SINGAPORE – Growing up, Ms Masako Wada heard horrific stories from her mother about the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki city in south-western Japan.
“My mother saw rows of burnt and injured people climbing over the mountains like chocolate-covered ants to get help,” recalled Ms Wada.
Living about 2.9km from the bomb’s epicentre in Nagasaki, she was a year and 10 months old when the bomb was dropped on Aug 9, 1945.
Her family was not directly affected as their home was on a mountain but from their vantage point, her mother could see the damage, and smell the death and destruction.
Ms Masako Wada, an atomic bomb survivor, sharing anecdotes of death and destruction during a 15-hour stop in Singapore on March 21.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
“She used to say that the smell of (atomic bomb victims) burning like human garbage would come back to her every August,” Ms Wada said.
These anecdotes were part of the testimony the 82-year-old shared with students from Raffles Girls’ School during their visit aboard the MV Pacific World – the ship of Japan-based non-governmental organisation Peace Boat – during its 15-hour stop in Singapore on March 21.
Nagasaki was levelled when the United States dropped a 4,536kg plutonium-239 bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man”, instantly killing some 27,000 of the estimated 200,000 residents.
By the end of 1945, the number of people who died from acute radiation exposure had reached about 70,000.
