The Shadow of the Cloud

English Coursework
The Shadow of the Cloud

August 6th 1945
06:00 am

There is nothing that will excite a young child more than a birthday. My seventh was no exception – as I bounded out of bed, the smell of seven incense rods, burning away the seven years I had been in existence, filled my room. My mother, Washimosho, stood at the back of my room, looking impressive in her long kimono and grey hair. I myself was much smaller than I am now, with a curtain of long raven hair and shining brown eyes. My mother embraced me, crying “Happy birthday Hirhoki-tan!” We were as close as a mother and daughter ever were.

I flung open the door of my house, watching people flowing through the streets of my home town, Hiroshima, like a swarm of bees. The Sun burned a yellow luminescent hole in the blue sky, and there was not a cloud in the sky. It’s such a perfect day today, I thought. But there was a rumble… American bombers sliced the sky in half with their trails. Air raid sirens blazed loudly. We were under attack! A mass of people stampeded into the air-raid shelter, as I stood, desperate to run with fear and yet rooted to the ground like a tree by the same fear. It was only the voice of my mother that shook motion into me.
“HIRHOKI! RUN TO THE SHELTER OR YOU’LL END UP LIKE YOUR FATHER!”
I ran, caught up in the herd of human buffalo, into the shelter as sirens blazed. For my father had perished about four years earlier, in the battle of the Coral Sea.

It was dark and cold in the shelter. There must have been close to eighty citizens of Hiroshima pressed together in that room. Water was trickling in a stream from the roof to the floor. I clenched my fists tight, whispering to myself that I and my dear mother would survive the War. Suddenly, the sirens stopped blaring, people from above shouted that it was safe to come out and yet not a single bomb had fallen. Thank God it had all been a false alarm. I stepped out of the shelter with my mother. She held me tight, warming me, thawing me out after the cold chill of fear had frozen me. We walked back home in silence. I had many questions, but I knew they could wait. We were both in a state of shock.

08:00 am
Many American B-29s had flown over my city by 8am. My stomach rumbled. “There’s no point in going to the shelter,” Mother explained to me. “No-one else is going now. They’re all false alarms.”
I sat to the very low table, watching bubbles of gas form in the boiling tea over the fire as planes continued to fly over. Little did I know that they were just planning… preparing for a bigger attack…

The bombers continued to drone as I sipped my tea, yet the people continued to walk normally, recovering from the shock of 6am. Nothing was going to happen.
Mother decided it was time for her daily shop. She stepped out of the door, and waving goodbye to me went to the market in Hiroshima centre.

8.15am
I was standing alone outside my house, soaking up the sunlight of Hiroshima’s suburbs. Mother was in the dense, bustling city, buying sushi. Another bomber flew overhead.
Oh no, not again, I thought. Cold winds whipped my hair into a wild canopy of darkness. The sky was darker than it was at 7am now, for clouds had gathered in the sky. It was not until someone on the street screamed “Oh my God!” that I noticed something was falling… falling from the plane…I turned and ran…

BOOM!! There was a bright flash of light and a loud bang behind me, followed by a low rumble. As I spun around I saw the city of Hiroshima, the city that I was born and raised in.
It was on fire.

And then… then came the wind, a wind so strong I thought my face would be ripped off. Wood shattered with the force of the titanic shockwave. The city was burning black, and hungry flames from the bomb licked Hiroshima clean of eighty thousand people who would instantly be turned into ash and never live again.

My mind filled with one thought – RUN. My fear and confusion filled my mind; leaving no room for my mother and making me concentrate on speeding away from the city. I turned away and fled, with the flames in hot pursuit. The ground was rippling like a tsunami in solid matter. I saw waves knocking elderly people over as the searing fire of death spread out and swallowed them.

As I spun around to look at my home I saw the fireball that had eaten the city rise into the air, dominating like a monster rearing its head. A ten kilometre mushroom cloud had formed and was growing still. I ran harder than I had ever run as my legs carried me, breathless and with a heartbeat like a machine gun, outside the city walls, which had smashed and lay shattered like a dropped clay pot.

