Yaoroyzu's Fitting Destiny

At the end of the day, Grandma always had a few stories to tell me and my brother. She was pretty much the best grandma ever, but I don't think she liked our dad because he used to drink a lot. He didn't hit her or anything, he just liked to drink a lot. My mom told me that's how our dad met my mom; they were both at some bar getting drunk.

Grandma had been married to grandpa for like forty years before he died. Grandpa had been in World War Two and he was in one of those Japanese-American internment camps when he was a kid. After that, he never drank anymore. He said it made him remember being in the camp and made him sad, so he never did it again. For as long as I can remember, I've never seen anyone drink booze either - except for the time my uncle got really drunk after his wife died from cancer and I think everyone else at the funeral drank too. It was weird.

My dad used to go out drinking with his friends on Friday nights when we were little, but then Mom would call later telling him to pick us up because we were too young to be left alone with Grandma. Every time Dad came home and asked why we needed to leave early, Mom would just say something like "I needed you here" and smile. I'm not sure if she meant she really needed him or if she really wanted him gone, but eventually Dad stopped going out with his friends and started staying home more often too. That probably helped them get back together after they broke up and Mom moved away, but that's a different story for another day...

No matter how many times we heard them all, we always loved hearing Grandma's stories about Japan. She'd tell us about how she grew up in a place called Hiroshima where there wasn't any snow or ice at all! She'd talk about how she was happy because it stayed warm year round (except for typhoons) and she could be outside playing until late at night because it never got dark! And then there was this big war that happened over in Europe between two countries no one had ever heard of before, and suddenly America started fighting with Japan as well! Of course that country across the ocean we've known as 'America' since forever really is actually called 'the United States' now; Grandma says that name sounds more important anyway...

Then things got bad for everyone in Japan except the soldiers who went off to fight in a place called Guadalcanal (Grandma says she doesn't know where that is either). Everyone else was forced to stay home and work in factories making bullets for guns and other weapons so the soldiers could keep fighting. Only people who did very important jobs like doctors or teachers could stop working in their normal jobs and do something else instead like fight in the war or help out with the weapons factories. They only had enough food for everyone to eat if everyone worked hard!

Grandma didn't get to go outside very much those days! Her school shut down while all the kids were still inside during recess, so they all ate lunch together sitting on the ground under trees behind their school building! Then, one day during lunch break, there was suddenly a big loud "BOOM!" followed by a bright flash of light all around them! The next thing Grandma remembers is waking up on top of her friends with her face covered in blood from cuts all over her head! She had no idea what happened or how she ended up there until an American soldier found her and took her away in a big truck where other survivors were waiting to get rescued!

That's when Grandma learned about something called an atomic bomb that someone dropped on Japan but wasn't supposed to be used yet until later against another country for some reason... The whole city of Hiroshima was completely destroyed by this one bomb though; whether you survived or not depended on how far away you were from it when it exploded! Many people died instantly from burns or getting crushed by debris falling from buildings or *other* people who fell down dead around them from injuries caused by burns or broken bones caused by being knocked over by shockwaves from the massive explosion!

Many others also died slowly over time from cancer caused by radiation leaking out into their bodies after the blast - which meant they got sicker every day until they died even though they were perfectly healthy at first like Grandpa was... They tried giving people medicine to take care of those kinds of sicknesses after the bombs fell - like Grandpa took - but sometimes it didn't work so well... Sometimes people got better after taking those medicines anyway; many died anyway regardless if they took any medicines or not...