Silent Witness

by Kana Kobayashi, Staff Writer

The student seems to have been wearing his cap while working for the war effort as a mobilized student on August 6, the day of the bombing. Partially torn and frayed, the cap belonged to Tetsuro Manabe, a second-year student at the former Sotoku Junior High School who suffered burns all over his head and back.

Tetsuro witnessed the flash from the atomic bombing in the area of Kusunoki-cho (now part of Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward), about two kilometers from the hypocenter. He managed to make it back to his home in the area, but the house’s roof had been blown off and its walls were collapsed. At a relief station set up in Oshiba National School (in the city’s present-day Nishi Ward) to which he and his sister, Mitsuko Yoshioka, had gone for help, the limited treatment he received included the application of Mercurochrome for his burns. Each time his bandaging was removed and replaced, blood and pus would run down his back.

To help endure the intense pain, Tetsuro was described as humming his school song and other music in a trembling voice and nodding in response when Mitsuko would say, “Let’s just get better.” Without that hope becoming a reality, he died about 40 days later.

After the war, Mitsuko communicated her experiences in the atomic bombing to students on school trips and put together a collection of A-bomb poems. She wrote poetry to provide proof of her brother’s existence and to describe the pain she felt from having her brother snatched away by the bombing. She donated her brother’s cap to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in 1962. After the donation, she is said to have frequently visited the museum to see the keepsake cap in an effort to stay connected with her brother.

(Originally published on February 5, 2024)