Caspar Daw

“When I felt ill and was on the way to becoming a burden to the other men, I noticed a growing chill in their attitude toward me. For people like us, living day and night on the brink of danger, the normal instinct of survival seems to strike inward, like a disease, distorting the personality and removing all motives other than those of sheer self-interest. That is why this afternoon I did not wait to go and tell my former comrades-in-arms what had happened to me. For one thing, they probably already knew; besides, it seemed unfair to risk awakening their dormant sense of humanity.”
― Shōhei Ōoka, Fires on the Plain

“What the diary does not reveal, for it stops too soon, is the appalling fact that from late 1945 until 1952 Japanese medical researchers were prohibited by U.S. occupation authorities from publishing scientific articles on the effects of the atomic bombs.”
― John W. Dower, Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945

“...in the distance across the dark fields I saw a flame. With the rainy season, the fireflies had long since disappeared. What then could this be? The flame flickered, now brightly, no dimly, and sometimes it glowed like a halo, as if it had sunk deep into water.
I was frightened by this flame. For in my heart I, too, carried a flame.”
― Shōhei Ōoka, Fires on the Plain

“One might have complained about the soot and ashes or about the pipes and curtain rods that hung crazily from the ceiling, but patients never lived in a hospital ward so nearly free of bacteria as this one that was sterilized by fire.”
― Michihiko Hachiya, Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945