There were mountains of corpses, piled with heads at the center of the mound. They were stacked so their eyes, mouths, and noses could be seen as little as possible.

In one mound a man's eyeball moved and stared. Was he still alive? Or had a maggot moved his dead eye?

Water! Water! People wandered about searching for water. Fleeing the flames, crying for water to wet their dying lips. An injured mother with her child fled to the riverside. She slipped into deep water, then scrambled along the shallows. Running as the raging fire engulfed the river, stopping now and then to wet her face, she ran on until finally she came to this spot. She offered her child a breast, only to find it had breathed its last.

The twentieth-century image of madonna and child: an injured mother cradling her dead infant. Is this not an image of despair? Mother and child should be a symbol of hope.

From: The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki. Eds. John W. Dower and Junkerman. Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International, 1985; 39.