いま伝えたい―矢野美耶古さん - 新日本婦人の会中央本部

いま伝えたい――矢野美耶古さん

やの　みやこ・ 14歳の時に広島で被ばく

今も続く、被爆者のたたかい

／　広島市西区の自宅にて証言（2017年）

　私は矢野美耶古です。当時14歳でした。

　1945年8月初めから、広島市では爆撃による火災の炎症を防ぐため、市を南北に分断する大きな防火帯を東西約5キロに渡って作る計画で、区域内にあった民家を強制的に立ち退かせる建物疎開作業をおこないました。その作業は兵隊さんが中心となり、それを義勇隊や中学生、女学生の低学年が手伝いました。

　私の通っていた広島市立第一高等学校の1、2年生も、8月5日から現在平和公園になっているあたりで作業をおこないました。5日の夜はいつになく警戒警報、空襲警報が繰り返され、防空壕の中で長い時間を過ごすうちに、私は激しい腹痛を起こし、6日は作業を休んで生き残りました。

　8月6日午前8時15分、私は爆心地から南4 km の自宅で、家族と一緒にいました。突然北の空がピカッと光り、家族はそれぞれ防空壕へ逃げていきましたが、私1人逃げ遅れてその場にいました。

　地底から突き上げられるように、座っていた畳と一緒に吹き上げられ、落ちた時には床が抜けていました。夢中で外に飛び出してあたりを見ますと、大きな松の木も根本から倒れて、枝の半分は茶色に焦げておりました。家は倒れなかったんですが、めちゃくちゃに壊れていました。ふと北の空を見上げると、今でも目に焼き付いているのですが、赤、黄、オレンジ、紫色… ほんとに表現しがたい火の玉が浮いているのが見えました。その後、不気味な入道雲、これは原子雲なんですが、もくもくと湧き上がっていました。日食の時のように、あたりが暗くなってきました。爆風と衝撃波によって広島中のちりが吹き上げられ、太陽の光を遮ったからです。どれほど時間が経ったのか、裏の方から「家の下敷きになってる人がいるから、助けてくれ～」と叫ぶ声で、我に返りました。

　そのうち、ケガや火傷をした人が逃げてきました。時間が経つほどに火傷のひどい人が増えてきました。皮膚は垂れ下がり、顔は真っ赤に腫れ上がり、知人から声をかけられても、誰なのか判断がつかない状態でした。昼間はケガ人を宇品の港まで運びました。夜になっても、ゲガ人の行列は途絶えることなく続きました。私の家はお宮で、臨時の救護所となり、３日めの夜は 50人くらい泊まりました。家族は野宿をしました。

　翌朝、何よりも驚いたことは、無傷だった人も亡くなっていました。お宮と隣の幼稚園に収容された人が何人も亡くなりましたから、翌日から私の主な仕事は死体を焼く火の番でした。救護所は、9月の末まで続きました。家族の中で一番に症状が出たのはすぐ上の姉で、8月16日の夜から高熱を出して寝込みました。軍医さんに診察してもらったところ、これは赤痢だから隔離しなさいと言われました。でもその頃、家族全員下痢をしていたので、食料事情が悪いのと、衛生状態が悪いからだろうと軽く考えていました、結局 1ヵ月半寝込みました。

　私は17歳頃から貧血がひどく、たびたび倒れるようになりました。口内炎や目にものもらいが次つぎでき、身体の弱いところに紫の斑点ができました。身体がだるくてたまらないので、病院で検査をしたところ、「白血球が減少しているが、原爆とは関係ない」とお医者さんは言いました。高校を卒業して1年間、家でぶらぶらしていました。何もする気力がわかないのです。俗にいう「ブラブラ病」だったと思います。

　1945年9月8日、アメリカ原子爆弾災害調査団が初めて広島に入り、惨状と被害の実情を確かめたにもかかわらず、原爆放射能の後障害はありえない。すでに広島・長崎では原爆症で死ぬべきものは死んでしまい、9月上旬現在、原爆放射能のために苦しんでいるものは皆無であると声明を発表しました。

