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Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Early October, debris near entrance of Shima Hospital ruins

by Maho Yamamoto, Staff Writer

In early October 1945, at the site of Shima Hospital (present-day Shima Internist Hospital, in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward), located directly beneath the detonation of the atomic bomb, there was debris near the entrance of the two-story brick building. Before the dropping of the atomic bomb, that spot was a corner in the area known as Saiku-machi, where the Hiroshima Post Office and other businesses had been located. Kaoru Shima, director and a surgeon at the hospital who died in 1977 at the age of 79, opened the hospital in 1933. The hospital’s rooms were said to have always been full.

According to Mr. Shima’s 1983 memoirs, on August 6, 1945, he had traveled to the area of Kozan-cho (present-day town of Sera) in Hiroshima Prefecture to perform surgery. Widespread fires had broken out in Hiroshima City, so he was only able to return to the hospital, which was in ruins, on the afternoon of August 7. In his memoirs he wrote that, “All that remained was the residual heat of collapsed bricks and the stench of dead bodies. There was nothing else.”

He worked to treat the wounded at a temporary relief station that had been set up in Fukuromachi National School (present-day Fukuromachi Elementary School), whose reinforced concrete school building had survived the fires. A message was posted on a board near the remains of the hospital. “Inpatients and outpatients, attending nurses and their family members, as well as hospital staff of Shima Hospital, please write names and addresses, and write down information about whether alive or deceased, addressed to Kaoru Shima, at Nishi Police Station (Misasa Credit Union),” read the message.

Kaoru’s oldest son, Kazuhide, 90, was 10 years old at the time and managed to survive the atomic bombing because he had been evacuated. “I think my father continued to feel bad about the fact that only he had survived,” said Kazuhide. “He must have desperately wanted to find out about what had happened to people.”

His efforts were in vain, however, as all of the roughly 80 people who were in the hospital at the time died. Among the hospital’s ruins were scattered white bones, making identification of the remains impossible, except for the head nurse, who was identified by her gold tooth. Kazuhide’s wife, Naoko, 81, later heard her father-in-law say with tears in his eyes, “Our housekeeper had asked for some time off at the beginning of August, but I asked her to wait until the Bon holidays, as we would also be busy. Because I said that to her, she died.”

Shigeo Hayashi, who died in 2002 at the age of 84, photographed Shima Hospital’s ruins and the message board between October 1 and 10. He was in charge of taking still photographs in the physics team for a film produced by Nippon Eigasha that was designed to document the activities of a special task force formed to investigate the damages caused by the atomic bombing.

(Originally published on October 1, 2024)

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