children and old people were being forced to evacuate from the capital, here were two girls of about seven together with two elderly women in their sixties. I recalled that they were from a big family, and perhaps for that reason they had an unusually large air-raid shelter in their garden. The parents were in their mid-forties. When the girls grabbed my arms, I turned round and saw the two old ladies standing there looking at me, bleary eyed and exhausted. The wise parents must have told them all to go to the shrine when the air-raid alert sounded.

This put us in terrible dilemma. Nakamura and I had managed to escape from the raging fires thanks to our youth, the spiritual strength forged through our military training, ourreduced to burnt-out ruins. A shroud of thin white smoke and the distinctive smell of burned flesh hung in the air. People with blackened faces and bloodshot eyes stood in the ruins staring into space. Filled with anger, sadness and despair, they staggered about gazing at what remained of the neighborhood where they had lived until the night before. But there were very few of them, perhaps thirty at most. What had become of all the people who were here last night?

Then we saw them. Beside the blackened telegraph poles and burnt debris of wooden houses, charred corpses were lying in the road. Near the Shibuya River were a dozen or so bodies that looked more like burned logs. Their hair and clothes had been completely burned off