• I was five on July 20, 1945. Our house was in the Kuruma district of Hanakawa, and the shock of the explosion blew the shutters off.
Research note: Kuruma is about 1.4 kilometers west of the impact site.

• Our family’s rice field was northwest of the impact point, so we traveled there from Kuruma by way of Komagi. Even after we stopped cultivating it, I knew the area well and went back at least once a year to gather wild vegetables, right up to the start of solar power plant construction in 2018. I continued to notice the place where the bomb had fallen.

• Two or three days after the bombing, when we went to weed our field, I saw the crater in the neighboring Kanazawa family’s field.

• Bomb fragments were embedded in trees as far as about 50 to 100 meters from the impact point.

• The crater was three to five meters deep. Water flowed into it from the ditch beside our rice field to the west, so it filled up. Long ago, I thought eels might be hiding there and considered draining it to catch them, although I never did. Over the years, soil accumulated and the hole gradually filled in. Recently it was covered in grass; someone who did not already know the location would not have recognized it just by looking.

• The rice fields beside the stream were deep and muddy, but the rice tasted good.

• To the north was a rice field cultivated by Suda from Yunomami. I later heard that the family had been weeding there when the bomb fell.

Research note: it had been assumed that no one was near the Kitaibaraki impact site at the time. The testimony of Kamiakutsu (上圷日支) established that the late Suda had been working in a very nearby field. Kamiakutsu also knew the impact location until just before the solar power construction began. It is regrettable that the story of the simulated atomic bomb did not reach him earlier: had it done so, there would have been a strong possibility of preserving the site. Until construction progressed, the surrounding area contained many marshy former rice fields and was difficult for the general public to enter. But Kamiakutsu, familiar with the terrain, went every year to gather wild vegetables. He was one of the few people who knew the site in recent years. Mamoru Noguchi introduced him to us for the interview.