| ++Materials Exposed to the A-bomb++ |
| ++Pictures Taken Shortly After the Explosion, by Yoshito Matsushige Courtesy of Chugoku Shimbun++ |
++Survivors in agony from burns and wounds(western foot of Miyuki Bridge about
11:00 a.m., 2.27 km from hypocenter)++
|
| In this picture you can see the pathetic figures
of sufferers in agony from burns and injuries. Black smoke and raging flames
shoot up from the heart of the city. Escaping the raging flames, the people
crowded about, their seared skin hanging in strips. Yoshito Matsushige
who took the picture said that he could scarcely focus his camera, as his
tears kept getting on the finger. |
++A wounded policeman(Minami-machi, about 5p.m., 2.5km from hypocenter)++
|
| You can find the figure of a policeman who, in
spite of his own injuries, was writing air-raid victim certificates for
the injured. |
| ++Shigeru's Lunch Box++ |
Shigeru was a first year student at Second Hiroshima Prefectural
Junior High School. Every day with his classmates he was mobilized to help
with the demolition of buildings for fire lanes.
On August 6, as usual, taking the lunch his mother had prepared,
he left home early in the morning. Because of the general shortages during
wartime, that lunch contained only a mix of rice, barley, and soybeans
and some sauteed potatoes and daikon. The contents were simple, but it
was a lunch his mother had made with love. That morning, he is said to
have taken it very happily.
The place where he and his classmates were supposed to work was only
about 600 meters from the hypocenter in Nakajima Shinmachi (near what is
now Peace Memorial Park).
After the A-bomb fell, his mother wandered through the ruins of Hiroshima
looking for him, and early in the morning on August 9, on the bank of the
Honkawa River, she found Shigeru's body with this lunch box held tight
under his stomach. The lunch Shigeru never ate was charred black. Lunch
Box
|
| ++Shinichi's Tricycle++ |
On that fateful summer morning, he was riding his tricycle in
front of his house. Suddenly, a bright light flashed in the sky and Shinichi,
badly burned by the blast, died that evening. Shinichi's father did not
want to put the body of his three-year old son alone in a cemetery. So
the father buried Shinichi and his tricycle ---to continue to be his playmate
---in the backyard of their home.
Forty years later in the summer of 1985, Shinichi's father removed
his son's remains from their yard for proper burial in a cemetery. The
father donated this tricycle to the Peace Memorial Museum. |
| ++Uniform of the Middle School Boys |
Middle school boys were mobilized to demolish buildings
in Koami-cho. They were exposed 800 meters from the hypocenter. The uniform
displayed here is composed of articles from three different boys. Three
mothers lost their only sons. Just a few pieces of the boys' clothes were
found --- Hajime's bloodied shirt and jacket, Eiichi's charred cap and
belt, and Masayuki's tattered leggings. The mothers donated these precious
clothes to express their endless grief and anger.
It speaks no words; its feet take no steps. It is a "speechless witness"
to the tragedy of August 6, 1945.
++Demolishing work
In the final days of World War II, a great number of students had
been mobilized to demolish buildings and make firebreaks. On the day of
the atomic bombing, about 6300 boys and girls who had been mobilized to
be engaged in this work died due to the atomic bombing.
At the time of bombing, 8387 students were in the city dismantling
buildings to make firebreaks. Many others, who were at work in various
industries in the city, also perished.
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