Water was no comfort to those burned by the fires set off by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A nuclear explosion radiates surrounding water, and any spray falls back down to Earth as a nuclear shower. Rain falling after Hiroshima was blackened by soot and ash and carried with it debris from the explosion as well as radioactive material.
For victims of the burns, intense heat, and injuries, even contaminated water may have been seen as a blessing. A common refrain in survivors’ accounts is how the wounded and dying begged for water. But even before the atomic bombs fell, the military had advised that people with such injuries should not be given anything to drink. This is still advised for certain injuries. In a case of severe bleeding, taking in water can exacerbate blood loss. In cases where the extent of bleeding couldn’t be determined, it would have been difficult for anyone without medical training to assess if a victim could handle water. If they were already at the brink of death, a drink likely wouldn’t have made a difference.
Making judgment calls in that situation haunted many survivors. Rikuko Sasaki recalled seeing a neighbor try and get water out of an icepack that his mother kept away from him; when the boy died, his mother couldn’t stop crying or giving his dead body water. Other survivors reported giving drinks to victims who then died, or being too injured themselves to provide water to begging, dying children.
