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When I was in Japan just after the war I visited a temple on the outskirts of Hiroshima. I assisted an old Japanese lady up a flight of stairs to the temple where my friend Nori was engaged in conversation with the second old Japanese lady. It transpired that they were sisters.

On the morning that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima one of the ladies had left to visit friends in the hills which was nowhere in the vicinity of the bomb. After the bombing her whole family was wiped out — her husband, children, parents and friends were all gone. The only surviving relative left was the second lady that we met — she survived because she was in Manchuria fighting the Chinese.

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