Hideo Kimura, aged 12 at the time of the bombing, was a first-year student in the higher grades of Kusatsu Elementary School. He was exposed to the bomb at Kan-on-machi on his way to Koami-cho to engage in building demolition works as a mobilized student, and sustained serious burn injuries. He could not put the images of the destruction of Hiroshima and people who had been injured or died in the A-bombing out of his mind.
In 2002, Kimura drew a picture of the A-bombing for the first time in nearly 60 years since the bombing. Since then, he has conveyed his A-bomb experience to many people through pictures and picture storytelling shows.
Drawn by Hideo Kimura
1. In early morning on August 6, 1945, Kusatsu-minami Volunteer Citizen Corps headed for Koami-cho for building demolition works.
2. At 8:15 a.m., the atomic bomb exploded overhead and the heat and blast surged with an immense boom.
3. People who sustained serious burn injuries and had been blown away by the blast, their clothes burned by the heat, were calling out for help.
4. To rescue volunteer citizen corps members, Coast Guard members headed for Koami-cho from the Kusatsu Harbor on fishing boats.
5. Boats could not go up the Tenmagawa River due to ebb tide. Coast Guard members moored their boats at the Eba Water Gate, and headed for Koami-cho on foot.
6. Volunteer citizen corps members were calling for help.
7. Some families of volunteer citizen corps members headed for Koami-cho from Kusatsu on foot. The father and child at the foreground tried in vain to find the child’s mother by looking for her gold teeth as a clue among the water-blistered corpses.
8. Because of the full tide, Coast Guard members moored their boats to the river bank in Koami-cho, and were engaged in rescuing injured volunteer citizen corps members.
9. Some female volunteer citizen corps members could not get out of an air-raid shelter due to their injuries.
10.The boat went down the Tenmagawa River with the injured on board. Many volunteer citizen corps members were left behind on the river banks.
11.The boat hurried back to the Kusatsu Harbor with both injured and deceased volunteer citizen corps members on board.
12.Families of volunteer citizen corps members cried loudly in confusion, looking at those who had changed beyond recognition.
13.Women, suffering serious burn injuries, were all but dead without any energy to utter words, even in front of their family members crying and calling their names.
14.Although they were called by their mother, the children did not go near her because they were scared by her monstrous appearance.
15.The mortally-injured mother called her children close to her, and died after her last words. Her children cried their eyes out.
16.The deceased mother was put into a casket made from the drawers of a chest. Children stuck close to the casket, and watched over their mother in tears.