Word: shigeto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...morning of Aug. 6, 1945, Dr. Fumio Shigeto was waiting in line for a trolley to take him to Hiroshima's Red Cross Hospital. A nurse he knew waved to him, inviting him to join her near the front of the queue. Not wanting to push ahead of the people in front of him, Shigeto declined the offer. At that moment there was a blinding flash, followed by a deafening boom. Most of the people in the line were hurled to the ground, burned and bleeding. Shigeto, who was sheltered by the corner of a reinforced-concrete building, survived...
...best-known of Hiroshima's "atomic doctors," Shigeto, now 72, has spent the 30 years since that dreadful day caring for the victims of history's first atomic attack. He has refused almost all requests for interviews. Last week, following his retirement (to settle in a home on the outskirts of the city and "raise carrots with my wife"), Shigeto consented to talk to TIME Correspondent S. Chang and reminisce about his escape-and the work it enabled...
Flash-Boom. For Shigeto, the job of treating Hiroshima's survivors began moments after pikadon (Japanese for "flash-boom"). For a moment he paused, listening to the screams of pain that filled the air, and asked himself, "God, how on earth could a single doctor handle this mountain of patients." Then, although stunned by the explosion, Shigeto knelt, opened his black bag and began to treat the man lying at his feet, only to yield to the victim's pleas that his wife be treated first. After administering first aid to the couple, Shigeto turned his attention...
...Shigeto worked his way toward the fringes of the holocaust in the center of the city. He lost count of the number of patients he treated that first day, but vividly remembers the feeling of frustration that overtook him as he emptied his bag of supplies, then began tearing up his shirt to bandage the injured. Says Shigeto: "I realized how terrible it is to be a doctor and to be unable to do anything at all to the hundreds of wounded and dying all around...