Eizo Nomura

Eizo Nomura (Japanese:野村栄三, also written as Eiso or Eizō; 1898 – 1982) was a Japanese civilian working in Hiroshima, Japan at the time of the atomic bombing of the city on August 6, 1945. Nomura survived the blast and aftermath, despite being only from the hypocenter. He was the closest known survivor of an atomic bomb explosion.

Background The United States had been bombing Japanese cities with conventional explosives and incendiary bombs for months prior to August 1945, often with terrible effect. On the night of March 9-10 Tokyo had been bombed in what was considered the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history, leaving an estimated 100,000 dead and 1 million homeless.

Hiroshima had been relatively unscathed prior to August. For months prior to August the United States dropped leaflets in Japanese, some 63 million leaflets in all, over several dozen Japanese cities, warning civilians to evacuate urban areas. On August 1, there was a leaflet drop over 35 Japanese cities, including Hiroshima.

At the time of the attack, the population of Hiroshima was approximately 340,000 – 350,000. An estimated 21,000 people were within 500 meters of the hypocenter on the day of the bombing. The bombing occurred on a Monday morning during rush hour.

Because of the absence of warning and the population's lack of concern about individual planes, the explosion came as an almost complete surprise, and the people had not taken shelter.

Day of the bombing On August 6, 1945 the 47-year old Eizo Nomura, a father of four, was working for the prefecture’s Fuel Rationing Control Union, in what was called the Fuel Hall (today the Rest House in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park). Nomura was one of 37 employees working there. The building was a steel-frame reinforced concrete structure, with three stories above the ground and one below, located near the Motoyasu River. Nomura said later that ordinarily his section manager would have provided documents for him to work on already on his desk, but that day seemed to have forgotten. So Nomura went to the basement to fetch the documents himself. He described the basement room as small, about 10 tsubo, or .

Hiroshima before bombing with hypocenter (A), the Fuel Hall building (B), and the Aioi Bridge (C) marked, along with 1000 ft (305 m) circles from hypocenter. The Aioi Bridge, with its distinctive T-shape, was the intended target of the bomb, but the bomb drifted to the SE by 240 m.

Nomura and his colleague were joined by a small number of other survivors, virtually all of whom were injured. One woman said she was going blind and others had apparent internal injuries. They huddled on some stone steps that led down to the Motoyasu River. The buildings on the other side of the river were already on fire, and the buildings on their side soon followed, including the Fuel Hall. Burning wooden boards and other debris fell on them from the intense smoke clouds. An enormous water spout sprang out of the river, one of many tornados and fire whirls which sprang up from the extreme conditions, and filled the air with more debris.

After a time it began to rain, eventually coming down in torrents, Some of the survivors, desperately thirsty, drank the rain, unwittingly making their odds of future survival even worse. Those survivors were from an estimated 21,000 people who had been within that radius at the time of the blast, representing 99.6% mortality.

Downtown Hiroshima shortly after the bombing in August 1945, taken from about 500 m SW of the hypocenter. The only two buildings standing in the scene are the "A-Bomb Dome" (as it is known today) in the center rear, and the Fuel Hall where Eizo Nomura was working, to the right of that.

The bombing at Hiroshima was the first and the most destructive of the two atomic bombs dropped by the United States, the second being at Nagasaki on August 9. At Hiroshima between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly by the initial blast of 3,000 - 4,000 degree C heat, the shock wave which followed, and the ensuing fires. Within a radius of 1.3 km almost every structure was destroyed and almost every person killed. Thousands of people burned to death while trapped under collapsed buildings. One of the chapters was entitled simply "Atomic Bombing". He wrote for several years, completing 800 pages of handwritten manuscript.