Atomic bombing of Nagasaki

The atomic bombing of Nagasaki is recalled through the survival of Lizard Brancussi, an Australian prisoner of war held as forced labour at the Mitsubishi shipworks. The works were destroyed in the bombing, but Lizard survived. The account makes the event more than the destruction of a workplace: it marks a rupture in his captivity and leaves him moving through a devastated landscape while holding fast to a small image of his wife.

Lizard Brancussi and the Sketch

Before the bombing, Lizard had carried a pencil sketch of Maisie through the camps and on the hellship to Japan. Rabbit Hendricks had drawn it in a Syrian village, linking the image to a life and a place far removed from the shipworks. Lizard kept the sketch through the bombing and its aftermath. As he made his way into the hills, he continued trying to see Maisie as Rabbit had drawn her that morning. The repeated effort to call up the same image gives the sketch a precise role: it is a surviving connection to his wife, not a record of the destruction surrounding him.

Survival and Aftermath

Lizard reached safety in the hills after the shipworks vanished in the bombing. His route took him through scenes of mass death and widespread suffering among Japanese civilians. The account places these losses beside the deaths of prisoners of war Lizard had known: in both groups, the dying called for their mothers. That parallel does not erase the differences between captors and captives; it shows how the bombing brings human vulnerability into view across those divisions.

A Story Difficult to Repeat

Sheephead Morton introduces Lizard’s experience as a story too sad for anyone to repeat. The frame emphasizes the difficulty of conveying what Lizard witnessed without turning it into spectacle. Instead, the narrative returns to the sketch and to Lizard’s effort to hold Maisie’s likeness in mind. The bombing is thus remembered through both catastrophic loss and the fragile persistence of a personal image.