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Hiroshima : 70 Years After the A-bombing

Hiroshima: 70 Years After the A-bombing: Close-range Survivors 7

Hiroko Tokukiyo, 84: Poem written at age 80

At Hiroshima Fukokukan at time of A-bombing

Through joys and sorrows: Gratitude to mother

Hiroko Tokukiyo, 84, began using a wheelchair in her everyday life this spring. She lives alone at her home in Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward. “Ever since I was young I’ve been told I don’t look like I’m having a hard time.” With a mischievous smile she said more than once, “I’m able to live peacefully like this thanks to my mother.”

Ms. Tokukiyo is one of four living survivors who were in the Hiroshima Fukokukan in Fukuro-machi (now part of Naka Ward) about 330 meters southeast of the hypocenter at the time of the atomic bombing. She was employed at the Hiroshima Telegraph Office, which was housed in the seven-story ferroconcrete building. After graduating from a training school run by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, Ms. Tokukiyo (nee Nakaya) went to work in the Communications Section of the telegraph office when she was 15.

Diagnosis by Ph.D. from Tokyo

On August 6, 1945, she was on the fourth floor chatting with a woman who worked in the General Affairs Section. At the moment the bomb exploded she said she “felt it reverberate in my ears.” The next thing she knew, she was shrouded in darkness so black she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. Her face was covered in blood, and a piece of concrete had pierced her right ankle.

She went down the stairway, which was on the verge of collapsing, and went outside. Inside a streetcar were the bodies of passengers who had been killed instantly. They were still hanging onto the straps, their flesh burned a reddish black. Ms. Tokukiyo crept about 200 meters through the flames. When she got to Shirakami Shrine, which still stands on Peace Boulevard, it began to rain. She caught the “black rain” in her hands and passed out while drinking it.

It was evening when Ms. Tokukiyo awoke, and she began to cry. An acquaintance came by on his bicycle and said he had come in search of his daughter, who worked at the Hiroshima Central Telephone Office, east of the Fukokukan. “If I save you, I suppose someone else will save my daughter,” he said and put her on the rack on the back of his bike. Near the head office of the Hiroshima Electric Railway Company (now Higashi Senda-machi, Naka ward), they came across her mother Ishino, 43, and her brother Teruzo, three years older, who were looking for her. She returned home to Ujina-cho (now part of Minami Ward) with them.

She suffered from a high fever, bleeding gums and other symptoms. Her mother took her to the army hospital in Ujina, where she was seen by a “Ph.D. from Tokyo,” she said.

The doctor is believed to have been Prof. Masao Tsuzuki, who led a survey team from Tokyo Imperial University. Midori Naka, an actress who was in Hiroshima at the time of the A-bombing, returned to Tokyo where she died on August 24. She was the first person to be certified as suffering from “A-bomb diseases” after being examined by Prof. Tsuzuki. The survey team arrived in Hiroshima on August 30 and conducted examinations and surveys based out of the army hospital.

The doctor said Ms. Tokukiyo had less than two months to live. When she combed her hair, all the hair on the left side of her head completely fell out. Her mother fed her rice gruel, passing it from her own mouth to her daughter’s, and sold off family possessions and kimonos at the black market to get the money to buy medicine. Perhaps as a result of her mother’s devotion and prayers, Ms. Tokukiyo recovered after a few years.

“Don’t let poverty dull your wits”

“Poverty dulls the wits” the saying goes, but Ms. Tokukiyo’s mother insisted she must not allow that happen. Ms. Tokukiyo is proud that she etched this precept of her mother’s in her mind and carried on living after the A-bombing. Ishino died of lung cancer in 1958 at the age of 55.

Hiroko married Haruyoshi Tokukiyo, a carpenter, and they raised two daughters. She briefly referred to the time that they ran their own business but then dropped the subject saying, “There’s no need to write about the hard times.”

But then she took a black-and-white photo out of her wallet and said, “This was the most difficult time.” Taken when she was about 30, the photo shows Ms. Tokukiyo wearing a coat with a round collar that she had borrowed from a friend. Her hair is pulled back and her neat eyebrows and gaze suggest the innate strength of mind that allowed her to overcome the horrors of the A-bombing.

In 2001 she had surgery for both breast cancer and lung cancer. Her husband died in 2009 at the age of 79. Her daughter who lives in Hiroshima visits her nearly every day. Her four grandchildren have grown up healthy. A helper who cooks and does laundry for her is like a member of her family, she said.

After several requests, she opened a photo album and showed me a poem.

Crawling, walking
Through the quagmire
80 years old


“There have been good things and bad things,” Ms. Tokukiyo said. “But even now I would like to say to my mother, ‘Thank you for giving birth to me.’” The album was filled with photos of Ms. Tokukiyo with her daughter’s family and her helper as well as greeting cards.

(Originally published on July 14, 2014)