<Begin Segment 29>

EG: What was Hiroshima like after the bomb?

TM: Well, the first time I saw Hiroshima after the war was on my way to Kyushu. And the train stopped at the Hiroshima station. So they only had a few minutes. And I got off the train and saw just everything was flat. Nothing was there. And, of course, that was only a few minutes because the train had to, you know, stay only for a few minutes. But after -- that was when I was there by myself -- and after family came, because her people were in Hiroshima, we took a trip down. And even then, things were not normal. Of course, they had lots of sick people, housing was bad, damages, and just lots and lots and lots...

EG: How did her family escape the bomb? They must have been out from the center of the city.

TM: Uh-huh. Her cousin was away from the center of the explosion. So he was saved. I don't know about her uncles and all that. I guess they were not in, close to the center, but her mother's side, I understand there were quite a bit of damages. And then I think her, one of her cousins disappeared. They don't know what happened to her.

EG: Just never heard of again. That would be a hard time.

TM: As far as that goes, place like you've heard of Yahata steel town in Kyushu? I went by there on train and there wasn't anything. Just the chimneys. And that was true in the area between Tokyo and Yokohama. You can go miles and miles and miles and nothing but concrete chimneys standing. Nothing was, nothing else was there.

EG: And yet MacArthur set up his headquarters in Tokyo. There must have been enough of Tokyo standing to make it, start making a new government?

TM: Well, there were, I think they were purposely not touched. Because around imperial moat -- the emperor's moat -- there were a lot of these nice buildings. And one of the nice buildings was Daiichi Insurance Company where MacArthur made the headquarters and...

EG: And the palace, of course, was not touched.

TM: It was a modern building, yeah.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.