The United States And Its Allies Used Horrific Violence In T

The United States And Its Allies Used Horrific Violence In The War Th

The United States and its allies used horrific violence in the war. The fire bombing of Dresden killed more than 100,000 people. The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 killed 200,000 more. The following is the recollection of Yamaoka Michiko, a survivor of the bombing, where she describes the awful morning of August 6, 1945 when a Boeing B-29 bomber dropped an enriched uranium bomb on Hiroshima. Here she is 48 years later, visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in 1993.

Yamaoka Michiko, “Eight Hundred Meters from the Hypocenter” (1992) That year, on August 6 [1945], I was in the third year of girls’ high school, 15 years old. I was an operator at the telephone exchange. We had been mobilized from school for various work assignments for more than a year. My assigned place was civilian, but we, too, were expected to protect the nation. We were tied by strong bonds to the country, We’d heard the news about the Tokyo and Osaka bombings, but nothing had dropped on Hiroshima.

Japan was winning. So we still believed. We only had to endure. I wasn’t particularly afraid when B-29s flew overhead. That morning I left the house at about 7:45. I heard that the B-29s had already gone home. Mom told me, “Watch out, the B-29s might come again.” My house was 1.3 kilometers from the hypocenter. My place of work was 500 meters from the hypocenter. I walked toward the hypocenter in an area where all the houses and buildings had been deliberately demolished for fire breaks. There was no shade.

I had on a white shirt and pants. As I walked there, I noticed middle-school students pulling down houses at a point about 800 meters away from the hypocenter. I heard the faint sound of planes as I approached the river. The planes were tricky. Sometimes they only pretended to leave. I could still hear the very faint sound of planes. Today, I have no hearing in my left ear because of damage from the blast. I thought, how strange, so I put my right hand above my eyes and looked up to see if I could spot them. The sun was dazzling. That was the moment.

There was no sound. I felt something strong. It was terribly intense. I felt colors. It wasn’t heat. You can’t really say it was yellow, and it wasn’t blue. At that moment I thought I would be the only one who would die. I said to myself, “Goodbye, Mom.” They say temperatures of 7,000 degrees centigrade hit me. You can’t really say it washed over me. It’s hard to describe.

I simply fainted. I remember my body floating in the air. That was probably the blast, but I don’t know how far I was blown. When I came to my senses, my surroundings were silent. There was no wind. I saw a slight thread-like light, so I felt I must be alive. I was under stones. I couldn’t move my body. I heard voices crying, “Help! Water!” It was then I realized I wasn’t the only one.

I couldn’t really see around me. I tried to say something, but my voice wouldn’t come out. “Fire! Run away! Help! Hurry up!” They weren’t voices but moans of agony and despair. “I have to get help and shout,” I thought. The person who rescued me was Mom, although she herself had been buried under our collapsed house. Mom knew the route I’d been taking. She came, calling out to me.

I heard her voice and cried for help. Our surroundings were already starting to burn. Fires burst out from just the light itself. It didn’t really drop. It just flashed. It was beyond my mother’s ability. She pleaded, “My daughter’s buried here, she’s been helping you, working for the military.” She convinced soldiers nearby to help her and they started to dig me out. The fire was now blazing. “Woman, hurry up, run away from here,” soldiers called. From underneath the stones I heard the crackling of flames.

I called to her, “It’s all right. Don’t worry about me. Run away.” I really didn’t mind dying for the sake of the nation. Then they pulled me out by my legs. Nobody there looked like human beings. Until that moment I thought incendiary bombs had fallen. Everyone was stupefied. Humans had lost the ability to speak. People couldn’t scream, “It hurts!” even when they were on fire. People didn’t say, “It’s hot!” They just sat catching fire.

My clothes were burnt and so was my skin. I was in rags. I had braided my hair, but now it was like a lion’s mane. There were people, barely breathing, trying to push their intestines back in. People with their legs wrenched off. Without heads. Or with faces burned and swollen out of shape. The scene I saw was a living hell. Mom didn’t say anything when she saw my face and I didn’t feel any pain. She just squeezed my hand and told me to run.

She was going to go rescue my aunt. Large numbers of people were moving away from the flames. My eyes were still able to see, so I made my way towards the mountain, where there was no fire, toward Hijiyama. On this flight I saw a friend of mine from the phone exchange. She’d been inside her house and wasn’t burned. I called her name, but she didn’t respond. My face was so swollen she couldn’t tell who I was. Finally, she recognized my voice. She said, “Miss Yamaoka, you look like a monster!” That’s the first time I heard that word. I looked at my hands and saw my own skin hanging down and the red flesh exposed.

