One evening I was visiting with a Japanese family in Kamoi. It was cold. We sat in a circle around a big urn which contained hot charcoal. A metal scaffolding over the urn held a round quilt above the urn. The quilt stretched around the circle of people about waist high and kept our legs warm.

The circle included a young woman I had not met. While not fluent, she could make herself understood in English. It turned out that she worked for the American occupation forces in an office in Tokyo. I had the impression that her boss was a high ranking army officer.

“But I am not from Tokyo,” she said. That naturally led me to ask where she grew up. She responded with a conversation-stopping word.

“Hiroshima!”

On her own initiative she then told her story. She spoke calmly and in a straightforward manner, with neither tears nor rancor.

The afternoon before the bomb fell she had been sent to some relatives who lived a few miles out in the country to get food for the family. Food was in very short supply. She had gathered the food parcels and prepared to carry them home early the next morning.

The bomb exploded shortly after she started walking. She saw the flash. It killed her entire family. I felt embarrassment beyond the power of words to describe. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. The others looked at me, making it worse. I have no recollection of what I said, if anything, or of how the evening ended.