HAMAGUCHIMACHI STOP (NAGASAKI)

Streetcar shows spirit of Nagasaki

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Yasushi Wada

By Keiko Nakamura

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Sixty years on, it is difficult to find any trace of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in the streets around the Hamaguchimachi streetcar stop, about 400 meters from ground zero. The bombing by the United States occurred at 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945.

"There was a baseball stadium next to the stop. My father used to take me there to watch the Giants play. (Victor) Starfin pitched so fast that I couldn't see the ball," said Koichi Wada, 78, recalling the good old days before the outbreak of World War II.

Wada worked as a streetcar driver. When the atomic bomb was dropped, he was sitting in a lounge at Hotarujaya terminal after finishing his shift.

The bombing came 1-1/2 years after Wada had been mobilized and begun working as a streetcar driver.

Initially, he was supposed to be driving near Hamaguchimachi Stop but due to a derailment caused by one of his colleagues earlier in the morning, the timetable was rescheduled — a situation that saved Wada's life.

"I felt like 50 flashbulbs, or even 100, went off at once," said Wada, describing the moment the bomb exploded. "Soon after, I realized the lounge was destroyed and found myself lying on the floor," he added.

He then walked along the streetcar line in search of his colleagues. But due to the heat on the ground, he could not get to the northern area. It was only three days after the bomb that he managed to reach the area around Hamaguchimachi Stop.

Wada found a scene from hell. Everything had been incinerated and the rubble glowed in the intense heat. In the wreckage of a street car, he found a body whose hands gripped the handle in rigor mortis. He used a door to carry the body to a nearby vacant lot, where he mourned for the dead colleague. Wada himself was suffering from blood-filled diarrhea and was losing his hair, he said.

But only three months later, the streetcar service resumed. "Can you believe that operations resumed in just three months? Seven cars returned to service, and I drove the fourth. Children and adults chased the car I was driving, shouting: 'It's moving! It's moving!' It filled me with emotion," Wada said.

For four decades until he retired at 60, Wada used his days off to visit places connected with missing colleagues, and compiled a list of 117 colleagues who lost their lives in the bombing.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the streetcar service by Nagasaki Electric Tramway Co. It only costs 100 yen to ride the streetcar. The route, which has survived devastation caused by atomic bombing, floods and typhoons and people's increased dependency on cars, is as tough as the people of Nagasaki.