Editor’s note: This is part of a series on hibakusha who responded to a survey by The Asahi Shimbun, The Chugoku Shimbun and The Nagasaki Shimbun on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings.

A 95-year-old hibakusha offered to show the keloid scar from 80 years ago that still remains on her right shoulder during an interview in Hiroshima Prefecture.

“I really hated this,” the woman told a reporter. “Shall I show it to you? You have never seen a keloid, have you?”

After baring her shoulder, she said, “It is embarrassing to show the scar. But I am showing it because I am close to the end of my life.”

The woman participated in the nationwide survey of atomic bomb survivors and agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity.

She had mentioned the raised scar in the questionnaire when dictating her answers to her daughter who filled it out on her behalf. The woman also said she has lost vision in one eye and that a piece of metal remains inside her head.

During the interview, the woman repeatedly said, “I am ashamed of being exposed to the atomic bomb.”

She was 15 years old and working at a firearms factory, where she also lived, when the United States dropped the first one.

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, she was scheduled to help demolish buildings and was walking toward Hiroshima, shoulder to shoulder with her co-workers.

A plane flew overhead. “It is a B-29,” she thought and immediately covered her face with her hands and dropped to the ground.

She remembers neither the flash nor the sound. When she lifted her head, flames were rising in the direction of the city center.

“The fire is huge. We have to run,” the woman thought.

Her friends she was with were nowhere to be seen.

She suddenly noticed a burning sensation on her right shoulder. Her factory uniform had caught fire and was in tatters.

The woman reached an air raid shelter on a nearby mountainside. It was packed with the injured.

Keeping her eyes open became increasingly difficult as time went on. It was only then she realized her face had swollen. Soon, the woman became unable to see anything.

Her memory after that moment is hazy. 

She reunited with her family who came looking for her, and rode a freight train when returning to their home in the suburbs. The woman does not remember how many days the journey took.

“I was in a daze,” she said. “I did not have a clear sense of what was happening to me or to others.”

For several years, she drifted between bedrest and brief periods of activity. The burn on her shoulder took years to dry and heal. A burn on her face also left her with a scar.

At 19, she returned to work in Hiroshima. Her mother told her to apply a little extra makeup. 

The woman was embarrassed when others saw the keloid on her shoulder at public baths and did her best to hide it. She did not want her husband whom she wed through an arranged marriage to see it, either.

She has never spoken about her atomic bomb experiences, not even to her own family. 

“People keep you at arm’s length just because you suffered the atomic bombing,” the woman said.

“Ashamed” was a recurring word throughout the interview.

That this woman’s experience ingrained an emotion powerful enough to endure for a lifetime encapsulates the injustice of the atomic bombing. There is no reason a victim should feel shame for having suffered it. 

She does not recall responding to hibakusha surveys conducted by The Asahi Shimbun around the 60th and 70th anniversaries of the atomic bombing. 

For the 80th anniversary survey, she asked her 70-year-old daughter to write her responses for her.

Her daughter knew that her mother was a hibakusha because of the keloid. Her mother has also been asked if she was wearing a hairpin every time she was at the hospital for an MRI because of the metal in the front part of her head.

But details of her mother’s experiences were all new to her. She was at a loss for words at the harshness of what she heard.

Why did the woman agree to the interview and show the keloid, something she always wanted to conceal?

“I am old now, you see,” she said. “I wanted people to know, before I go, just how terrifying the atomic bomb is.”

Although she survived, it is evident how much it cost her.

“You should never make such a terrible bomb again,” she said.