Silent Witness

by Kana Kobayashi, Staff Writer

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, located in the city’s Naka Ward, also has in its archives a collection of A-bombed cosmetics, including a charred compact and cosmetic bottles melted by heat from the bombing. The items would have added a bit of color to the daily lives of their owners until the day of the atomic bombing. They represent physical objects that reveal the inner lives of women during wartime.

The compact’s edge is marked white, which might have resulted from the white makeup powder contained within. The compact was a personal possession of Sayoko Uchida, who was 14 at the time of the bombing.

Ms. Uchida experienced the atomic bombing as she was walking to her workplace in the area of Otemachi (now part of Hiroshima’s Naka Ward) from her aunt’s home in Showa-machi (also in Naka Ward), where she had been boarding at the time. She suffered burns over her entire body. After she was taken to her parents’ home on Nomi Island (now part of Etajima City in Hiroshima Prefecture), she pleaded with her mother for a mirror. The mother refused, not wanting her daughter to get a glimpse of her changed appearance. Sayoko died on August 19, 1945.

Her compact was found among the ruins of her aunt’s home, located about 1.5 kilometers from the hypocenter, and was kept by her family in the family’s Buddhist altar at home for many years. In 2017, Sayoko’s older sister, Mihoka Ishii, 95, who is a resident of Akitakata City, donated the compact to the museum.

A bottle of cosmetic cream with the words “RA-STER CREAM” on its lid was completely flattened by heat from the bombing. Toshiyo Nakamura donated the bottle to the museum in 1979. Ms. Nakamura carefully kept the item after she had found it among the ruins of her former home in the area of Koi-cho (now part of Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward), from which she and her older sister had barely escaped after the bombing, and brought it back home with her.

A different flattened white bottle once contained cosmetic lotion. The bottle is one of around 230 A-bombed items collected by Gakuro Takeda, who spent several years starting in 1946 walking around the city upon his post-war return from mainland China to gather items he thought would be useful for conveying the tragic situation of the atomic bombing. What kind of person was the original owner of the lotion bottle? Was she able to survive and escape the powerful flames?

The cosmetics give insight into the women of that time, who apparently never forgot the joys of daily life even amid a war that deprived them of freedom.

(Originally published on July 1, 2024)