The Night the Stars Went Silent

The Night the Stars Went Silent

— A Tale from Hiroshima

I was seven years old when the stars stopped singing.

They used to hum softly to me every night through the holes in our rice paper walls. Even when the war sirens wailed in the distance, even when Mama whispered worries to Papa after she thought I had fallen asleep, the stars still sang. Faint, high voices like lullabies in the dark.

But on August 6, 1945, the world changed in a second — and their voices disappeared forever.

That morning began like any other. I had just tied the red ribbon in my hair when Papa called from the doorway, “Aiko, come! Help me with the miso soup.” I ran barefoot across the tatami, ignoring Mama’s quiet scolding about slippers. Our home was small but warm. Papa was gentle. Mama worked hard. The war had taken much, but inside our wooden walls, we tried to keep peace alive.

Later, I walked with my older brother Kenji to the schoolyard. The sky was too blue — bright in a way that felt wrong. Kenji always said I had a strange sense about things. Maybe I did. Maybe all children do.

We were standing in line for roll call when the sky cracked open.

There was no warning — no siren, no planes, no shadows on the ground. Just a flash. Blinding. White. Endless.

Then silence.

Not quiet — silence. Even the cicadas stopped.

I don’t remember falling. Only that the sky seemed to vanish, replaced by a glowing dome of fire. I opened my mouth to scream, but sound no longer worked. Dust coated my tongue. My ears rang, and the ground beneath me twisted like it wanted to spit me out.

When I woke up, I was no longer in the schoolyard.

The world was gray. The air tasted like metal. My skin burned where the ribbon had once been. I touched my head — the ribbon was gone. So was Kenji.

I stumbled through the rubble, calling his name, each time my voice cracking more. My school had become a heap of broken beams and ash. Where our neighborhood once stood — with the kind old woman who sold me sweets, the lantern shop, the pond where Kenji fished — there was nothing but smoke and bones.

I walked for hours. I don’t know how. I was barefoot, bleeding, and burned, but I kept walking. I saw people with skin hanging like cloth. Mothers carrying children too quiet to be asleep. The river was full of floating bodies, drifting like dolls in the current.

That night, I found Papa.

He was crouched beside what used to be our home. The front beam had fallen on his legs, trapping him. He smiled when he saw me, though blood stained his teeth.

“Aiko,” he whispered. “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

I crawled beside him and clutched his hand. He told me to run, to find Mama, to keep going. But I couldn’t leave. I curled up beside him as the darkness fell.

And that was when I noticed — the stars were gone.

No hum. No glimmer. Just a black sky, thick with smoke and sorrow. The silence was louder than any bomb.

Papa passed before sunrise.

When soldiers finally found me, I couldn’t speak. My voice had disappeared with the stars.

Years have passed. I am old now. My hair is gray, and my burns have long scarred over. I live in Tokyo, in a quiet apartment filled with plants and the ticking of a small clock — a gift from my son.

But some nights, I still sit by the window and look up.

The stars have never sung again. They returned, yes — brilliant and scattered like broken glass in the sky — but they are silent.

I write this not for pity, but for remembrance.

For Kenji, who never got to grow up.

For Mama, who was never found.

For Papa, whose last words kept me alive.

And for every child who lived through the day the world ended.

The night the stars went silent was the night I grew up.

But it was also the night I vowed never to forget.