This Was the Enemy

The only new building in Hiroshima was a Roman Catholic church, raising its simple, spireless two stories above empty, bombed acres. In the church's tiny backyard shed, an organ played while children clapped their hands and sang a Japanese kindergarten tune.

Some 180,000 Hiroshimans still reckoned all time as before & after pika-don (flash-bang), but the city was slowly shuffling back to life and growth. Directly under the spot where the bomb had burst eleven months ago, a small vegetable garden flourished. The people were clearing paths through the desert of debris (it would take years to remove all) and building temporary camps of wood and rusty tin. In an effort to hide the naked desolation, the city administration issued free seedlings of wildflowers. The Reconstruction Deliberation Committee, with Rotarian zeal, dreamed of making a tourist center of Hiroshima with parks, broad avenues and a memorial hall to world amity. Chief booster was the city's assistant mayor, who played third base on the newly formed baseball team. (Brightly colored posters tacked to dead trees last week announced a doubleheader with the Osaka-Kobe team.)

Hiroshimans flocked to a makeshift horse racecourse reconverted from an army drill ground, and into 17 movie houses (four more than before pika-don). The current feature was one of Japan's first postwar movies called Blast of Love. And for the children, there was a new toy, The Peace Game, priced cheaply at seven yen.

Last week, a twelve-year-old Hiroshima schoolboy with a ragged scar over his left eye peered at a TIME correspondent through glasses he has worn ever since the bombing. Said Hiroshima's child: "You American? American soldier good. Americans number one." His mother and sister, he said, had been killed by the bomb.

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