Michie Hattori: Eyewitness to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Blast

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Ichiro Miyato, of the 27th Radar Squad (Southern Kyushu), returned to his radar screen after helping carry material for the new construction, which, when completed, would provide a more powerful and well-camouflaged radar installation intended to detect, at a great distance, the anticipated invasion by American forces.

Miyato, his tour scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., noticed the wall clock showing 10:45. He initialed the logbook under the date August 9, 1945. No sooner seated, he spotted a blip moving southward. He watched the radar make two more sweeps; still only the one blip appeared. Scanning frequencies, he found interference indicating the blip was using its own radar.

‘Looks like a lone B-San running radar…I’d guess it’s mapping,’ he advised his command headquarters. ‘Altitude…probably 10,000 meters…out of triple A and fighter range.’ After a couple more sweeps he plotted the vector and reported, ‘Their course will take them over Nagasaki…if you want to alert Civil Defense.’ Nagasaki lay 25 kilometers south of the radar station.

Miyato poured himself a cup of green tea. He knew Japanese fighter planes would not scramble. The Boeing B-29 was too high, and they couldn’t afford to waste the fuel in a futile attempt to bring down the bomber.

Back on the line to headquarters 10 minutes later, he had just gotten the words out: ‘They should be over Nagasaki now…,’ when his screen went blank. A distant flash filled the room with light, and the walls of the radar shack shuddered.

Michie Hattori Bernstein was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. She never forgot that day.

I may not have been the brightest student in high school, but I was probably the most obedient. When the city sounded the air raid warning, I ran as fast as I could to the cave the government had dug into the side of a hill for us students. I always made it to the shelter ahead of the rest of my class. I say always because Nagasaki had been bombed five times before that day. Out at our school we heard the explosions or saw the sparklers coming down, but they never came near us. Even the sounds were muffled by the hills around our location.

We thought the warning on August 9 would be like the others. That’s why a lot of the girls just hung around the school. At that point, the government had not announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days before. The teachers made us all leave the classrooms, telling us to run to the shelter. I did, but most of the others just stood around talking in the schoolyard. It was not that unusual to see B-San ['Mr. B'] flying over. That’s what most of us called a B-29. A single B-San had never caused trouble — just checking the weather or taking pictures of the coast, we assumed.

National Archives

The telltale mushroom cloud floats menacingly up from Nagasaki shortly after the Boeing B-29 Bockscar dropped the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. One of those who survived the horrific attack was 15-year-old Michie Hattori (opposite), who barely made it to a nearby cave just as the bomb was exploding over the city.

When the bomb exploded, it caught me standing in the entrance to the shelter, motioning for the pokey girls to come in. First came the light — the brightest light I have ever seen. It was an overcast day, and in an instant every object lost all color and blanched a brilliant white. My eyes couldn’t cope, and for a little while I went blind.

A searing hot flash accompanied the light that blasted me. For a second I dimly saw it burn the girls standing in front of the cave. They appeared as bowling pins, falling in all directions, screaming and slapping at their burning school uniforms. I saw nothing for a while after that.

Immediately, a powerful wind struck me. It propelled me farther into the cave; then in an instant it threw me out the front entrance. I guess the shockwave hit the back of the cavern and bounced. It took me with it and others who had sought refuge in the shelter. We came tumbling out onto the ground.

What a terrible feeling! I could see nothing. My hands and face singed, intense pain gripped my body. I tried to walk a little and stumbled over a fallen tree. I lay there, not knowing for sure where I was or whether something else might happen to me.

When my senses, including my sight, began returning, I heard crying from the girls in front of the shelter. All, except one, were now standing and blowing on their skin. Looking at the one lying down, I saw her leg twisted at a crazy angle. To this day, we don’t know how it became broken. The face and hands of the other girls quickly turned bright red. I guess my being partially inside the cave provided some protection because my stinging began to disappear before long.

We told Haruko, the girl with the broken leg, to lie still; we would go for help. Fires started all around us. Flames leaped from paper and wood scraps, some from collapsed structures. Thick smoke and dust filled the air. The fires gave the only real illumination. Even the noontime sunlight, filtering through the clouds, darkened. The word I kept hearing the girls say, jigoku, means hell. That’s the closest I ever want to come to jigoku.

‘Let’s go back to the school. It’s only a couple hundred meters,’ one of the classmates suggested. We traveled slowly because each step caused pain. Our thoughts were that a bomb must have gone off near the shelter and burned a short distance around us. We didn’t even dream what devastation covered our entire city.

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Tags: Historical Conflicts, Women's History, World War II

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