"What happened?" Jinpachi shouted.

His grandfather was still watching the plumes of smoke on the horizon. "Something is terribly wrong," he said worriedly. "Jinpachi, ikuzo. We must get to your parents and ensure that they are alright." Taking a money purse, he put a few coins in it and tucked it into his kimono.

Arriving at the local train station, they were surprised to see hundreds of people waiting as many trains sat idly on the tracks. "I don't believe this!" one man shouted. "It's been almost two hours and you still don't know what's going on?"

"Ano, sumimaseng," the elderly octegenarian asked politely. "What is happening here?"

Turning to him, he said, "All trains to and from Hiroshima have stopped running and no one knows why. I've been waiting here the whole time and nobody seems to have the slightest idea what the hold up is!"

A man in a conductor's uniform who was close by replied, "No one knows because we can't get any calls or telegraphs through to the capital. The lines have just gone dead. There's been no word since that strange incident two hours ago.

"Is it another bombing?" Jinpachi blurted.

"Since this war began, I've never seen a bomb that could create such a force in one blow," the conductor replied.

"We are returning home," the old man told the boy. "There is nothing we can do here. We must wait for news of what has happened."

Back at his grandfather's small village, the locals had gathered to speculate on what had transpired. Their loud animated chatter was interrupted by a loud cry.

"OOOOIIIIIIII!" A young man on a bicycle was pedaling as if his life depended on it. Stopping before the gathered villagers, he took a moment to catch his breath.

"Doshta? Any news?" a woman asked.

"It's gone!" he puffed. "All gone!"

"What's gone?" another man demanded.

"Hiroshima is gone," he announced.

"What do you mean Hiroshima is gone?" an older woman cried.

"They think – they think it was the Americans. They dropped some type of new bomb and the city just…vanished. They're not even sure how many people were killed instantly! The people who were just outside the city, they felt the ground shake and then an unimaginable heat. The survivors, apparently many are burned and you can see the patterns from their clothing seared into their skin!" He shuddered at the mental image.

"Oji-sama!" Jinpachi yelled, on the verge of tears. "What about Oto-sama and Oka-sama?"

"I do not know, child," his grandfather said solemnly. "But until we hear otherwise, we will assume they are fine." He gave his grandson a reassuring pat on the back.

The next two days were just as nerve wracking, as people anxiously awaited news of what the situation was in Hiroshima. News trickled in slowly, given their rural location and the devastation to the telecommunications system. The stories that they did hear were so horrific that many could not believe that they had not been exaggerated out of proportion to the facts.

The third morning after was no better than the first two. Jinpachi tried his utmost to refrain from worrying about his family, but this was made even more difficult by the constant chatter of the villagers who understandably talked about nothing else. His grandfather was trying to coax him to eat when a commotion outside distracted him. "What is going on?" he asked the nearest person.

"It happened again!" he said in a tremulous voice.

"What happened again?"

"Nagasaki – they dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki!"

"Masaka," he whispered. As the townspeople reeled from the news, he was secretly grateful that he had no relatives living on the island of Kyushu. Behind him, he heard his grandson begin to cry. "Jinpachi," he tried to soothe him. "Be strong, child. I know it is difficult, but we will see this through." Wanting so much to believe him, he nodded and stifled his sobs.

When the trains began running again, Jinpachi and his grandfather crossed the island and got of at the first functional train station just outside of Hiroshima. Making the remainder of the journey on foot, the sight that greeted them was beyond imaginable. Any place that would serve had been turned into an emergency station to tend to the wounded survivors. It was all he could do to stifle a scream when he saw the victims of the blast, many with their flesh missing or burnt, crying in pain. There were children, older persons, women – no one appeared to have been spared from the atrocity. There were even stories floating around about survivors of the first explosion who had made their way to Kyushu only to suffer the tragedy yet again.

The city had been laid waste by the impact of the bomb. Where homes and buildings had once stood, there was only rubble in their place. The charred skeletons of hapless victims completed the gruesome picture. "Can you find your home?" his grandfather asked, looking around at the desolate ruins. Any sort of geographical markers had been obliterated and the entire area was an almost flat, vast expanse of cinders.

"I can't tell what anything is," Jinpachi answered in disbelief.

Despite the disastrous state the people were in, few if any doctors could be seen. "When will they be sending in physicians?" his grandfather wondered aloud.

"According to the most recent news, the bomb went off above the Shima Clinic. Almost all the doctors and nurses are unaccounted for," a nearby man replied.

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm one of the only doctors I've seen here in almost two days," he replied, wiping his dusty forehead on his arm.

"What can we do to help, sensei?" the old man asked him.

"Not much unfortunately, oji-san," he informed him. "What we really need is pain medicine, but all the pharmacies were destroyed in the blast. Most of these people probably won't survive very long, but at least it would be preferable if we could make them comfortable before they died."

"So-ka," he said regretfully. "Jinpachi, we are going back. If your family is alive, they will contact us, but there is nothing for us to do here." Unable to think of anything to say, he did as his grandfather said.

ikuzo: let's go

ano: excuse me

sumimaseng: pardon me, sorry (formal)

doshta: what is it?

oto-sama: father (formal)

oka-sama: mother (formal)

masaka: it can't be

sensei: teacher, doctor

oji-san: gramps, old man

so-ka: I see