Silent Witness: Small bowl with imbedded bone fragments
Dec. 25, 2023
Object reflects agony caused by high temperatures
by Kyoko Niiyama, Staff Writer
Imbedded in the broken brown bowl are bone fragments. What can be surmised from the bowl’s appearance is that the materials had melted and stuck together after being exposed to thermal rays from the atomic bombing. According to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, no records of how the museum came to possess the bowl are in existence, and details including where the bowl was found are unknown.
The atomic bombing by the U.S. military reduced Hiroshima to ashes, and many of its citizens were burned alive. In their written personal accounts, some survivors have described having brought home bones as keepsakes of family members killed in the bombing, despite not knowing to whom the bones ultimately belonged. The remains of around 70,000 victims are thought to be stored within the Peace Memorial Park’s Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound.
There are other A-bomb materials in the peace museum’s collections that include human bones. For example, a bottle containing bone fragments collected from the scorched earth, as well as a molten mass that includes the bones of countless people. Such materials communicate the agony of those whose entire bodies were exposed to the bombing’s intense heat, which managed to melt even metals.
(Originally published on December 25, 2023)