I was now well out of the reach of the fire. It was growing still, but upwards rather than outwards. The roaring was lessening; the hungry lion had taken its fill. But then I felt snow fall on me… the gentlest of touches, specks of dust falling from the orange cloud like leaves from an autumn tree. I turned and looked towards the flaming city, fearing that everything I knew and loved was inside that fireball. And then my heart began to sink, as my throat closed up. Was Mother still in the city?

I sat on a log, tensely waiting for the flames to die down for about an hour, knowing full well that it was not safe to go back. But I was naïve, being a seven year old. My mother always told me that “everything was going to be alright. We’re going to win this war, Hirhoki.” Believing her, I was convinced that no matter who was killed by the cloud my mother wasn’t. When that cloud began to fade, I would search for my mother.

11am
The cloud was grey. It could not be very hot anymore. I imagined the city to be a cool yet smoky place, with buildings upturned, places destroyed, people dying and dead bodies. Yet in my naïve imagination, my mother was alive and well, treating the bomb victims like she always did when I was ill. I was walking towards the remains of the city, hoping and praying mother was OK.

The air stank as I got nearer. I could smell smoke, but I could also smell burnt flesh. Lost in the unbearable stench, I tripped over a limp, lifeless body, as if a ragdoll. I screamed as I saw its chest move up and down. It was breathing. “Help…me…” came a small groan from the bundle of dying flesh… before its breathing ceased. What if mother now looked like that? I thought. That moment was the beginning of the formation of my rational, adult mind. Mother was not supernatural, not immortal. She was human, and if you cut her, she bled… was Mother the lively person I imagined her to be? Was she a barely human ragdoll? Was she a pile of ash?

Dying people lined the streets of Hiroshima. It was almost impossible to walk without stepping on a corpse. Skin was hanging from their arms and legs like pieces of ripped shirt. Buildings were hanging like broken toys, wood had cracked and splintered, bricks
had smashed into dust. A few buildings managed to survive – barely. The bank was still standing and the hospital stood proud – two lone blocks of stone surviving amongst their shattered wood cousins.

15:30 pm
The market place that Mother had bought her sushi from had been burned into ashes. So had everything in the middle of the city. No buildings stood there, and the only feature was a river which glowed spookily in shades of fluorescent jade. I had come back to the hospital, utterly devastated. Mother was a pile of ashes. But then I looked up at the hospital, a lonely survivor with just the bank for company. Mother could be in there. My heart skipped a beat as I rushed into the building.

I ran through the corridors. Every doctor and nurse was busy with bomb victims. I asked every one of them if they knew Washimosho Izumi, and the response had been negative every time. I described her, using as much descriptive language as my small, seven-year old vocabulary let me. They just walked away, leaving me feeling empty. Mother probably wasn’t in here.

But then above me Japanese characters glowed. “Burn unit,” they said. I tentatively stepped inside. How stupid of me! I thought. The burn unit was the most logical place to go to find a bomb victim. It was full, every bed occupied by a groaning patient.
I scanned the beds, until at last, in bed 7, was a sleeping woman with greying hair. She was laid on her front, covered in bedclothes. Her eyes were closed, and though she must have been in intense pain, she was smiling peacefully. I had found my mother.

“Mother!” I yelled, excited, ecstatic. She did not respond for a few seconds, then her eyes opened slightly and she gave a faint moan – “Hirhoki. Hirhoki. Uncover me, Hirhoki.”
I was so happy to see mother alive, I almost did not notice the horror beneath the covers. As I pulled them back, enormous red marks came into view, like red blotches on an artist’s canvas. I began to cry out in horror. My mother’s beauty was tainted.

“I knew I’d find you here,” I sobbed. “In just a few short weeks we’ll be back home… the war will be over… Hiroshima will be rebuilt. As you promised, everything will turn out OK in the end… right?” I was spouting things I knew were untrue, wanting them to be reality, trying to change the truth, yet knowing deep down Mother was dying.

