Scissors-rock-paper determined fate -- JCP member Hibakusha at 57th year

"My heart aches when I remember that day," said Yoshioka Yukio, a 73-year-old Hibakusha of Hiroshima, at a class reunion. Until then, for more than half a century after the fateful blast on August 6, 1945, he never told the story to anyone else. Akahata of August 4 carried Yoshioka's story. He keeps on relating Hibakusha's experience to young people:

I was 16 years old and served as a class leader in my school. Under the national mobilization, the whole of my class was assigned to help evacuate the prefectural office building on August 5 and 6 as a fire prevention measure. A vice-class leader and I had to choose which of us on which day would go to work. We played a scissors-rock--paper game to decide on the schedule. I won and chose to take my group to the site on Aug. 5.

Depth of despair

The one-day difference decided out fate. The 23 students led by the vice-class leader were around 800 meters from ground-zero when the A-bomb was dropped on Aug. 6. All of them died in a matter of week.

I was about 1.7 kilometers away from the hypocenter. I immediately fell unconscious. Later my father roused me. I couldn't see anything at first because my eyesight was blocked by my forehead skin peeling off, so my father banded them with a rope and took me home. He died three months later. Two thirds of my back and all the joints of my limbs were burnt. Since then, not even a single hair or sweat has returned onto my keloid skins.

I lost hope and the will to live. The only thing I had was a sense of despair. Wishing that I could have been killed with my 23 classmates, I several times attempted to end my life.

Encounter with the JCP

What led me to live positively was my meeting with Communist Party members in my workplace. Through study meetings with them, I realized that I was deceived, that I was taught a false history. JCP members at that time were said to be "unpatriotic" or "traitors." But I felt it was rather the opposite; I thought they were the real patriots by opposing the war. I then became a member of the Japanese Communist Party.

Now, I am telling young people about my personal experience of the atomic bombing. When I relate the reality of radiation to young people, I always add a phrase, "Learn real history or you'll lose both the present and the future." (end)