Forgotten Horrors: Ant-Walking Alligators of Hiroshima

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After the bomb went off, Hiroshima was transformed from a dull backwater city into a momentary vision of Hell. Among the horrors witnessed by survivors were the ‘ant-walking alligators’—creatures of the blast that seemed neither human nor animal, neither living nor dead.

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In his book, Last Train to Hiroshima, Charles Pellegrino combed through thousands of eyewitness statements. Among the horrors of radiation poisoning and the initial firestorm, he uncovered one ‘creature’ unique to the atomic wasteland: the ‘ant-walking alligators’.

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They had once been human. When the sky exploded, they’d had the misfortune to survive. Faces turned to the blast, the skin had been seared from their skulls; leaving only a black, leathery substance without eyes or features. All that remained was a red hole where their mouths had once been. They staggered about the outskirts of Hiroshima, avoided by other survivors – but the real horror was the sound they made

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The alligator people did not scream. Their mouths could not form the sounds. The noise they made was worse than screaming. They uttered a continuous murmur — like locusts on a midsummer night. One man, staggering on charred stumps of legs, was carrying a dead baby upside down.”

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