<Begin Segment 19>

TI: And then you were talking that you went to the hospital, so you were able to start talking to some of the people.

HH: Yes. Well, since there was no other military area, and there's no restaurants or anything like that left, I was housed in the hospital. And that's where I heard, I found out that the cook was employed, I guess, to cook for the hospital personnel. And I think they had some nurses, too, there, but mostly was navy doctors conducting a survey, I mean, a study of survivors, some of 'em, and some of 'em were body parts and things like that. They were making studies, I think, for radiation or something like that. But while I was there, I think I was there about three days. And at one time, I saw some children around, and they were playing around outside of the hospital. And so I kind of talked with them a little bit, and then I found out that those were this cook's, Japanese cook's children, and he told me that his wife and a daughter was a victim of the atomic bomb.

TI: And how, how did that make you feel when he told you that?

HH: Well, I thought, gee, here he's lost his family except these two, and I thought, wow, how can he work? But in those days, homes were destroyed and everything else, so I think he was a cook there anyway, so he was able to stay there and must have had a place that he could have his kids there, children, too. But I felt very, very bad about it in a sense, because I'm from, my parents were from, not Hiroshima, but one more, Yamaguchi-ken, which is one province south of Hiroshima. Very, very close.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.