he edge of the road. The litter bearers on the left side
fall into a two meter deep ditch which they could not see in the
darkness. Father Superior hides his pain with a dry joke, but the
litter which is now no longer in one piece cannot be carried further.
We decide to wait until Kinjo can bring a hand cart from Nagatsuke. He
soon comes back with one that he has requisitioned from a collapsed
house. We place Father Superior on the cart and wheel him the rest of
the way, avoiding as much as possible the deeper pits in the road.

About half past four in the morning, we finally arrive at the
Novitiate. Our rescue expedition had taken almost twelve hours.
Normally, one could go back and forth to the city in two hours. Our
two wounded were now, for the first time, properly dressed. I get two
hours sleep on the floor; some one else has taken my own bed. Then I
read a Mass in gratiarum actionem, it is the 7th of August, the
anniversary of the foundation of our society. Then we bestir ourselves
to bring Father Kleinsorge and other acquaintances out of the city.

We take off again with the hand cart. The bright day now reveals the
frightful picture which last night's darkness had partly concealed.
Where the city stood everything, as far as the eye could reach, is a
waste of ashes and ruin. Only several skeletons of buildings
completely burned out in the interior remain. The banks of the river
are covered with dead and wounded, and the rising waters have here and
there covered some of the corpses. On the broad street in the
Hakushima district, naked burned cadavers are particularly numerous.
Among them are the wounded who are still alive. A few have crawled
under the burnt-out autos and trams. Frightfully injured forms beckon
to us and then collapse. An old woman and a girl whom she is pulling
along with her fall down at our feet. We place them on our cart and
wheel them to the hospital at whose entrance a dressing station has
been set up. Here the wounded lie on the hard floor, row on row. Only
the largest wounds are dressed. We convey another soldier and an old
woman to the place but we cannot move everybody who lies exposed in the
sun. It would be endless and it is questionable whether those whom we
can drag to the dressing station can come out alive, because even here
nothing really effective can be done. Later, we ascertain that the
wounded lay for days in the burnt-out hallways of the hospital and