Hiroshima : 70 Years After the A-bombing

Mother continued to blame herself

The charred lunchbox contains a small amount of rice mixed with chopped white radish and some boiled beans. Twelve-year-old Reiko Watanabe set off to work on the government-ordered demolition of buildings, carrying this lunch that her mother had made for her.

Reiko was a first-year student at Hiroshima First Municipal Girls’ School (now Funairi High School). “That morning Reiko tried to get out of going to work,” said her younger sister, Hiroshima resident Naoko Masuda, 74. “But Mom scolded her and sent her on her way.”

On August 6 the school’s first- and second-year students were mobilized to demolish buildings to create firebreaks in case of air raids, a job they had begun the day before. Zoroku Miyagawa, then principal of the school, described the scene just before the students went to work in the book Floating Lanterns, compiled by the parents of the deceased students to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the atomic bombing. He wrote:

“The students gathered along the south side of the earthen wall of Saifukuin Temple for their morning assembly. They were told to leave their belongings – water bottles, lunch boxes and the like – by the wall [omission] and they started to work.”

Mr. Miyagawa was called away by the prefectural government, thus escaping death. All 541 students were killed.

Reiko’s lunchbox was found the following day by her elder sister, Keiko Nagai, 83, a resident of Sakai in Osaka Prefecture. Keiko was then a fourth-year student at First Hiroshima Prefectural Girls’ High School (now Minami High School). “I had etched her name into the bottom of the aluminum lunchbox with a needle, so I knew it was hers,” she said. Their father Shigeru, who was working at the post office in Okayama, returned to Hiroshima to look for Reiko, but her remains were never found.

At the time, the family was living in Itsukaichi-cho (now part of Saeki Ward). A classmate of Reiko’s who lived next door took the day off and was spared. “My mother blamed herself terribly. After I had children I understood how she felt,” Naoko said.

Reiko’s grave is at a temple near the monument to her school, which faces the Motoyasu River. Her parents donated her lunchbox to the Peace Memorial Museum in 1970. Until her death in 1988 at the age of 83, Reiko’s mother visited Reiko’s grave on the 6th of every month. Naoko has carried on the practice.

“Even after good food was no longer scarce, my mother seemed to feel guilty about eating it. I don’t think she ever forgave herself.”

A replica of Reiko’s lunchbox was made and put on display in Croatia last year as part of an exhibition on the atomic bombing.

(Originally published on February 3, 2014)