“It felt like the sun had fallen - and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.
The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko's home city of Hiroshima - the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan. Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.
