Haruko Lewis, now 88, takes just seven words to describe the atomic bomb that dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima, Japan, when she was 18: "Boom-boom-pop. Houses? Bah, bah. Gone. Gone."
A stroke last year ago has forced Haruko to talk in single words. But those rock-hard syllables outline the jagged effects of the nuclear fission that radiated from the collision of two chunks of enriched uranium in the heart of Little Boy, the first atomic bomb unleashed on the world.
"Houses, bah, bah, bah," Haruko repeats, motioning with her good arm to show how shock waves flattened houses one by one by one. She glances at her son, James, nodding for confirmation from the serenity of their home in Harvest, Ala.
"Hiroshima. So beautiful. All gone. Gone. Dead."
Click here for details of the 70th anniversary Victory Day event at
the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Aug. 10, 2015, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
World War II veterans and Haruko Lewis will be honored.
Aug. 6, 1945, had dawned sunny and clear in the city situated on the inland sea that curves into western Japan. Her father, a fisherman and carpenter, was out in the bay fishing - an early start that would save both him and his precious boat. Haruko and her sister, who had both worked in the cotton mills since they were children, were also heading to work. It had been a noisy night with multiple air raid warnings. But around 8 a.m., the all-clear sounded. Radar watchers had spotted two enemy planes flying very high, but decided they were merely on a reconnaissance mission. There was nothing to fear.
The lookouts were wrong.
Destruction
Haruko was on the back porch of her house, on the side away from the blast, which was about five miles from her house. She saw the effects of the bomb before she heard any noise. There was a sudden bright light like the inside of the sun, the collapsing houses, then roaring confusion that she remembers, paradoxically, as silent. She saw the huge, awful cloud blooming with its deadly mushroom head, while darkness rained down around her.
And then she was running through a horror movie past human-shaped creatures moving with their flesh dripping off. Cries for help. The entire landscape flash-burned to a crisp. Bodies charred and rigid in a final scream. She wasn't sure why she was running - but soon realized that the soles of her shoes were melting, and there was no where to go. Destruction was everywhere.
"She has told me that her family came and were trying to help people," James said. "You could see where people had been vaporized, their shadow imprinted into the concrete. She said it smelled like fish frying because of the burning skin."
Haruko's family's home had survived thanks to sturdy construction by her father. The only other house in their neighborhood still standing was a few doors down - another house he had built for his best friend. In their cellar, they had a stash of rice. Her father's boat also survived the blast, and in the next months, his ability to catch fish kept them alive and also many of their neighbors.
"He would bring back fish and give it away to people, like rations," James said.
The next year was grim. Most of the outskirts of Hiroshima, including their neighborhood, remained without power, even in the depths of a winter that brought several feet of snow. Clean up from the bomb was on-going. The military was forced to dig mass graves and push bodies into them in layers, burning them, then adding another layer. Estimates are that 70,000 to 80,000 people died immediately, with another 100,000 dying over the next year from burns and radiation poisoning. About two-thirds of the city's population perished.
"Friends die. Everybody die. Smell -- ooh," Haruko said, covering her mouth and nose at the remembered stench.
As the occupying American soldiers moved in, the Japanese citizens kept to their routines, away from the noisy GIs. But then Haruko and her sister took jobs as waitresses in a club where the GIs came. The clubs were islands of gaiety in the midst of so much sorrow and grinding work.
Haruko Lewis jokes with her husband, Walter Lewis, in their home after they moved to Huntsville, Ala. Haruko, 88, remembers seeing the bomb explode that leveled her hometown of Hiroshima, Japan, the summer she was 18. Lewis lives in Harvest, Ala., near Huntsville. July 30, 2015. (Courtesy/Haruko Lewis)
GI Bride
In a few years, a broad-shouldered GI with a wide smile named Walter Lewis walked through the door. Haruko, who is barely 5 feet tall, was among those who noticed the airplane mechanic, who towered more than a foot taller than she. And Walter Joseph Lewis noticed the dignified, hard-working young Japanese woman. He loved making her laugh.
But more than height separated them.
"Her parents and family really did not approve of her dating a GI," James said. "They met a long time before they married."
Walter was stationed in Japan for several years. When he and Haruko finally married, James said, her family disowned her. She left the house carrying only a satchel of clothes and a jewelry box that has disappeared over the years. As far as James knows, she never heard from her parents or her sister again.
James was born in Hiroshima on the U.S. Army base. When he was 2, his father was reassigned to Hawaii, and eventually retired from the military, returning to Huntsville to live near his parents. The family became part of Huntsville's 1960s boom times. During those years of civil unrest, James remembers how his own Japanese-American heritage set him apart.
"I was friends with both black kids and white kids. They didn't tease me," James said. "One of my white friends told me that they didn't consider me black or white, so I was outside of their race fights. He said since there were only about two Oriental students at Butler High School, we were the real minority."
"He did pretty good," Haruko says of her son, sending him a quick smile.
Post-war endurance
For Haruko, being a housewife was a serious profession. James remembers awaking at 5:30 a.m. to the smell of Pine Sol as his mother scrubbed their floors. She trimmed the grass around the fence with scissors. When her husband returned home, she would massage his shoulders and buffed his shoes to a military shine. She made her own noodles for her favorite Japanese soup. She never talked much about the bomb, but James knew she had nightmares about it for years.
They went to church with Walter's parents. Haruko refused to teach James to speak Japanese because the teachers had told her it would give him a speech impediment. To this day, James regrets losing that opportunity as a kid.
"Whatever someone told her to do, she would do it strictly by the book," James said.
It was a good life - a good life that was destroyed by a different kind of bomb when Walter, at 44, died of a massive heart attack. James was 12 and suddenly the man of the household. It was another tough transition. But they survived both that, James said, and then, years later, the sudden death of James' sister at 38 from a heart attack.
Haruko never considered returning to Japan, or perhaps never mentioned it because of the cost. She grew to love Southern fried chicken and Johnny Cash music.
"She just took it all in stride," James said.
"I like it here," Haruko said. "I'm OK now."
The video, below, by British Pathe from the 'A Day that Shook the World' series, includes vintage news footage of the Hiroshima bombing --