It would be some time before I came to appreciate The Girl’s worth and to realise that there was considerably more to her than this yakking, chattering seven-year-old waif. So The Girl does have a name – and now I give it to you. Her name is Katsuko.
For other, quite different reasons, you do not know my name either. Apart from my injured arm, you know next to nothing about my looks. But that is because I am a nobody. It is my story, but I am a mere cipher, just another of the selfish dogs that was allowed to prosper during Japan’s years at war. And that is the way that I would like to keep it.
At the start of this book, I wrote about the dilemma that I am always asked when people learn that I am Mr Two-Bomb, the man who survived both Little Boy and Fat Man. Am I lucky? Have I been blessed – or cursed?
I can unequivocally state that I am the luckiest man alive. Through the bombs, I have learned how to care; and I have learned how to love. But perhaps the greatest gift to be bestowed on me by the bombs was that they brought The Girl into my life.
And she has never left it.
She is standing over my shoulder now, watching me as I scratch away at these last few paragraphs, still correcting me on the composition of my sentences. She is even more nagging, more talkative and more bossy than she was 60 years ago – and I would not have it any other way. Every day, I give thanks for this woman, this wonderful woman.
Now in this story, I have called her everything from ‘That chit of a girl’ all the way through to her given name, Katsuko.
But it would be several years before we hit upon a name with which we both felt comfortable.
It was a name that I felt I had earned – and I can only hope that she is as proud of her name as I am to use it. For the name that suits her best, and the name which reflects how much she means to me is this: I call her my daughter.
My thanks to the foreign correspondents who used to inhabit News Corp's New York bureau in 1998. They included Geoff Stead, Cameron Stewart, Tunku Varadarajan and Oliver August – and not forgetting my stalwart photographer, Shannon Sweeney.
Also in this diverse cluster of reporters was Andrew Butcher – and it was Andrew who first told me of an extraordinary interview that he'd once had with the original Mr Two-Bomb. I thank you!