Suddenly the pulse and respirations ceased. It is certainly a sign of our
good care that so few died. In the official aid stations and hospitals, a
good third or half of those that had been brought in died. They lay about
there almost without care, and a very high percentage succumbed.
Everything was lacking: doctors, assistants, dressings, drugs, etc. In an
aid station at a school at a nearby village, a group of soldiers for
several days did nothing except to bring in and cremate the dead behind the
school.


During the next few days, funeral processions passed our house from morning
to night, bringing the deceased to a small valley nearby. There, in six
places, the dead were burned. People brought their own wood and themselves
did the cremation. Father Luhmer and Father Laures found a dead man in a
nearby house who had already become bloated and who emitted a frightful
odor. They brought him to this valley and incinerated him themselves.
Even late at night, the little valley was lit up by the funeral pyres.

We made systematic efforts to trace our acquaintances and the families of
the refugees whom we had sheltered. Frequently, after the passage of
several weeks, some one was found in a distant village or hospital but of
many there was no news, and these were apparently dead. We were lucky to
discover the mother of the two children whom we had found in the park and
who had been given up for dead. After three weeks, she saw her children
once again. In the great joy of the reunion were mingled the tears for
those whom we shall not see again.


The magnitude of the disaster that befell Hiroshima on August 6th was only
slowly pieced together in my mind. I lived through the catastrophe and saw