The sons and daughters of kamikazes were treated with near rever- ence. It was widely believed that their father's honor was handed down to their offspring as soon as word had been received the mission had been successful. Albeit a suicide mission.
Taki Homosoto was one 17 year old boy so revered for his father's sacrifice. Taki spoke confidently about such matters, about the war, about American atrocities, and how Japan would soon defeat the round faced enemy. Taki had understood, on his 17th birthday that his father would leave . . .and assuredly die as was the goal of the kamikaze. He pretended to understand that it made sense to him.
In the last 6 months since his father had left, Taki assumed, at his father's request, the patriarchal role in the immediate family. The personal anguish had been excruciating. While friends and family and officials praised Taki's father and fami- ly, inside Taki did not accept that a man could willingly leave his family, his children, him . . .Taki, never to return. Didn't his father love him? Or his sister and brother? Or his mother?
Taki's mother got a good job at one of the defense plants that permeated Hiroshima, while Taki and his brother and sister con- tinued their schooling. But the praise, the respect didn't make up for not having a father to talk to, to play with and to study with. He loved his mother, but she wasn't a father.
So Taki compensated and overcompensated and pretended that his father's sacrifice was just, and good, and for the better of society, and the war effort and his family. Taki spoke as a juvenile expert on the war and the good of Japan and the bad of the United States and the filthy Americans with their unholy practices and perverted ways of life, and how they tortured Japanese prisoners. Taki was an eloquent and convincing orator to his piers and instructors alike.
At 8:15 A.M., the Hiroshima radio station, NHK, rang its old school bell. The bell was part of a warning system that an- nounced impending attacks from the air, but it had been so over- used that it was mostly ignored. The tolls from the bell were barely noticed by the students or the teachers in the Honkawa School. Taki though, looked out the window toward the Aioi Bridge. His ears perked and his eyes scanned the clear skies over downtown Hiroshima. He was sure he heard something . . .but no . . .
The first sensation of motion in the steel reinforced building came long seconds after the blinding light. Since the rolling earth motions in 1923 devastated much of Tokyo, schoolchildren and households nationwide practiced earthquake preparedness and were reasonably expectant of another major tremor at any time.
But the combination of light from 10,000 suns and the deafening roar gave those who survived the blast reason to wish they had- n't. Blindness was instant for those who saw the sky ignite. The classroom was collapsing around them. In the air was the noise of a thousand trains at once…even louder. In seconds the schoolhouse was in rubble.
The United States of American had just dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. This infamous event would soon be known as ayamachi - the Great Mistake.
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