I received the sad news that Michiko Kiyooka passed away sometime during 2018. Mrs. Kiyooka was a Tokyo fire bombing survivor that I photographed in 2008. Her portrait and testimony is one of the first to be featured in the From Above project.
She was 21 years old when Tokyo was firebombed on
March 10th, 1945. She jumped into the freezing Sumida River to escape
the furious firestorm consuming everything it’s path. Hours after she
managed to pull herself to an area along
the banks that was safe. She headed towards a contained fire
underneath a bridge to get some warmth but had no idea the fire was a
pile of corpses. She lost her father and sister when they froze to
death and drown in the Sumida. Their bodies were taken out 3 days
later.
Each time I stare at the murky waters of the Sumida I can’t imagine the sorrow Mrs. Kiyooka carried all of her life.
..December 2018.. ..Nagasaki..
Link to an NHK Nagasaki interview broadcast last week from the From Above exhibition at the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims.
“I was nineteen. After breakfast I sat down at the balcony and I was knitting while babysitting 4 children from the neighborhood.
Then I felt this bright bright flash as if the sun fell down from the sky.
Following that was a loud roar that I had never heard before. ”
“My mother carried me and my younger sister on her back while she held the hand of my three-year-old brother, while we tried to escape up the mountain. However, there were corpses everywhere. Some of the eyes were popped out from the bodies, some parent’s and child were holding each other and burnt black and dead. It was just inferno. Some were without heads.”
