The Day Minato Saw The Light

Minato Harada was playing on the beach on the northern shore of Inoko island. Dawn had been a couple of hours ago, and he was skipping stones across the sea.

His father was out on his boat, trying to catch fish to feed his family and to sell so he could buy other goods they needed. And his mother was at home, a few hundred yards away.

At first, when she'd allowed him to go down to the beach by himself, she'd been worried, as all mothers are. But his father, being a fisherman, had taught his son from an early age to respect nature, especially the sea.

As Minato played, he heard a noise in the sky, but that wasn't unusual. Planes often flew overhead.

But none of that worried him. He was content in his own little world, and his father had told him he'd be safe on their tiny island - there was no military significance to it.

After an hour of playing, and honing his stone skipping skills, Minato heard a slightly different noise. It was deeper than the usual engine noises he heard. He looked up but couldn't see anything - yet.

And so he carried on playing. He'd grown bore, and his fingers were starting to hurt. In fact, he had a small cut on his forefinger where one of the stones had had a jagged edge he'd not noticed.

So he decided to go looking for crabs along the seashore. They were difficult to spot unless you knew what to look for - something his father had taught him after his fifth birthday.

All he had to do was look for those small pools of water, often amongst the rocks, that were left after the tide had gone out. And if he was lucky, he'd find the crabs there.

Minato struck gold at his first attempt. Not one, but four crabs, all in the same puddle. He'd brought a large glass jar with him, as he always did, just in case, and carefully scooped the four crustaceans into it. They were somewhat on the small side, but maybe his mother could do something with them as an added treat at dinner time.

The noise from the engines in the sky grew louder, and he could now make out the shape of a much larger plane. It was, he thought, what they called a bomber.

He ignored it, as he usually did. Even the loud explosion and the bright lights didn't concern him. But what was impossible to ignore was the immense cloud that climbed up into the sky.

Even though he was about 30 miles away from Hiroshima, the noise was deafening, and his eyes hurt from the glare. It was the first time he'd seen the results of any bombs, and it wasn't at all what he'd been expecting.

He was unsure what to make of it, so he grabbed his jar of crabs and ran home to tell his mother. Minato was in such a hurry that he tripped over some rocks and broke his glass jar as he hit the ground. The crabs scurried off to find the nearest water, while he picked himself up and continued up the beach.

Out of breath, having run as fast as his legs would carry him, he arrived at the front door and found his mother standing there, staring out to the city across the water. Her mouth was open and her eyes unblinking. Tiny tears ran down her face, as though she felt something deep inside.

"Mama," he said. "What's going on?

"I don't know, Minato, but I feel something terrible has happened."

He joined her in crying, without really knowing why.

Minato didn't yet know his parents had friends in Hiroshima, which was why his mother was so upset. She feared for their lives, and rightly so - 80,000 people had just died, wiped out in within seconds.

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The war had ended soon after the day of the big explosion. Over a decade later, Minato never moved from the island. It was home, a place he felt comfortable, mentally if not physically. His body had begun to ache in an ever-increasing number of ways. The same had happened to his parents, both of whom had died from unknown causes during his teens.

Minato carried on his family's tradition - fishing. He enjoyed being out on the small boat but returning home each day to an empty house brought tears to his eyes. He still couldn't accept what had happened all those years ago, even though he now knew more about the events of that fateful day.

His friends had moved away after their parents died. They no longer liked being on this island with their memories, and so headed to the mainland, to go who knew where. None of them had ever kept in touch.

But Minato stayed put. He even found himself a wife, a girl who had moved to Inoko a couple of years earlier because her parents had found work there.

As the years went by, and he felt sicker and sicker, he was grateful they at least had two sons, a lasting reminder of the love Minato and Chiaki shared.

By the time Minato was in his early 30s, his health had deteriorated still further. He could no longer go fishing each day. Whenever work allowed, one of his sons tried to help him, but they both had their own jobs. They were the first male Haradas to work for somebody else in many generations.

Back home, the one he'd grown up in, his wife was ill as well. The local doctor didn't know what was wrong - only that a lot of the island's inhabitants were experiencing similar problems.

One by one, they died, all too young, all with hitherto unseen symptoms.

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Minato was at sea with his sons, not to work but to enjoy the breeze, when he too breathed his last. His two boys wrapped him in a spare sail and headed home.

The graveyard was almost full, but there was still space in the grave where their mother had been buried. A grave they too would need sooner than they thought.