Miss_Sasaki

Miss Sasaki is a woman who spends much of her time alone with her thoughts, suffering in silence as most of her fellow citizens. Her story is one of inner turmoil, the psychological conflict of feeling suspended in time, being left to die and watching for it...and ultimately triumphing through faith. She represents the many unheard voices of the Hiroshima tragedy, those waiting under the rubble who emerge to rebuild their lives.

Miss Toshiko Sasaki was a 20-year-old girl who lived in Koi with her family: her father, her mother, her two brothers, and her sister. Her mother had taken her baby brother to the hospital. The day of the bombing, she woke up at three in the morning to prepare breakfast for her father, brother, and sister, and a whole day's meals for her mother and baby brother, and then, at seven in the morning, when she was done, she went to work as a clerk at the East Asia Tin Works. At the time of the bombing, she had just turned her head to chat with a coworker, when she saw the bright light and was paralyzed with fear.

She is crushed by a bookshelf full of books, her left leg twisted under her. She was unconscious for three hours, and then she heard someone walking on the wreckage above. She called for help, saying her leg was cut off, and he dug out a lot of books until she could see him. Then, he noticed that she was pinned by the bookshelf, and he left to find help. He found no help, and he told her to get out by herself. Later, several men came and dragged her out. She discovered that her leg was badly broken, not cut off. She sat outside in the rain, unable to move. Then, a man carried her to a shelter from the rain, and he brought two other grotesques. The afternoon was hot, and they smelled bad. They sat in silence through the night, unable to sleep. Miss Sasaki sat there with the two others for two days and two nights, and her leg became discolored, swollen, and putrid. On the third day, some friends came looking for her. They told her that her mother, father, and baby brother were definitely dead, and they brought her to a military hospital on a nearby island.

Miss Sasaki lay in pain at another hospital; her leg's fracture was being prevented from setting by an infection. She read de Maupassant, lent to her by another patient who was sympathetic. She was moved to another hospital, and her leg got worse. So, they bound her leg with crude splints, and she was taken to the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima. She got creeped out along the way from how the plants had overgrown Hiroshima, as if they couldn't wait to take over. She was placed under the care of Dr. Sasaki, and exhibited symptoms that were now commonly showing up. The doctors attributed it to the radiation. She got weaker and weaker, and her fractures were mending so that her left leg was shorter than her right, and her foot was pointing inward. Father Kleinsorge visited her as she grew more depressed and explained the reasons for everything. After Father Kleinsorge's visit, she got better and left the hospital as a cripple.