Survivors Recount Experiencing A-Bomb Effects in Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Yomiuri Shimbun

6:00 JST, August 6, 2025

80 years ago this month, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Under a pair of mushroom clouds created by the enormous energy released by nuclear fission, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated, and over 210,000 people were killed. The following is based on the testimony of two people who were exposed to the effects of both bombings and saw both cities burnt to ashes, who recounted their painful experiences and stressed that something like this must never happen again.

A familiar town transformed

“Minami-Kanon-machi, Hiroshima; 3.5 kilometers from hypocenter” and “Aug. 10, Matsuyama-machi, Nagasaki; exposed to radiation upon entering the city.”

These entries from the official atomic bomb survivor’s certificate of Ayano Hirashima, 88, of Nagasaki, indicate that she was exposed to nuclear radiation in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

She was 8 years old and a third-grade student in elementary school on Aug. 6, 1945. At 8:15 a.m. that day, as she stood at the school entrance, reaching for her shoes as she prepared to go out on the playground, her vision suddenly turned red. She heard a loud booming sound and found herself trapped under the building. She managed to crawl out, guided by the light coming through a 10-centimeter gap in the rubble, and when she emerged she found that the town she knew had been completely transformed.

She returned home barefoot. Her mother emerged from their air raid shelter and asked if she was hurt. It was then that Hirashima first noticed that her legs were bleeding from glass fragments that had become embedded in them. A cart rolled past them, loaded with dead bodies.

Her family originally lived in Nagasaki, but about 18 months before the bombing, Hirashima, her siblings and her parents had moved to Hiroshima due to her father’s work.

After the blast, dressers in her home were overturned and no water came out of the faucets.

On Aug. 9, the family decided to return to Nagasaki. They did not know that at 11:02 a.m. that day, another atomic bomb had detonated over that city.

On Aug. 10, they arrived at Michino-o Station, in the northern part of Nagasaki. They walked through the city toward her grandparents’ home. Nagasaki had also completely been destroyed. Along the way, she saw the body of a girl in a school uniform. Her brain was exposed. Ayano also saw people who were so badly burned that their genders were unrecognizable, and others who were alive but groaning in agony.

“Oh, there’s another dead person over there.” As she counted the number of dead people she had seen on her fingers, her sister scolded her, saying, “Don’t count the dead.” She had become numb from seeing so much death.

In 1968, she obtained an atomic bomb survivor’s certificate, which entitles the holder to free medical care in principle.

She was recognized as a “Type 1” victim of the Hiroshima bombing, which indicates that she was present at the site when the atomic bomb was dropped, and a “Type 2” victim of the Nagasaki bombing, which indicates that she entered the affected area soon after the blast.

Her parents and siblings have already died. She is the only remaining member of her family who knows about the horrors of the atomic bombings.

“The atomic bombs melted people. They turned humans into something not human. They must never be used again,” she said emphatically.

Piles of corpses

Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s respective National Peace Memorial Halls for the Atomic Bomb Victims contain registers of deceased victims, of whom 25 were listed as having been exposed to the effects of both bombings as of July. However, the exact number of people exposed to both bombings, including those who survived, is unknown.

Kazutomo Imamichi, 91, of Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, is one such survivor. At the time, he was a fifth-grade student in elementary school in Hiroshima. On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, he was walking to school by his usual route.

Suddenly, he was hit by a flash of light and a shockwave that blew him away from where he had been standing, about 1.7 kilometers from the hypocenter. In a daze, he got up and ran to the school, only to find the building collapsed and his classmates lying on the ground. He was unable to help them up or check on those trapped under the building, so he returned home.

He saw a procession of dead bodies floating down the river. “Please give me water…” said a person whose skin was peeling off, but he could do nothing. He realized that both of his legs were burned only after he got home.

His home was about 2.5 kilometers from the hypocenter. His mother and three younger brothers were uninjured. On the morning of Aug. 8, they left Hiroshima for Nagasaki, where his mother’s parents lived. On their way to the station, they passed by a field where dead bodies were piled up like a pyramid. At the station they boarded a train.

At around noon on Aug. 9, the train stopped before reaching their destination station in Nagasaki and did not restart. They got off the train and walked over a mountain pass. When they reached the other side, they saw the city of Nagasaki burning. They had no choice but to step over countless bodies and people moaning for water as they made their way forward.

“Words can’t express it. It was a living hell,” he said.

The train they had ridden on that day had been behind schedule because it had been forced to stop many times on its way to Nagasaki due to factors such as air raid warnings.

“If it had arrived just a little earlier, we would have been right in the center of the blast and would not have survived,” Imamichi said.

About three months later, his father returned from the battlefield and the family moved back to Hiroshima. On the way, his 4-year-old brother, who was being carried on his father’s back, died. The cause of his death is unknown. It was later revealed that exposure to radiation can seriously harm humans, and Imamichi suspects that this may have killed his brother.

“I was exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and I walked through the flames in Nagasaki. It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” he said. “I don’t want anyone else to see the hell that I saw.”

Even after 80 years, he still chokes up each time he remembers those scenes.