Falling Leaves

The Americans stood their ground. Undoubtedly, they were attempting to push us Japanese in, creating siege-like wall around the remaining survivors. The tough environment clearly made us all stronger. You could see the grim looks on our faces, desperate to make a last stand effort. Explosions rattled the stands, fear was shown. The past few days have been a mix of hiding, and searching for food-our primal instincts, bursting out. I hadn’t just feared the Americans. Here, bodies were ravaged-decorated with cut, blisters and bruises. No one felt safe here, not in the place that was once Hiroshima.

I am Sakura Hamada. I lived in what was currently one of the seven remaining houses in my city. It was once a beautiful city, but two years ago, in 1942, we were attacked by the Americans. They destroyed our homes and pushed the remaining civilians into the center of hiroshima, which just so happens to be next to my home. My family had been living at the bare minimum for the past twelve years - actually, the entirety of Japan has. In 1930, we had a Great Depression that ended up completely failing the economy. Thousands lost their jobs. My father was one of the unfortunate ones. He too, lost his job, but he also lost his wealth, too. My mother and father had not spoken in weeks-I feared for them. I helped them as much as I can, cleaned, cooked, I even helped the neighbors with common chores, but only to receive little to nothing. We had nothing anymore.

The borders were lessened - the Americans had fallen back a bit. But our dictator, Tojo Hideki had not done anything to keep the Americans back. He had hidden, and he knew that there was little to no hope for Hiroshima. I knew this too-and so does the rest of Japan. We’ve lost the war, but we wouldn’t give up. We suffered for this, worked for this, everything we had ever done-everything I had ever done, has led up to this. If we lost, there will be no future for Japan.

The Americans were gone. Their intentions were not clear, but the cries of joy as we celebrated the victory was pleasing. But we knew it’s not over. No matter what, we would still have economy issues. No matter what, The damage dealt would be near impossible to reverse. No matter what, we couldn’t make up for the family and friends taken in this war. We couldn’t dwell on the past. And that’s was when I heard it. A faint whistling getting closer and closer, louder and louder. I looked up and spied a small silver plane with the words “Enola Gay” written on it with black calligraphy.

It was from America.

~Eric Chen.

(Post-Script)

Truthfully, I’ve been working on the same story concept since fifth grade. Every year, every rendition, I can feel it get better. This current version is the newest one as of April fourth, 2018, and I do believe, that while it only gets half of the story, and leaves out some characters, it is the most detailed and informative rendition yet. In case you haven’t realized yet, Falling Leaves is about a young boy from Hiroshima, Japan during World War Two. This version ends with the Enola Gay (bomber plane) dropping the Little Boy (bomb) on Hiroshima Japan.