Word: kawamoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Peace Museum now, Kawamoto uses a long wooden pointer to indicate, in a large circular panorama, the route of the rest of his escape. Above the center of the panorama a bright red ball representing the hypocenter hangs by a cord. Kawamoto touches the pointer to the area of the playground, then moves it out into the city, away from the hypocenter, toward the Kyobashi River and the Miyuki Bridge...
During the war people kept their own reservoirs in case of fires. The water in these reservoirs lay filthy and stagnant through the year, but Kawamoto was desperately thirsty. He started toward one of the reservoirs, but saw that people were lying dead, half in, half out of the water. Coming to the Miyuki Bridge at last, he leaped down the steep stone steps, stumbling over others plummeting down. There was a logjam of bodies at the base of the steps. "I was so scared." He tried to drink the muddy water, but spit it out. He clambered...
Much of what Kawamoto saw between the school playground and the Miyuki Bridge is exhibited in the museum he directs. It is after hours now, so he is free to move easily from display case to display case, using one exhibit or another to illustrate his story. During regular hours the museum is packed with schoolchildren in uniform, pressing their noses against the windows of the cases; chattering; some horseplay from the bigger boys. On display is all that became of Hiroshima once the bomb dropped, along with historical memorabilia such as the directive from Lieut. General Carl Spaatz, commander...
...melted lump of coins; a mass of nails, of sake cups. A watch stopped at exactly 8:16 was found in the sands of the Motoyasu River. A horse is on display; its legs are missing. One case contains hair that had fallen in a clump on the ground. (Kawamoto's hair fell out after six weeks, but two months later it grew back again.) Another case contains black fingernails two or three inches in length that had grown on a hand where the skin was entirely burned off. The black nails had blood vessels in them; nothing like them...
...displays that touch Kawamoto most deeply are those of a middle-school uniform, much like his own, the jacket torn with one sleeve missing; and of wax models of victims walking as if stunned or asleep, their arms held out in front of them. Their skin hangs loose on their bones, like ill-fitting clothing. Their real clothes are rags. In the display case they stand blank-eyed against a backdrop of a wasteland of ashes and a fire-streaked sky. "It is the way people really looked," Kawamoto says. "They did not seem to walk voluntarily; they appeared...