34 HIROSHIMA
Mrs, Nakamura abandoned Myeko, who at least
could breathe, and in a frenzy made the wreckage fly
•above the crying voices. The children had been sleeping
nearly tea feet apart, but now their voices seemed to
come from the same place. Toshio, the boy, apparently
had some freedom to move, because she could feel
him undermining the pile of wood and tiles as she
worked from above. At last she saw his head, and she
hastily pulled Mm out by It. A mosquito net was
wound intricately, as if it had been carefully wrapped,
around his feet. He said he had been blown right
across the room and had been on top of his sister
Yaeko under the wreckage. She now said, from under-
neath, that she could not move, because there was
something on her legs. With a bit more digging,
Mrs. Nakamura cleared a hole above the child and
began to pull her arm. " Itai ! It hurts !" Yaeko
cried. Mrs. Nakamura shouted, " Thore's no time now
to say whether it hurts or not," and yanked her whim-
pering daughter up. Then she freed Myeko. The
children were filthy and bruised, but none of them had
a single cut or scratch.
Mrs. Nakamura took the children -out into the
street. They had nothing on. but underpants, and
although the day was very Ijot, she worried rather
confusedly about their being cold, so she went back
into the wreckage and burrowed underneath and found
a bundle of clothes she had packed for an emergency,
and she dressed them in pants, blouses, shoes, padded-
cotton air-raid helmets called bokuzukl, and even,
irrationally, overcoats. The children were silent, except
for the five-year-old, Myeko, who kept asking questions: