Hayashi was born in
Nagasaki and spent the years from 1931 to 1945 with her family in
Shanghai. She returned to Nagasaki in 1945 and enrolled in Nagasaki Girls' High School, where she was mobilized in the
Mitsubishi Munitions Factory. She was working at the factory when the
atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Hayashi was seriously ill for two months, and suffered afterwards from fragile health. She later studied nursing in a special course the Welfare Faculty for Women attached to the
Nagasaki Medical School, She first drew wide attention in 1975 with an autobiographical story about the bombing,
Ritual of Death (
Matsuri no ba), which received that year's
Akutagawa Prize. Hayashi lived near
Washington, D.C. from 1985 to 1988. ==Selected works==