Sitting in her Belfast home, 66 years after Nagasaki, Nobuko Pollock vividly recalls the horror of the bombing that killed her brother, destroyed her home and flattened an entire city
THE LIVING ROOM of Nobuko Pollock’s semi-detached house in Belfast is tiny and homely, crowded with mementoes gathered over a lifetime.Origami sculptures and kimono-clad dolls jostle for space with figurines and framed photos of her only grandchild, seven-year-old Rebekah.
The TV appears oversized among such knick-knacks, but its prominence is no accident: it is Pollock’s umbilical link with her motherland. Each year, she tunes into the commemorations for the atomic bombing at Nagasaki, in which, 66 years ago this Tuesday, Pollock lost a brother and escaped with her life.
That trauma was painfully revived earlier this year when she found herself glued to the footage of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan’s east coast. “It brought it all back,” she says, her eyes welling up. “The devastation, the terrible waste of life.”
Despite the very different circumstances, the radiation scare at Fukushima had particular resonance for the 78-year-old. “You can’t see radiation, it’s a silent killer. That’s why I’m against nuclear technology. If you saw the harm it can cause . . .” She trails off.
Pollock was 13 years old when the chillingly monikered “Fat Man” bomb tumbled on its terrible journey from the skies above Nagasaki, one of the most important ports and industrial centres of wartime Japan, on August 9th, 1945.
Up to 75,000 people lost their lives immediately; a further 70,000 died in the months that followed. An estimated 15 to 20 per cent of deaths were caused directly by irradiation and a further 20 to 30 per cent by flash burns. The remainder were caused by more conventional blast-related injuries. Of course, the death toll is necessarily incomplete; research is ongoing into the incidence of cancer among Pollock’s generation.
It is hard to absorb such statistics. The apocalyptic nature of a nuclear attack is perhaps better conveyed by hideous details: for example, the heat created by the Nagasaki bomb (3,900 degrees Celsius) was so intense people’s clothes caught fire more than three kilometres away from the point of detonation. It unleashed winds of almost 1,000km/h, instantaneously collapsing buildings.
Three days previously, Hiroshima had been similarly devastated, and although the bomb used for that city was smaller, the death toll was higher, with 30 per cent of the population killed immediately, including 90 per cent of the city’s doctors and nurses.
The flat landscape of Hiroshima allowed the blast to zap an area of more than 10sq km. By contrast, the impact of the Nagasaki bomb, which missed its target by more than 3km, was partially contained by hills.
In strategic terms, the bombs had the desired effect: Japan surrendered, effectively ending the second World War, although the rights and wrongs of the actions of the then US president, Harry S Truman, will be forever debated.
Pollock’s recollection of August 9th, 1945, is still vivid. Her home was around 6km from the bomb’s hypocentre. “What I remember is the huge noise. We ran next door, to an American hotel, as we knew they had a concrete bunker. Our own house was on fire. Most of Nagasaki was on fire, as all the buildings were wooden.
“That night my brother didn’t come home. My mother and grandfather went out looking for him. They found his body at the hospital morgue. There were no burn marks on him, but we assumed he had died instantly, as he had been at the university, just half a mile from the bomb.”
A second-year medical student at the time, Pollock’s brother, Harunobu Miyake, was cremated in the street by his family. Pollock had been extremely close to him, a fact she puts down to losing her father as a baby. “I thought I would go out of my mind with grief,” she says. “More than that, I thought my mother would go crazy.”
In what would be a harrowing journey, the family decamped to her grandfather’s home village. “We saw so many refugees: people on stretchers, people with no hair, with burns all over their bodies. The fields were full of dead animals. The buildings were flattened. It was a nightmare. I will never forget it.”
Pollock’s only remaining sibling, a sister named Ayako, also survived the bomb, but died from bone cancer 15 years ago. Neither Pollock, nor her mother, nor her grandparents went on to develop cancer, despite the fact her mother and grandfather had been in the immediate vicinity of the blast within 24 hours.
Pollock was very ill, however, after the birth of her only child, Martin, in 1967, and had to undergo a hysterectomy, something her doctors believed may have been linked to radiation exposure.
A cheerful and friendly woman, she says she has never felt anti-American sentiments – indeed, her adult life has been intimately connected with the West – although she remains angry at the fact more time was not left after the Hiroshima bomb to secure a surrender.
After receiving an American-style education in Nagasaki, Pollock attended typing school and learned English. “When I was young, the sense was that everything was happening in the English-speaking world,” she says.
She landed her dream job as a secretary for the American shipping and oil giant that would become Texaco, and worked in Nagasaki, Osaka and Innoshima, converting to Christianity along the way.
At 28, she met the love of her life, Bobby Pollock, a Belfast naval engineer and a former sergeant in the British Army. Two years later, in 1962, she travelled to Belfast to become his bride.
What a shock it must have been for a woman who had never stepped outside Japan to land in the uninspiring suburbs of north Belfast. Back then, the city had no Oriental Supermarket, no Japanese Society (of which she is now an active member), no karaoke nights, no karate clubs.
Her first impressions were of the strange pebbledash houses and “the height of the policemen, like giants!” she says, laughing.
It was only a sometime home, however, as she and Bobby travelled with his work, sailing by Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, until she became pregnant. Bobby worked at sea until his retirement, meaning Pollock was often home alone, with a young child, for up to eight months at a time. When the Troubles broke out, that took on ever greater significance, with flashpoints like Ardoyne just a short walk away. What did her family back in Japan think?
“My mother understood that if you love someone, you go with them, but my sister was bitterly against my international marriage. She worried that if anything happened, I was so far away.” She looks incredulous, however, when asked if she has any regrets. “Bobby and I had a wonderful life,” she says.
Pollock nursed her husband through Alzheimer’s for eight years, refusing to hand his care over, before he died, in 2000. She is currently rereading their love letters and recently asked Martin, who works in the NI Civil Service, to bury them with her.
She has returned to Japan a number of times but would love one more trip. “It’s the old Japan I miss,” she says, almost apologetically. “I know all this technology is important, but it’s the seasons I am nostalgic about. Kyoto in autumn, with the maple leaves turning red . . .
“But,” she says, her face brightening with characteristic optimism, “if it’s not to be, I will watch it on my TV.”
