Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Late September, A-bomb survivor returns home with glass shards still in body
Sep. 26, 2024
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
In late September 1945, Kenichi Endo, 26 at the time, was released from the Hiroshima Second Army Hospital’s Tojo Branch, located in the area of Tojo-cho (in present-day Shobara City) in northern Hiroshima Prefecture, and boarded a train that would take him back to his home of Niigata. Mr. Endo had been hospitalized for more than one month due to severe injuries he suffered from glass shards hitting him at the time of the atomic bombing combined with acute effects of radiation.
In his personal account titled “Fire of Life,” Mr. Endo recalled his memories from that time. “I was able to walk again slowly using my crutches. I was saved,” he wrote. There was a time during the hospitalization when he could not even get out of bed.
His family was a sword dealer in Niigata City. He had been drafted into military service while employed at the Niigata Railway Bureau. Because he had come down with the infectious disease paratyphoid after being assigned to an Army unit in Hiroshima City in April 1945, he was hospitalized at the Hiroshima Second Army Hospital in the area of Motomachi (in the city’s present-day Naka Ward) on August 6.
“After a powerful flash of light, I felt a scorching heat that instinctively made me cover my face with both hands,” wrote Mr. Endo in his personal account. The hospital was located around one kilometer north of the hypocenter. Shards of window glass shattered by the A-bomb’s blast were impaled all over his body. He was treated to staunch the bleeding at a relief station (described in this series last month, on August 9) in a tent that had been set up next to the destroyed hospital.
Around August 11, he was taken to the hospital’s Tojo Branch by truck and train. While he watched as other patients at the hospital developed symptoms such as subcutaneous hemorrhagic spotting and loss of hair, passing away one after the other, he experienced a dramatic decrease in white blood cell count, making him “feel like a death row inmate on the brink of execution.” According to the Record of the Hiroshima A-bomb War Disaster, published in 1971, more than 90 percent of around 300 patients who had been admitted to the branch hospital died by the end of September.
Mr. Endo’s white blood cell count finally recovered to a certain extent around December of that year after he managed to return home. Later, as chair of the Niigata Atomic Bomb Survivors Association, he worked on the collection of A-bomb survivors’ accounts describing their experiences in the bombings. His personal account “Fire of Life” is included in a 1991 collection of association members’ writings titled “Doves.”
Shards of glass remained in his legs and buttocks even more than a half-century after the bombing. The painful glass shards were removed from his body in a surgical procedure that took place in 1998. After he died in 2006 at the age of 86, his surviving family donated one of the glass shards to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
(Originally published on September 26, 2024)
In late September 1945, Kenichi Endo, 26 at the time, was released from the Hiroshima Second Army Hospital’s Tojo Branch, located in the area of Tojo-cho (in present-day Shobara City) in northern Hiroshima Prefecture, and boarded a train that would take him back to his home of Niigata. Mr. Endo had been hospitalized for more than one month due to severe injuries he suffered from glass shards hitting him at the time of the atomic bombing combined with acute effects of radiation.
In his personal account titled “Fire of Life,” Mr. Endo recalled his memories from that time. “I was able to walk again slowly using my crutches. I was saved,” he wrote. There was a time during the hospitalization when he could not even get out of bed.
His family was a sword dealer in Niigata City. He had been drafted into military service while employed at the Niigata Railway Bureau. Because he had come down with the infectious disease paratyphoid after being assigned to an Army unit in Hiroshima City in April 1945, he was hospitalized at the Hiroshima Second Army Hospital in the area of Motomachi (in the city’s present-day Naka Ward) on August 6.
“After a powerful flash of light, I felt a scorching heat that instinctively made me cover my face with both hands,” wrote Mr. Endo in his personal account. The hospital was located around one kilometer north of the hypocenter. Shards of window glass shattered by the A-bomb’s blast were impaled all over his body. He was treated to staunch the bleeding at a relief station (described in this series last month, on August 9) in a tent that had been set up next to the destroyed hospital.
Around August 11, he was taken to the hospital’s Tojo Branch by truck and train. While he watched as other patients at the hospital developed symptoms such as subcutaneous hemorrhagic spotting and loss of hair, passing away one after the other, he experienced a dramatic decrease in white blood cell count, making him “feel like a death row inmate on the brink of execution.” According to the Record of the Hiroshima A-bomb War Disaster, published in 1971, more than 90 percent of around 300 patients who had been admitted to the branch hospital died by the end of September.
Mr. Endo’s white blood cell count finally recovered to a certain extent around December of that year after he managed to return home. Later, as chair of the Niigata Atomic Bomb Survivors Association, he worked on the collection of A-bomb survivors’ accounts describing their experiences in the bombings. His personal account “Fire of Life” is included in a 1991 collection of association members’ writings titled “Doves.”
Shards of glass remained in his legs and buttocks even more than a half-century after the bombing. The painful glass shards were removed from his body in a surgical procedure that took place in 1998. After he died in 2006 at the age of 86, his surviving family donated one of the glass shards to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
(Originally published on September 26, 2024)
