Big Boom Coming

When we worked in the factory, the Japanese civilian population would tell us what was going on, how the progress was going. They told us that there was a big, they said, “We got a big bomb. We got a big boom coming.” They called it a big boom. And they said, “That's coming when your... pretty soon.” And sure enough it did come, two big booms. One just 17 miles from us and the other one was in, on the island of Tokyo. Well they took us all out of the huts, they made us get out of the huts because they knew the bomb was coming. They made us get out of the huts and go and lay on the parade square and it was just concrete - concrete parade square. We went and laid out there face down, we couldn't look up. We could hear the planes flying you know and mortar shells going off and everything. But we weren't suppose to look up, we had to look, we had to keep straight, faces straight down until after the bomb. When that bomb went off, well it was such a big bang and shook the whole island that we got up and looked and seen the big smoke come. That was about two o'clock in the morning, we could see that big flash of the light going. Smoke going up with the lights in the air, well everything was on fire there at that time because everything started burning there and the lights were just over the mountain, just over the little mountain there from us. And then we noticed the Japanese, the Japanese were scattering. We didn't have that many in the camp and then all of a sudden they brought us a great big pig. It must of weighed five, six hundred pounds, a great big pig, a big fat one. Turned around and told the cooks to kill that because that was going to keep us with food until the Americans come because the war was going to end. That had to keep us until, plus they left us the rice, a few bags of rice and everything and that was supposed to be, supposed to keep us until the Americans liberated us.

Mr Lynch talks about the buzz leading up to the ninth of August 1945, and how the events unfolded.

Wilbert Lynch

Wilbert Lynch was born in Portage, Manitoba on April 6th 1923 and was raised on a farm with two brothers and three sisters. He left home when he was 13 years old and worked for five dollars a month plus room and board at a few local farms. Three days after turning seventeen he joined the army and trained on the Bren gun in Camp Shilo and became a member of the 18th Manitoba Reconnaissance Battalion.