The Ient Family: Family History

The End of the War

The Americans, as I say, had been over bombing and machine-gunning and all the rest of it. They shot about 40 of us. One morning we got to the dockyard and there was absolute silence. Absolute silence. There was a Japanese foreman sitting at the end of this number four dock, where we were to work on cleaning out this engine in the dry docks. So he just sat there, sat there all morning, not a murmur anywhere. So it got towards lunchtime – what a lovely word for a bowl of rice! – lunchtime. They said, 'Go down there Chick and find out when we can have lunch.' I said, 'I’m not going down there.' – I said, 'There’s something gone wrong.' Anyway, it got time for lunchtime, and I did go and speak to this foreman, who was quite a docile bloke really, so I said it’s quarter to twelve and before I finished he went rabbiting on. So I went back to the lads and they said ‘What did he say?’ I said, 'I don’t believe it,' I said, 'the only words I got was "American" and a "bomb" and "100,000 people." I said, 'It’s ridiculous that, no, I’ve picked it up wrong from what he said.' Anyway, we went down and had our meal, came back, still no work at all. We went back to the camp; everything was dead silent down there.

As you know the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, which is here [pointing to the map]. This small island, on the ‘Inland Sea,’ was where we were. It was called Innoshima, which is 30 miles away from Hiroshima, so we were 30 miles away from where the bomb was dropped!

Now don’t ask me how we got away with that. As you know, they dropped a second bomb. Not near us this time. As you know, that lead to the capitulation.


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