Gaufre’s Reviews > Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War > Status Update

I stopped a while back because I watched an archival video of the wounds of T described in the book. I wouldn't say it was a mistake; it took me a long time to absorb.

After her brother died

Nagano said, "so [my mother] held the rice bowl with my brother's ashes close to her chest, one hand over the top, and stroked it, over and over, whispering my brother's name and apologizing to him. She never put his ashes down, even inside the air raid shelter. That's how it was for us. There are really no words for the sadness I felt."

a child's body lay on the ground, completely burned. His face was covered in blisters and swollen like a balloon [...] "We didn't want to think that he was my brother," Nagano said, crying.
"'Are you Sei-chan?' we asked. He couldn't see us, but he nodded yes. And even though he nodded - it's terrible to say - we desperately hoped that maybe this was the wrong person, that Seiji might be in a better state... "

When they finally came to Yoshida's burned body, they knew he was their son. They lifted him up, placed him into an ubaguruma (baby carriage), and pushed him nearly four and a half miles [...] to their home. [...] Along the way, he blacked out and didn't regain consciousness until mid-December, four months later.

When a mother burst out shouting and crying with happiness when her daughter finally came home, a military policeman rebuked her loudly: "Such effeminate behavior has caused Japan to be defeated!"

Mothers and fathers searched for their children at schools, factories and shelters throughout the area, but facial burns and swelling rendered people so unrecognizable that many parents could only identify their sons and daughters by reading the ID tags on their school uniforms.