Mother smiled as she held my hand. “And you shall live to enjoy it, Hirhoki. My time is passed. You shall feel the cool wind on your skin, untainted. You shall hear birdsong in the morning. You shall enjoy all the beauty of a peaceful world, while I will not. You will live to see such perfect days, perfect, peaceful days.” She moaned gently. “I will pass out of this world, to a land where there are no bombs… rivers… green grass… and cherry blossoms fall from the Sakura trees forever and ever…”

“Mother! No!” I cried. Salty tears streamed down my cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re saying!” But she did not reply. Her eyes were glazed over, and her mouth was transfixed in an eternal smile. Her time was now finished. She would wear that smile from now until the end of time. “Mother, please wake up!” I shouted, as tears fell from my eyes onto her cooling body. “Why are you sleeping?” I began to wail, crying into her cold corpse, until I felt the gentle hand of the doctor on my shoulder.

That night I was carried into a motor car and transported to a ship, ready to take me to the island of Honshu and the Japanese capital, Tokyo, together with many other Hiroshima survivors. I had no mother, and no future. While I was in Tokyo, the Americans bombed Nagasaki, forcing our country into surrender, and sinking my spirits even lower. It seemed there’d be no future.

6th August 2005
I am cooped up inside my study on my 67th birthday, writing down the memoirs of a childhood blown into pieces by a single bomb. The TV screens are flashing me pictures of the cloud, pictures of a tortured city where 400,000 souls were lost to the bomb itself or to radiation sickness. I am glad that I survived. I eventually found a new home with a foster family, was raised well and studied at Tokyo University, but all of my life I lived with the shadow of the cloud imprinted into the back of my mind.
I glance from the window.
The sun is shining brightly, burning a yellow hole in the blue sky. Birds fly overhead.

…It’s such a perfect day today.




DIALOGUE
(Between Hirhoki and Washimosho on the return of the fleet after the Battle of the Coral Sea. Hirhoki is 4.)

Hirhoki: Where’s Father?
Washimosho: [head hung, hesitating] …Your father… won’t be coming home tonight.
Hirhoki: When will he be coming home?
Washimosho: He… won’t, Hirhoki. He’s… *to herself* how do I explain this to a four year old?
Hirhoki: [anxious] Tell me, mother! What’s wrong with him?
Washimosho: Look, Hirhoki. People don’t last forever. They have to go some day. And that has just happened to your father. He isn’t there anymore.
Hirhoki: [panicked] Oh no! Mother, will you go away and never come back? Please don’t do that to me, please! [Bangs fists on her]
Washimosho: Hirhoki-tan, I will always be there for you. Your father is gone, but I will try to take his place. I won’t leave you, Hirhoki.
Hirhoki: [begins to cry]
Washimosho: [Hugs] I’m sorry Hirhoki. I’m so, so, sorry. [Cries herself.] I promise you whatever happened to your father won’t happen to me. For me and you, no matter what happens, everything will turn out OK in the end.


INTERNAL MONOLOGUE
(Hirhoki, just after her mother’s death.)

My mother has just gone. She told me whatever happened, everything would turn out OK in the end. Now I know that was a lie. Why did she do that? Why would my own mother lie to me? Why? I think I understand what happened – my mother has gone forever, like my father did. She explained it to me when I was four, but I am still confused. I thought my mother was beyond all this. I thought she would never die. If she was an ordinary person, then why was she so wise? How could she teach me all the right things, care for me, love me? She was always right, and yet things didn’t turn out OK in the end. Oh, no, this is so confusing. I will never see her again. She broke her promise. And now I’m off to Tokyo, a big, scary place I’ve never seen before. They’ve taken me away from home right after my mother died. Why do that to me? Now I’m going to be confused and scared forever. All I want is to be in my mother’s arms, no matter where she is.