Today’s Blackened Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
An account from a teacher of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945:
Just below Mrs. Ito, the chaos around the Tsurumi Bridge was growing. When Miyoko Matsubara, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, reached the bridge from some nearby homes where she had been salvaging roof tiles with a wrecking crew of youngsters from her school, she found hundreds of people who could no longer flee across the bridge. They had to stop to deal with the pain of their burns. Some were standing skin-to-skin in the water of the little emergency fire tanks that families had built near their homes and that had become refuges for burn victims all over town. Most had jumped into the river, and even there they still kept holding their arms up in the air as if ready to surrender to an unseen enemy.
Most were schoolchildren. They cried, “Mother! Mother!” and “Help me!” and looked up beseechingly at Miyoko. One child called, “Aren’t you Matsubara?” The face in the water was so blackened that Miyoko could not recognize it. “I’m Hiroko!” said the face, but Miyoko barely heard. Her own burned arms and legs hurt so much that she too forgot about crossing the bridge and jumped fifteen feet into the river.
Tsurumi Bridge
When Fumiko Morishita reached the Tsurumi Bridge toward 10 a.m., trotting hand-in-hand with her brother-in-law, her niece, and one of their neighbors, they were the subjects of envious looks from crowds of people huddled at the roadside too exhausted, too injured to go on. Fumiko and her people seemed so strong. None had been burned. Fumiko’s sister could not walk and had to be carried piggyback by her husband; she had sustained a back injury when the second floor of their home 900 yards from the hypocenter collapsed. But remarkably, Fumiko and the others did not seem hurt at all.
The people at the bridge were no longer jumping into the river. It was full of floating corpses, a reminder that the soothing water could quickly become a grave to a weakened body. Fumiko had wanted to wade in the river to cool off, but she turned away nauseated and ran on with the others. “Look at us,” said several of the people by the road. “We are not so lucky.”
Fumiko, who was twenty-five and had been working as an inspector in an artillery-shell factory, did indeed feel lucky. She was alive and so was her sweetheart, who had left for the army three and a half years ago but was still writing her faithfully. She was determined to marry him and return to work in her brother-in-law’s fish restaurant with its Kabuki dancers.
Even now her luck was holding, for at the Tamonin Temple near the foot of Hijiyama Hill she encountered a policeman of her acquaintance who presented her with two plump tomatoes on which she feasted with her little band of fellow survivors. And around her waist she she carried a money belt with 5000 yen. Citizens had been urged to make such belts for themselves as a precaution against air raids. Not many wore them so early in the morning. Fumiko, the lucky one, was relatively rich. She could not guess that she would hover for months near death while her companions on the road up Hijiyama Hill would all be dead within seven weeks. Having been lucky enough to live through the bomb’s blast damage and its fires, they would become victims of its lingering radiation.
A few steel and concrete buildings and bridges are still intact in Hiroshima after the Japanese city was hit by an atomic bomb by the U.S., during World War II Sept. 5, 1945. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)
Culled from: Day One: Before Hiroshima and After
Plastination Specimen Du Jour!
Whole-body plastinate of a woman in the 5th month of pregnancy. At this stage of the pregnancy, the fetus is 17 centimeters (about 6.5 inches) long from head to tail and causes the abdomen to bulge.
The superficial muscles have been exposed on the front side of this body, while the back shows the deeper muscles. On the left side of the back, the thoracic cavity has been opened, revealing a smoker’s lung, as can be clearly seen by the black pigmentation. On the right side, the torso has been opened to show the right kidney.
Culled from: Bodyworlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
October 26th. An order confiscating all salt offered for sale in camp has been issued by the Dutchman. Teeth ache very severely.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost