There were about 2,000 children who didn’t survive, even though they weren’t exposed to the A-bombing. I decided to be a storyteller to let people know what real war was like for them.

Yes. I have folded about 200,000 cranes so far. Children are very happy when given one.
Also,these cranes put a smile on faces of foreigners who visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and we can get acquainted with each other. I can’t speak English, though.

I started folding cranes at the time I became a volunteer storyteller eight years ago.
I wanted children from all over the world to take one to their country with them, together with the souls of the children who died in the A-bombing.
I wished those children who died could have played cheerfully. I wanted them to visit various places.
But since it is impossible, I wanted the foreign children to play with the cranes.
That was the only reason I started.

No. I just talked about it with my friends. I had never been asked to tell it, nor had I ever voluntarily told anyone that I was an A-bomb survivor.

Yes. I lived in Ote-machi (former Shioya-cho). Our house was located across from the former Bank of Japan.

I felt uneasy because I had no idea what had happened.
From the next evening, family members came to pick their children up. I asked them what happened in Hiroshima. When a young man living near my house came, I asked, “How is my home?” He just shook his head, saying nothing.
On August 9, my sister by five years came to pick me up.
She worked for the management bureau at Hiroshima Station then. She looked fine although she had some bruises. I was so happy to see her that I burst into tears.

Yes. The Geibi Line resumed its service on August 7.
She told me that our mother, younger sister and brother had been burned to death, holding onto each other in the house.
She said that she had been able to find the three, but she didn’t know where our father and our eighth-grade sister were.
She also said that she had asked a soldier working on the rescue operation nearby to cremate the bodies, and she collected their ashes.

Yes. We took the Geibi Line to a station near Hiroshima Station and walked into the city.
There was nothing! There was absolutely nothing left!
My sister and I walked to a first-aid station to look for our father and sister. The station looked like a burned auditorium, and smelled bad. There were wounded people lying on straw mats. We walked around avoiding those people, saying, “Does anyone know Michiko Kawamoto?” “Is Michiko Kawamoto here?” We searched a lot of aid stations for three days in vain. I became sick and said to my sister that I couldn’t continue any more. After that, she kept searching without me. After all, we couldn’t find them.

Yes. Their first target was food stalls. They got into a stall and said, “Give us udon noodles!” or “Give us some bread!” If they didn’t give them any, they would go on a rampage and break the stall. When they were two or three children, shop owners sometimes gave them something to eat, but if they repeated it, they were made to go away.
Then, the reconstruction projects, such as building bridges, started. Hiroshima City hired yakuza as supervisors on sites.
Street orphans were used as recruiters.

It probably was in 1946. They were hired at 100 yen a day.
Peace, in the true sense of term, didn’t come until 25 years after the A-bombing.
There are few records left about the first ten years of Hiroshima after the end of the war.
Hiroshima was like a city of yakuza. There were few people who could lead ordinary lives.
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, a law controlling gangsters was finally enforced, and consequently, the police cracked down on them. I think that was the start of the restoration of Hiroshima.

Many of those movies featured violent scenes between gangsters. But it was not such an easy thing.
Gangsters carried a kitchen knife or a gun with them, or sometimes they beat each other with clubs.
They didn’t stop fighting until the other person didn’t move. Otherwise, when the enemy got up, they got beaten twice as much. They had learned the way to fight.
It was such times. That’s why there are not so many people who can talk about the restoration time of Hiroshima.

The first gangsters who came to Hiroshima in those early days were taught to be chivalrous in some sense and never fight against common people. However, after the street children, who had never been educated in the way of gangs, joined them, their way of justice was completely ignored.
Drugs became raging. The children became addicted to philopon, a kind of methamphetamine, while they sold it. That was really scary. Suddenly, many children went on a rampage.

Everyone in those days thought about how to make a living for the day.
Shacks were being built here and there. Everyone was desperate to live.
When they saw someone who had something to eat, they knocked him down and took away the food for themselves.
That was not because they hated the other persons, but because they needed to survive.

My sister died of leukemia right before I became 11 years old.
My uncle came to take me in. He soon tried to put me in an orphanage, but all the orphanages were full. When my uncle and a city officer were arguing, Mr. Kawanaka, the mayor of Tomo Village, offered to take care of me. So, I started working for Kawanaka Soy Sauce.

I had a lot of bigger issues than love. I became a member of yakuza. I was able to get a job at a small delivery company because I had a driver’s license. However, I was easily tempted by young gangsters to gambling on pay days. Also, I was frequently asked to help whenever there was a fight, given a bamboo club. They said to me, “Hit! Hit!”

I had no friends besides them. All the orphans like me were in the same boat.
In those days, hospitals bought blood at 1,200 yen per two 200cc bottles. I could eat for ten days for that amount. So I would sell my blood once a month and hang around. When I wanted, I worked. That was what my life was like then.