August 6, 1945
8:00 AM
Hiroshima, Japan

How would you feel if everything you ever knew or loved suddenly turned into shadows? Your family, friends, job...everything? One minute, you and your loved ones could be having the time of your lives, and the next minute...your lives would be over. You could be having a regular day, going to work and living your life when you no longer will be the next day. All it takes is one small thing, to change the whole world. One rotten apple ruins the whole bunch. Well, let me tell you this; the chances of another country bombing you this second is highly unlikely, but back in the day, it was highly expected. Let’s go back and explore the violent past, shall we?

It was 7:30 am on a normal Monday, as I woke up and began to prepare for my day. I did the usual: brushed, showered, dressed, made up...Soon, I went downstairs, ate, fed the pets and prepared for my job. It wasn’t too hard to find and gather everything I needed in my small two room apartment. I worked at the Hatsukaichi Elementary School, approximately three miles away from where I lived. I taught children in first standard, or first grade. For such young children, they were all very bright and talented. I arrived at the school around 7:50 am, with just enough time to arrange and clean the classroom. I organized all of the papers and set an incense stick aflame on the holder that hung above my desk. The sweet fragrance of jasmine flower wafted throughout the room, leaving a warm welcome for the children that were all chilled by the breeze outside.


The students arrived steadily, three or four every 5 minutes, leaving all 15 students present at 8:00 am. We greeted each other, recited the morning prayer and soon began the lesson for that day. As we learned about the different numbers in math, such as odd and even numbers, I stopped the children, looked around the room and laughed.

“Why are we sitting around so early in the morning doing math instead of having fun?! Let’s go outside for a while!”

The children all hoorayed and whooped as I opened the door and allowed them to pass into the courtyard with all the playing equipment. As I looked back into the room to make sure everyone made it outside, I noticed my favorite pupil of the class, still sitting and doing her mathematics. I walked up to her desk and knelt down.

“Katsuka, why are you not outside with all of the other students? Go and play with them!”

“Miss Kioko, I do not wish to play outside today. I am too tired and I don’t have any friends in this class.”


“Well, go outside and make some friends! They’ll only know to like you if you play with them, not if you stay inside. I know you are tired, but come outside and play.”

“No, Miss Kioko, please do not force me. I will come after I am done with my work.”

With that, I left her inside, assuring her that she would make friends soon. I walked back outside and strolled over to the teachers bench, which was under the shade of a cement pavillion. As I watched the children play with joyous smiles on their faces, I thought to myself that this day was the best day of my life. Only seconds later did I realize with a jolt in my heart that it wasn’t the best day, but the worst.

“Miss Kioko! Miss Kioko! Look there are planes in the sky!”, yelled Akiko, a little 7 year old boy with a toothless grin. I looked into the vast blueness of the sky and spotted two planes, but they didn’t look like Japanese planes, nor did they sound like them. For the past two years, we had been in constant fighting with America, so I took the planes as the usual fly-bys. Then, I saw something drop from the bottom of the plane and heard the school speaker blare out on the pole behind me. It announced the usual announcement of the planes, as it did twice or thrice every week. I continued to watch the small object dropped from the plane rapidly get closer to the city, and only forty-five seconds after the drop did I realize the UFO. I screamed for all of the children to run into the school shelter cellar and as they all ran, a huge BOOM echoed all over the city. My last visibility was that of my dear students falling and crying as a heat wave destroyed our city.

As my consciousness cleared, my first thought was “I have died...I’m dead...all of my students...dead...” As I became more wary of my surroundings and my vision cleared, my first shock wave of pain hit me hard. I painfully sat up and examined myself. I had cuts all over my body from the flying debris and burns plastering my skin. My hair had been singed down to my scalp and my clothes were torn. Blood spattered the ground around me as I found that my left arm was barely hanging on. Struggling to stand up, I looked around. I found my beloved students nowhere to be seen. I ran as best as I could to the classroom, and as I neared the doorway, I found them. Not on the floor, not in bits, not as skeletons, but as shadows. The bomb that hit had been a nuclear bomb and would have killed anybody that was not protected by a shelter by heat. The heat wave that hit the children flew them against the building, disintegrating them and leaving them as mere shadows. It was a clumped image, only showing the strayed arm or leg from the once huddled group.

I sobbed my heart out; not only with pain, but with sorrow, and immense anger at America. I walked into my destroyed debris and rubble mound of a classroom with only the back wall still standing. As I walked around looking for anything or anyone that survived, I found the one image that completely shattered my heart. My favorite student, Katuska, was still sitting there, obediently doing her math work...but as a shadow. She was in that same position when the heat wave hit her, leaving an imprint that showed no resistance against an unexpected death.

I moved throughout the school, hoping for at least one remaining survivor, but knew that I wouldn’t find any. Instead, I was only greeted by shadows and blood. I walked to the main road and slowly, making my way through the rubble and dead bodies, to my apartment. I was only gifted with more sorrow here, finding it in dusty images as well. I was soon found by a rescue group and waited for my perfect life to come back...it never did.Over the next few months, Japan was devastated with high death tolls caused by radiation sickness, death on impact and several other injuries and illnesses; but not until after the second bomb hit in Nagasaki because both bombs completely obliterated those cities. As a whole, Japan started to grow again, this time, to a world economic power. I soon retired as an artist, drawing my life’s sorrows and adding color. I can never forgive America for that day, even though we attacked them previously. We only attacked their soldiers, not their innocent children, women and men. I will never forget that day, the day I thought was the most perfect day. I hope no one ever has to live through that. That no one ever has to wake up to oblivion...to mere, silent shadows.