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MN: Now, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima city on August 6, 1945. Can you share with us how you started that day and what happened?

JD: Okay. Well, about a month before the bombing of Hiroshima, Kure city, as I mentioned, about hour and a half train ride from where I lived, that was like a port city that made ships and repaired ships. There was a canal, a deep canal, and so it was a very important city. Kure also had a little facility there, a school that was a academy like an Annapolis type academy school there, Etajima. So it was a very important city, so that was bombed about a month prior to Hiroshima bombing by incendiary attack, and they said, that was a night bombing and they said a city that was, took eighty years to create was wiped out in two hours by incendiary attack. And as you know the history, the city (of Dresden) was bombed by the incendiary attack and heavily damaged also. This was in also spring of 1945, and saturated bombing first and then second raid came with incendiary attack, so all the buildings was broken now the firebomb was dropped too, so completely burn the city down to the ground. So probably similar thing happened to Kure, and so Hiroshima, it was interesting that during the four years of war we had bombing and raid, but no bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, so Hiroshima city was basically intact and it was indicated that it was about the tenth largest city in Japan, Tokyo being the number one city, down the line, Kobe and Osaka and so forth. So Hiroshima official felt that Hiroshima'd be the next target, so they start to consider that perhaps to be the next target similar to attack that was done in Kure, so the, on the August the 5th they called out for volunteers to come to the city to create a firebreak, like purposely tear rows of homes down, one lane so that the fire would be prevented from jumping from one, one side to the other, and so when that happened our teacher announced to us that on the morning of August 6th we'll be marching to the city of Hiroshima to contribute in working as a work crew to establish a firebreak avenue, so to speak. And my aunt who lived in the same village we did, she volunteered. She was nineteen years old then, so she got on the early train and went to the city, and as her story goes, she was on top of the roof when the bomb exploded. For me, I got to the train to catch a seven-thirty train, but what happened was the daily bombing we had, the train got delayed in the schedule, so it was about maybe ten, ten minutes behind schedule when I got onto it, and when they went to Mukainada I was also ten minutes behind. I rushed to my reporting station, we assembled in the courtyard, were taking roll call, and by then eight o'clock came by and by the time roll call finished, it was close to eight-fifteen.

But unfortunate thing happened to Hiroshima city is that on that morning of August 6th, about one o'clock, there was air raid. The siren went off and so people came out of bed, went to the bomb shelter. The bomb shelter was just a big ditch with heavy timber on top and the earth from below piled on top of that, and that became the bomb shelter for them. It was maybe sufficed for a regular bomb that dropped nearby and all the shamble would fall on top of them but they'll be protected below. But that air raid became a false alarm, so the all clear signal came out about one, one-thirty or one-forty-five, so they all went back to bed again. But at seven o'clock there was another air raid attack, and this time a single aircraft came by. There was an air raid siren and then imminent attack. It was short blasts went off, so everybody took cover, and sure enough the one aircraft came by, took a run around the city and weather, it became a weather reconnaissance aircraft. And if the city of Hiroshima was overcast they would just bypass and go to the next target down south as planned, to Kokura, and if that was clouded over they would go to Nagasaki, and that was their plan. But unfortunately for Hiroshima it was clouded at first, then they saw a break in the cloud drifting over, so the aircraft cranked the phone and notified the aircraft one hour behind that Hiroshima is aiming point, AP, and so the three aircraft that followed behind came and eight-fifteen appeared in Hiroshima.

And that's when I was on the courtyard. I saw these three aircraft, no siren going. Said, boy, there's an aircraft above, no siren to alarm the people to take cover, so Hiroshima, after the seven o'clock bombing raid, all clear, no siren after that, so people was outdoors going, getting to work, train and the buses, streetcars were running, and here eight-fifteen we saw, the sound of aircraft, we saw it, it's coming toward us. We watched the aircraft and as if it, to study the aircraft, the path, if it was not coming directly over you you'd be safe, so we watched for that, and it was coming toward us, but it veered away about five degrees toward Hiroshima city, but then exploded. So when I heard the, felt the hot flash, I fell on the ground, covered my eyes and ears like we were trained to do, four fingers over the eyes and thumb into the ear. This was done so that if the bomb fall near you, if it blast, there'd be, cause a vacuum around you and pop your eyeball and eardrum out, so you protect, do that, protect yourself, fall on the ground instinctively. And the flash came, and right after the flash, a flash, a bomb flash followed. All the windows on the factory blew up. Every place covered with smoke and dust. You couldn't see anything around you. Then I heard a footstep running toward the bomb shelter created for the factory workers about a thousand yards away, so I started following the footstep noise and went toward that, blindly following that noise. Then when I got to the bomb shelter, it was elevated, so I looked back into the city to see what happened and saw the mushroom cloud. And that's where the painting I did came out, come back. I saw that, and such a beautiful cloud going up and the city at the base of it was, said thirty thousand degrees centigrade, that hot, center was in the millions of degrees centigrade. So the aiming point was Aioi Bridge and that point, according to bombardier eyesight, and that's where, missed the target by about fifty yards or so, but it fell on that spot. And the bomb exploded about, oh, three thousand, three thousand feet above the ground exploded, and that was planned to do so because it would have a better coverage by exploding high in the air, and that was the way it was planned. They say the bomb weighed about two, four tons. Yeah, or was it two tons, was it? And when it released that weight the aircraft jerked up ten feet, and then it turned around and escaped from the city. And then when it exploded the aircraft, again, jerked up ten feet into the air, and that was because the bomb blast caught up with the aircraft and blew it up in the air. Far as the pilot, the Enola Gay pilot concerned he was hit by, by aircraft, anti aircraft shell, but it wasn't. It was their own bomb that pushed them up in the air. But they escaped safely and returned to, to Tinian Island.

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