Taking Refuge at the Time of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima : Beyond Rivers and Bridges

The present paper is a sequel to our previous one entitled "Rivers and Bridges as First Places of Refugee at the Time of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima." Both in the previous and present papers, it is our belief that despite the vast research material and literature accumulated on the human damages and sufferings caused by the Atomic bombing on Hiroshima., there are a few missing pieces in the whole picture of the totality of the damages and sufferings. One such piece is the behavior of the sufferers on the day of the bombing before they arrived at some first aid station, relief station or hospital, or before they died. We know little about how they reached such places. In the previous paper, first we showed that rivers and bridges were first places of refuge for many people. And secondly, we explored how they fled, or failed to flee, to rivers and bridges just after the atomic bomb explosion, and extracted four typical patterns of behavior: failure, exhaustion, sojourn, and success. In the present paper, relying on the same data and method as before, we begin where the previous one ended, and examine how people crossed (or failed to cross) a river or a bridge after they arrived there. The examination shows that the refugees who managed to arrive at a river or a bridge were faced with two major options. They could try either to cross the river, or the bridge. In the former case, they could try to walk or swim across the river, or to cross it by a boat. In addition, they might choose to stay where they were for various reasons, or they might take refugee in the river water, especially from the approaching fire. In all these choices, we find cases both of failure and success. But, we also find cases where refugees dissuaded themselves from trying to cross the river or bridge, presumably at the sight of so many tragic failures. Ours is an attempt at shedding some new light on the hitherto unexplored aspect of the human damages and suffering caused by the atomic bombing on Hiroshima