　続いてGHQはプレスコードを指令して、約6年間、原爆に関する報道を弾圧しました。日本の科学者、医師の被爆に関する研究や治療の資料は、すべてGHQに没収され、アメリカ本国に持ち帰られました。　近所のお医者さんがわからなかったのは当然です。

　政府はその後も被爆者を放置しました。運動によってやっと12年後に、それも一瞬の近距離被爆のみ被爆者として認めました。この姿勢は今も続いています。いま全国で原爆症認定裁判がたたかわれています。自らも被爆者で物理学の沢田先生や遺伝学の市川先生が裁判の証人に立ち、キノコ雲から降下した放射性微粒子を体内に吸い込むと、内臓に付着して長い年月かかって細胞を破壊する、内部被曝の問題を証言されました。

　イラク戦争で砂漠に落とされた劣化ウラン弾のチリは風に乗って世界中にばらまかれています。被爆者が辛い過去を証言するのは、若い人に自分たちの将来の問題として考えていただきたいと思っているからです。

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Just the Right Survivors So I Insist Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

Miyako Yano(1989)

I was born in the year when the Fifteen-Year War started and entered the girls’ school in 1944.

When the Atomic bomb was dropped, I was home absent from school with a stomachache. We were a family of five: Father, who was a priest, Mother, two elder sisters who were volunteer corps members, and myself.

On August 6, the military factory where my sisters worked was closed for planned outage. So unusually, all my family were in the living room. Suddenly a flash came like a lightening. Father almost automatically jumped out to the yard, shouting “We’re attacked!” Our house was 4km away from the hypocenter, but my father had a minor　burn on his right hand, which was exposed to the flash.

Mother ran to the kitchen, and my sisters rushed to the air-raid shelter, but I was still sitting there.

Then our whole house started to shake from side to side as if there had been an earthquake. In that moment, I was blown up by the blast with tatami mats up to the ceiling, and then knocked down to the floor. I went outside unconsciously. I was surprised to see our house completely destroyed, and the big pine tree that had stood in the yard fell down from the base. But I saw no trace of a bomb. I looked up in the sky on the north to see a gigantic thunderhead climbing higher and higher. A pillar of flame whose color was hard to tell if it was yellow, red or orange was rising.

It was all quiet out there and I had no idea what had happened. I heard someone　shouting, asking for help to rescue those who were left under the broken house.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. People with burns and injuries came one after another to evacuate in our shrine, and it soon was packed with these people. The shrine became a first-aid station.

In the afternoon, the army ordered us to move patients to Ninoshima Island because it was dangerous there. We put those who had just settled down on a large two-wheeled cart or boards to carry them to Ujina Port. Soon there was a line of the injured stretching in to the night and the shrine became crowded again.

We were told not to let people die before the altar, so we carried the seriously injured to the kindergarten next to the shrine. We let the lightly injured or uninjured stay in the shrine.
My family stayed outside. In the center of the city, the fire kept burning all night turning the night sky red.

At dawn, the rescue activity started again. Our shrine was used as the first-aid station till the end of September.
We were surprised to find those who had looked well and stayed in the shrine the night before dead.

We dug a big hole in the kindergarten yard with wood scrap from the demolished buildings. The owner of the photo studio across the street led the neighbors to cremate the dead bodies.
He said to me, “Miya-chan, keep watch on fire,” and he went back to the aid station.

The adults did not want children to see such a cruel sight, so I had to go and sit under the blazing sun watching the fire burning the bodies from day to day.

The photo studio owner couldn’t eat anything because the rotten smell bothered him and　he was laid up in bed several days later.
In retrospect, I think he was affected by radiation.

Early September, school reopened, so I went back to the classes. But there were only a few students in each class in the first and second grades. Our school had the biggest number of casualties, and all the students who had been to demolition work were dead.

I grew up with militarist education that taught us the highest honor that could be attained was to die for the Emperor. So I felt very ashamed of myself for having survived because I was absent from school and labor that day. I attended school with a sense of guilt.