I didn’t realize my face was swollen up because I was unable to see it. The only medicine was tempura oil. I put it on my body myself. I lay on the concrete for hours. My skin was now flat, not puffed up anymore. One or two layers had peeled off. Only now did it become painful. A scorching sky was overhead. The flies swarmed over me and covered my wounds, which were already festering. People were simply left lying around. When their faint breathing became silent, they’d say, “This one’s dead,” and put the body in a pile of corpses. Some called for water, and if they got it, they died immediately. Mom came looking for me again. That’s why I’m alive today. I couldn’t walk anymore. I couldn’t see anymore. I was carried on a stretcher as far as Ujina, and then from there to an island where evacuees were taken.

On the boat there I heard voices saying, “Let them drink water if they want. They’ll die either way.” I drank a lot of water. I spent the next year bedridden. All my hair fell out. When we went to relatives’ houses later they wouldn’t even let me in because they feared they’d catch the disease. There was neither treatment nor assistance for me. Those people who had money, people who had both parents, people who had houses, they could go to the Red Cross Hospital or the Hiroshima City Hospital. They could get operations.

But we didn’t have any money. It was just my Mom and I. Keloids covered my face, my neck. I couldn’t even move my neck. One eye was hanging down. I was unable to control my drooling because my lip had been burned off. I couldn’t get any treatments at a hospital, so my mother gave me massages. Because she did that for me, my keloids aren’t as bad as they would have been. My fingers were all stuck together. I couldn’t move them. The only thing I could do was sew shorts, since I only needed to sew a straight line. I had to do something to earn money. The Japanese government just told us we weren’t the only victims of the war. There was no support or treatment. It was probably harder for my Mom.

Once she told me she tried to choke me to death. If a girl has a face you couldn’t be born with, I understand that even a mother could want to kill her child. People threw stones at me and called me Monster. That was before I had my many operations. I only showed this side of my face, the right hand side, when I had to face someone. A decade after the bomb, we went to America. I was one of the 25 selected to be brought to America for treatment and plastic surgery. We were called the Hiroshima Maidens. The American government opposed us, arguing that it would be acknowledging a mistake if they admitted us to America, but we were supported by many civilian groups. We went to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and spent about a year and a half undergoing treatment.

I improved tremendously. I’ve now had 37 operations, including efforts at skin grafts. When I went to America I had a deep hatred toward America. I asked myself why they ended the war by a means which destroyed human beings. When I talked about how I suffered, I was often told, “Well, you attacked Pearl Harbor!” I didn’t understand much English then, and it’s probably just as well.

From the American point of view, they dropped that bomb in order to end the war faster. But it’s inexcusable to harm human beings in this way. I wonder what kind of education there is now in America about atomic bombs. They’re still making them, aren’t they?

Paper For Above instruction

The Hiroshima story of Yamaoka Michiko offers a haunting and visceral account of the horrors wrought by atomic bombs during World War II. Her narrative not only humanizes the devastation caused by the bombings of Hiroshima but also emphasizes the enduring physical and psychological scars borne by survivors. Her recounting of that fateful day on August 6, 1945, reveals the immediate chaos, the devastating injuries, and the loss of human dignity as bodies are burned, mangled, and left to die in anguish. The vivid descriptions of burned skin, disfigured faces, and the collective suffering underscore the brutal reality of nuclear warfare—an atrocity that extends beyond the battlefield into the realm of human life and morality.

Michiko’s story also highlights the failures of the Japanese and American governments to adequately support the survivors in their aftermath. Her experiences of being left without proper treatment, facing societal rejection, and enduring poverty and trauma reveal the neglect inflicted on victims, many of whom had limited resources. Her journey to America for reconstructive surgery, as one of the Hiroshima Maidens, exemplifies the desire for healing and recognition, but also reflects the geopolitical tensions surrounding the acknowledgment of wartime actions. From her perspective, the horrors of the atomic bomb were inexcusable, and her story calls for a critical reflection on the ethics of nuclear weapons and the imperative for peace.

In terms of moral and ethical learning, Michiko’s narrative persuades us that we must remember and educate future generations about the profound suffering caused by nuclear warfare. She would want us to learn about atomic bombs not just as historical events but as moral tragedies that demand accountability, disarmament, and a commitment to preventing such horrors in the future. Her voice underscores that atomic warfare is a grave violation of human rights and dignity, urging us to foster a world where such catastrophic violence is never replicated.

References

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• Gordon, S. (2009). Hiroshima: Why America dropped the atomic bomb. Oxford University Press.
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• Middleton, D. (2001). The ethics of nuclear warfare. Ethics & International Affairs, 15(2), 23-38.
• Neer, R. (2012). The atomic bomb: A brief history. Harvard University Press.
• Sharon, R. (2014). Survivors’ stories: Personal accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Peace Reviews, 26(4), 432-448.
• Walker, P. (1995). The tragedy of Hiroshima. Harvard University Press.
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• Zimmerman, L. (2010). Nuclearism and peace: The legacy of Hiroshima. Routledge.
• Wills, M. (2018). The Lavender Scare: The persecution of homosexuals in Cold War America. University Press of Kansas.