I had thought that I was not qualified to tell my experiences because I felt guilty.

One week before the A-bombing, the demolition order was issued to our house, located in the central area of the city. My mother, Masaru and I moved to the barn at my uncle’s in the mountains on the Geibi Train Line. My eldest sister and her five children moved to a house in Tenjin-machi.
The day before the bombing, August 5, was the first day for Masaru and me to work as mobilized students. We rode on a bicycle heading for the station, but the chain snapped off on the way. I decided not to attend the work that day. He decided to stay at my sister’s in Tenjin-machi, and walked toward the station 4km away. That was the last time I ever saw him. He was two years younger than I.
On August 6, I was a bit late for work because my train had been delayed. No one could imagine an enemy plane would be in the beautiful cloudless sky. The air-raid alert had been cleared. At the moment I put a bag of gravel on my shoulder, I felt something thud and saw a blueish white flash running. I wondered what had happened, and looked at the direction of downtown. There were two burning suns above the city. I was so scared that I rushed into a shelter nearby. At that moment, a tremendous roaring sound was heard and then silence followed. I anxiously crept out of the shelter. What I saw was the frameworks of a five-story building. People outside were bleeding with shards of glass all over their bodies.

When I got home, my brother, who was three years older, said to me, “Masaru has died.” He lived in a company dormitory of Toyo Industry, the present Mazda Motor Company, and had come back earlier than I had. Masaru was mobilized to a different place each day. On the previous evening, my older brother happened to get information about where Masaru was going on the following day. He had graduated from the same school as Masaru. So, he went to search for Masaru on his way home after the A-bombing. Masaru and the other first-year students of the school had been lining up at the place near the hypocenter. He picked up some ashes which were supposed to be Masaru’s in rows of the dead who might have been the Class 6 students, and brought them back home.
When we were chanting sutras for Masaru at my uncle’s house, a staff member of the kimono shop, who regularly visited us, showed up and said, “I saw a little Matsumoto boy fleeing in the direction of Koi. That caused a big fuss. “Masaru is alive!” However, when we found him at the temple in Inokuchi, a temporary first aid station then, he was already dead. I heard that he had said, “My brother will come to rescue me,” in a weak voice for several hours before he died. Even now, I feel sorrowful, thinking that he meant me when he said, “my brother,” because I was the closest to him. For more than 70 years, I have felt sorry that I am alive, and I have felt guilty as a survivor that I escaped without saving any lives.