Our school buildings were severely damaged, so on rainy days we had no classes and worked for reconstruction. When we searched for personal effects of the deceased or lost articles, the teacher would called me, “Hey,you, the survivor.” regret to be alive. It made me feel more.

Meanwhile, the School Memorial Ceremony was held, where the mother of a friend of mine, who used to go to school from elementary through girls’ together, said to me squarely, “I don’t want to see your face. You remind me of my daughter. She told me that she was too tired and wanted to stay home. The diligent one died while the lazy one survived.”

At that time I couldn’t understand the grief of a mother who had lost her child. Every day I thought of dying. I started to hate people and tried to avoid them. Some students felt it was too hard to be told they had survived because they were lazy, and moved to another school.

After Japan was defeated in the war, the school education was drastically changed; girls’ schools (12-16 years old) were abolished, and the education system was reformed many
times. In 1950 I graduated from high school.

Around that time, I fell sick. In the morning I was too weary to get out of the bed, feeling like falling into the pits. When I had a bath, I felt dizzy, things went black and fell down. So I consulted a doctor, but he said, “Nothing is wrong with you except anemia.”

Father was also unable to get up in the morning. Back then surviving was the biggest challenge. Father had no job and we hardly had cash income. Mother hoped that I found a job to help with family expenses. She scolded me for staying home without looking for a job.

My weariness and dizziness of unknown cause continued for a year and a half. Our neighbors worried that a young one like me would become useless and found me a job at. a laboratory near my house.

In 1955, I got married and had a son two years later. He was born in a state of suspended animation, but to my relief, he grew up without any more trouble. But the about six months later, he started to suffer anemia, and it became worse and worse. He was injected with blood forming medicine, but there was a limit on frequency of injection, so the doctor had to stop it. The exam found no cause for his anemia and my husband was very worried, while I took it easy thinking that my son just inherited anemia from me.

I avoided people, turned my back to society, and never read anything related to the A-bomb. I blindly accepted what the government said in public and I was not conscious of myself being Hibakusha. I hadn’t told my husband what I had experienced either.

Four years later, I gave birth to a baby girl. She was born premature, so I had to leave her in the hospital when I went home. I got mastitis, had it cut open, and the wound would not heal easily. The doctor looked puzzled, so I asked him if it was because of my exposure to the A-bomb. He said that it had nothing to do with the A-bomb. Then I started to have pains in chronic appendicitis. I was examined in the hospital, and was told that due to my abnormally low level of white blood cell counts they were not able to do surgery on me. At that point I believed my condition was related with the A-bomb.

My father had already passed away of stomach cancer three years before and the photo studio owner, who had burned the dead bodies together, also died of cancer.

All these remind me of possible effect of radiation on myself.

I have long kept being “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” about the A-bomb. When I participated with my husband in the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs for the first time, there were many right wing people coming in vehicles to intimidate the participants. I did not understand most of what people were discussing and reporting, but I came home feeling refreshed, overcoming all the biased views I had had.

I was encouraged to join the New Japan Women’s Association, and I happened to read “Burnt Like Fallen Leaves.” My way of life totally changed.

Ms. Misao Nagoya wrote that her younger sister who as a girls school student had left home cheerfully that morning to work in the building demolition just beneath the hypocenter. Her sister was still missing, burnt and gone leaving no trace of life on this earth. I thought I could have been one of those who disappeared like her sister. This was the first story of Hibakusha I had ever read, and I was deeply shocked.

Friends of mine who died had no choice but to live in the wartime. They were gone without experiencing a single day of peace.
To create a world where all the children, no matter what country they live in, will not be made victims of war, I will keep committed to the movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

This year, I left Hiroshima for my husband’s work, and it is now difficult for me to get materials and information on the A-bombing. It reminds me once again that “Burnt Like Fallen Leaves” has such an important role in making Hibakusha’s stories known.

いま伝えたい――矢野 美耶古さん

いま伝えたい――矢野美耶古さん