Disastrous Change

It was a normal morning. Nothing out of the ordinary. My mom had woken me up before school so that I could have breakfast. She wouldn’t leave the house unless she knew I had a meal before school. As I ran my wooden brush through my dark black hair a few times it got caught in a few knots. Brushing my hair was easy as I did not have much hair to comb as it only went down to above my shoulders. I slipped on my seifuku, my dark robe-like school outfit, which had a few stains as my mother hasn’t had time to do laundry lately. My feet made the wooden floor creak as I walked to my kitchen, feeling refreshed as I decided to go to bed early the previous night. As I ate my small cup of rice with miso soup my mom was packing my lunch for me, a piece of fruit with two pieces of sushi that she bought at Nishiki Market down the street. Not much but it was enough for my small ten year old body. My mom came up to me and gave me a kiss on my forehead, and headed off to her work. Her gruesome ten hour long shift in a factory. She’s never told me what she does for work, but from what we learn in school, and how she looks and smells when she gets home I already knew. But I don’t tell her I know because I prefer her to still treat me like the small innocent little girl she raised. The older I get the more I learn and the scarier life seems so I’d rather just pretend I don’t know. After I finished breakfast I grabbed my lunch off the counter and put it in my ragged old backpack then headed out the door. It was a gloomy day, grey clouds, and a bit of drizzle. It didn’t bother me though. I enjoy my morning walks to school, I usually see a friend or two on my way as well. It’s not a long walk either, only a few blocks. But my mom apologizes to me every morning that she can’t bring me. But I honestly don’t mind, she needs to work so that we can eat, and I understand that.

About ten minutes later I arrived at my school Yoshiki Elementary. It’s a small school in a small city a few cities away from the big city Hiroshima. Hiroshima is my favorite city to go to. My mom goes there for work every morning, it’s about a 45 minute drive. There’s so much to do there, good food, shopping, and lots of people. My mom brings me every year on my birthday and we do so many fun things there. She’s lucky in a way, I wish I could go there every day. I entered my class room and put my bag in my spot and sat down on the cold hard floor in front of the chalkboard. As my other classmates entered I smiled at them and said hello to my friends. I seemed to be more quiet in school than at home, I didn’t talk to too many people. 

School was going the same as always, we learned a few new words, played a few learning games, same as usual. My teacher handed out a vocab paper, I glanced at the paper and wrote my name “Akari Saito” then wrote the date “8/6/1945” It was around the third hour of school and we were about to start writing down definitions but the ground started to rumble, we all looked out the window, a loud thunder like sound crashed through the air. My heart rate jumped as I looked around at my fellow classmates and my teacher, we all shared the same shocked look in our eyes. “Get in the closet!” She instructed all of us. Me and my ten other classmates all squished together in the closet. I heard small poorly built buildings crashing down around us, a few houses I think as well. No one had an idea what was going on but at least I was in the school, one of the best built and sturdy buildings around. Some of my classmates were crying, although fear ran through every nerve in my body, my mother taught me to be strong, strong for everyone around me. I started to comfort those who were crying as we all needed to be strong together to figure out what was going on. 

I heard my teacher rustling around the storage closet, I’m not sure what she was looking for, everyone was in a state of confusion and panic. As I was shut in a closet my ears were doing all the work, I was trying to listen to all the noises around me. I heard faint radio static which made me realize that Mrs. Tanaka must have pulled out the radio, I mostly heard static as she was flipping through stations, one station had music, and then she finally got to the news station for our area, the station was staticy and from all the rumblings and students crying I could only make out a few words from it, it was a man talking in a loud demanding voice, “Crisis… explosion and bombing… we have been bombed… everyone inside… stay covered… hiroshima bombed… planes attacking.” He was talking in a panicky rush. From what I made out, tears started streaming down my face. I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening but we had been bombed, and my little ten year old brain was only thinking it caused a tenth of the damage that really happened.

When the rumbling finally stopped Mrs. Tanaka let us out of the closet and she ordered us to stay in the classroom. As I emerged I saw the windows. Two of them had massive cracks all throughout the window, as if you touched it the whole thing would shatter. Huge clouds of black smoke engulfing the air, there were ruins all around us, the air was cloudy from buildings ruble. The radio was still going, the static lessened and I could hear well since I was standing next to it, “Stay covered! Stay inside! It was an atomic bomb! The air could be deadly! All of Hiroshima is destroyed, it’s all ashe, and most of the city is on fire, this is a crisis! We have already concluded thousands of people will perish, anyone in Hiroshima you can assume to be gone.” The man continued talking, but my ears zoned out, almost like a switch flicked in my brain and I realized how serious this was, life was going to change drastically, and… my mom is gone. It was hard to tell myself that but deep down inside I felt it was true.