Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: September 19, describing cruelty of A-bombing in tanka poems
Sep. 19, 2024
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
On September 19, 1945, Iso Kawamura, 56 at the time, died at the home of relatives in the village of Kameyama (in Hiroshima City’s present-day Asakita Ward), Hiroshima Prefecture. On August 6, she had suffered burns to her back after experiencing the atomic bombing while she was outside of her home, which was located in the area of Hakushimakuken-cho (in the city’s present-day Naka Ward) and destroyed in the bombing. She was staying at the relatives’ home with her oldest son, 37-year-old Choichi, who died in 1977 at the age of 68.
Laid down on tatami mats on the dirt floor of a shed, Iso was taken care of by Choichi, who wrote tanka poems to describe his mother’s suffering in a notebook he titled “Bitter experience.”
“Despite treatment
My mother’s condition grew worse by the day
Pus formed in her burns
Emitting a bad smell”
“In so much pain
Mother says ‘End my life’
Almost reflexively”
He also wrote a tanka describing his feelings about the atomic bombing that took his mother’s life.
“What we should resent are
The people who developed the extremely cruel atomic bombs
How frightening is human knowledge”
Around the same time, Japanese newspapers were reporting on the devastation caused by the atomic bombs. The Osaka edition of the Asahi Shimbun published on September 4 carried photographs of Hiroshima in ruins, including one of a boy with burns to his face (introduced in this series last month, on August 10), under the headline “Cruelty unbearable to look at directly.”
Meanwhile, on September 10, the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ), led by the U.S. military, issued a memorandum on censorship guidelines for freedom of speech and the press, announcing it would crack down on those who engaged in “false or destructive criticism of the Allied Powers.”
On September 15, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper published comments by Ichiro Hatoyama, who would later become Japan’s prime minister, in which he stated that the use of the atomic bombs represented “violations of international law and war crimes, worse even than the use of poison gas.” Three days later, the headquarters of the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo was ordered by the GHQ to suspend publication of its newspapers for 48 hours on the grounds that the article involved, among other issues, “destructive criticism.”
On September 19, the GHQ issued the press code that outlined its censorship guidelines for restricting the media, including that “there shall be nothing which might invite mistrust or resentment” of the occupying forces. After that, the number of articles involving the atomic bombings dropped dramatically.
(Originally published on September 19, 2024)
On September 19, 1945, Iso Kawamura, 56 at the time, died at the home of relatives in the village of Kameyama (in Hiroshima City’s present-day Asakita Ward), Hiroshima Prefecture. On August 6, she had suffered burns to her back after experiencing the atomic bombing while she was outside of her home, which was located in the area of Hakushimakuken-cho (in the city’s present-day Naka Ward) and destroyed in the bombing. She was staying at the relatives’ home with her oldest son, 37-year-old Choichi, who died in 1977 at the age of 68.
Laid down on tatami mats on the dirt floor of a shed, Iso was taken care of by Choichi, who wrote tanka poems to describe his mother’s suffering in a notebook he titled “Bitter experience.”
“Despite treatment
My mother’s condition grew worse by the day
Pus formed in her burns
Emitting a bad smell”
“In so much pain
Mother says ‘End my life’
Almost reflexively”
He also wrote a tanka describing his feelings about the atomic bombing that took his mother’s life.
“What we should resent are
The people who developed the extremely cruel atomic bombs
How frightening is human knowledge”
Around the same time, Japanese newspapers were reporting on the devastation caused by the atomic bombs. The Osaka edition of the Asahi Shimbun published on September 4 carried photographs of Hiroshima in ruins, including one of a boy with burns to his face (introduced in this series last month, on August 10), under the headline “Cruelty unbearable to look at directly.”
Meanwhile, on September 10, the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ), led by the U.S. military, issued a memorandum on censorship guidelines for freedom of speech and the press, announcing it would crack down on those who engaged in “false or destructive criticism of the Allied Powers.”
On September 15, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper published comments by Ichiro Hatoyama, who would later become Japan’s prime minister, in which he stated that the use of the atomic bombs represented “violations of international law and war crimes, worse even than the use of poison gas.” Three days later, the headquarters of the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo was ordered by the GHQ to suspend publication of its newspapers for 48 hours on the grounds that the article involved, among other issues, “destructive criticism.”
On September 19, the GHQ issued the press code that outlined its censorship guidelines for restricting the media, including that “there shall be nothing which might invite mistrust or resentment” of the occupying forces. After that, the number of articles involving the atomic bombings dropped dramatically.
(Originally published on September 19, 2024)
