Coming off the ridge, however, a completely different world greeted me. No damage met my eyes, grass appeared green, a truck moved along a street. I stopped and asked myself if the past two hours had just been a terrible nightmare or were they real.

As I walked through my neighborhood I saw a number of people in the streets. Most knew something terrible had happened — they didn’t know what. I didn’t either. After relating to them a few of the scenes I had witnessed, I hurried on.Turning onto my street I saw my mother and dad coming out of the house. On their way to look for me, they had reached home only a few minutes before me. Both my parents worked at a small neighborhood factory assembling airplane parts. Those in the factory saw the flash and felt their building shake, but they put it down to an earthquake. Eventually the factory manager realized something more serious had occurred and released all of the employees.

That evening our civil defense block captain roused everyone in the area and formed rescue squads. We walked to the damaged sections. Initially, seeing the extent of the devastation stunned those in my group, but we all pitched in. That first evening chaos reigned, but over the next week we helped set up a makeshift morgue and treatment center.

I thought, only a week ago I would have been horrified at a paper cut on my finger. Now I found myself helping carry dead people whose skin was tearing off in my hands. I saw bodies where the blast had tattooed the pattern of their kimonos onto their skin.

I was assigned the task of keeping flies off of the injured. From nowhere, it seemed, a huge contingency of flies arrived. They swarmed around the wounded, attempting to lay their maggot eggs in the open wounds. Flies crawled under my makeshift bandages. At nightfall my parents would send me home to rest while they worked on.

People were telling us the war had ended — an event for which we had waited years, and yet it seemed insignificant in light of the efforts we were engaged in. By the end of August, victims were still dying of radiation sickness. We didn’t know at the time what was killing them. Civilian groups and returning soldiers cleared most of the debris from the streets.

About that time we saw our first Americans. The citizens of Nagasaki didn’t welcome them as I am told occurred in other cities. The universal horror experienced by those living in the atom-bombed areas could not be shaken off by even the promise of peace. We knew war is appalling and has few rules, but what the enemy did to our innocent civilians on a mass scale we felt to be outside the purview of a civilized nation’s warfare.

Was it the unseen hand of some providential power that directed the bomb’s ground zero squarely over the largest Christian church in Asia and its surrounding Christian neighborhood? Did that same hand spare the great Shinto shrine Suwa-jinja in the center of town? Are we to be pariahs the rest of our lives, disfigured and frightening others because of our radiation ailments? These were among the questions I heard my parents discussing with their friends.

Over the next few years such dark thoughts eroded away as America’s help rebuilt schools and encouraged businesses. I completed my education, majoring in English. When around Americans, I listened carefully to their pronunciation, trying to imitate each word. It worked out well for me. General [Douglas] MacArthur’s headquarters hired me, and I moved to Tokyo.

I became quite fluent in English, working closely with American officers, translating documents and explaining Japanese customs and mores. My early life in Nagasaki, however, I kept to myself. For many years after the war no one understood radiation sickness and many feared those exposed might somehow transmit it to others around them. In addition, I couldn’t bring myself to dredge up those awful memories people were sure to ask about. After all, Japan was becoming a different country.

Many months passed before I revealed the secrets even to my future husband, Raymond Bernstein. Serving as a civilian attorney employed by the War Crimes Commission, he frequently called on me to help with his cases. More than 500 war criminals stood trial, and lawyers called up close to 1,000 witnesses.

When we started dating, life became quite heady for this young girl. He escorted me to diplomatic functions, and we met with high-ranking judges and lawyers from many countries. More than once, newsreel cameras caught me standing by his side as he gave an interview.

Of course, I said yes when he asked me to marry him and move to America. However, I readied myself for months — maybe years — of red tape before we would actually say our vows. Ray just said, ‘I’ll pull a few strings,’ and in a short time we were on a plane headed to the United States. After living in Washington for two years, he took a job with the federal prosecutor’s office in Dallas.

His work took him all over Texas and to surrounding states. I found myself more and more left at home when he traveled. His circle of American friends seldom included me.

One day, after seven years of matrimony, he presented me with divorce papers, saying our marriage had been a mistake. He offered to pay my expenses back to Japan, but I felt this country offered better opportunities for a single woman.

A Japanese friend living in Fort Worth arranged a job for me with a loan company. Ray had converted me to his Jewish faith, but I guess you could say I reconverted to Christianity. The Baptist Church keeps me active. I remained with the loan company through a buyout by a mortgage business from which I retired in 1994. My plans call for my moving to Mississippi, where I understand the climate resembles that of southern Kyushu.

I have undergone an operation for cancer, but no one can determine if it is related to my ordeal in Nagasaki.

I have been reluctant to talk in any detail about my experience as a youth during the war. Now I believe the Lord has left the memories so vivid in my mind so that I may pass them on to other generations, instead of taking them to my grave.

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Michie Hattori Bernstein moved to Mississippi and died in 2003. William L. Leary was trained in Japanese by the U.S. Army. After the war, he conducted interviews with civilians in Japan for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and continues to interview Japanese expatriates living in America. For further reading, see The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Kyoko Seldon.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2005 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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