Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: October 5–7, treatment continues for wounded survivors at ferroconcrete school building
Oct. 7, 2024
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
Around the time of October 5–7, 1945, wounded A-bomb survivors continued to receive treatment at the steel-reinforced west building of Fukuromachi National School (present-day Fukuromachi Elementary School, in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward). Severely wounded patients were gathered in a classroom where mosquito nets had been hung from the ceiling as protection against flies. Hagie Ota, a woman physician who died in 2018 at the age of 96, engaged in the treatment of outpatients.
The school’s west building, located in the central area of the city, had avoided collapse after the atomic bombing and was being used as a temporary relief station in the bombing’s immediate aftermath. Masayuki Okita, a physician and chief of the Mihara public health office who died in 1984 at the age of 77, had started relief work at the school on August 17. In the personal account he wrote later, Mr. Okita revealed that around 350 patients were being treated at the temporary relief station in Fukuromachi National School on that day.
“The wounded patients, packed all together on the floor of the classroom, were difficult to look at, with burns over their entire body and other injuries.” The admitted patients, dying one after the other, were cremated on the school’s sports ground.
Previously working in the department of ophthalmology at the Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital, Ms. Ota was given the order to start providing treatment at Fukuromachi National School in September. Before that, she was situated at the Nihon Kangyo Bank’s Hiroshima Branch office, located in the city’s downtown, writing death certificates day after day for those who had died with no treatment available to them.
Ms. Ota later described in a roundtable session how, around October, “Some patients with ordinary injuries or had recovered to an extent began to return from the outskirts of the city.” She herself had experienced the atomic bombing at her home in Ushita-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Higashi Ward) before leaving for work. She was engaged in the work of treating patients despite her own ill health marked by a decreased number of white blood cells.
An emergency relief operations period during which intensive care was provided to victims of the atomic bombing ended on October 5. That period had been designated to last two months after the A-bomb disaster based on Japan’s wartime disaster protection law. According to Hiroshima Genbaku Iryoshi (in English, ‘History of Hiroshima atomic bomb medical treatment’), published in 1961, there were 11 relief stations in operation that day, as compared with 53 that had been put in place immediately after the bombing. In total, the relief stations still had 479 inpatients and 1,248 outpatients but, based on the law, free medical care for such patients ended that day.
The Hiroshima Prefectural government stepped in and reorganized the relief stations into what became known as the Nihon Iryodan (Japanese Medical Corps) Hospital under Japan’s National Medical Service Act. With that, patients were required to pay their own medical expenses out of pocket, with local municipal and town governments providing protection to patients suffering financial difficulties.
(Originally published on October 7, 2024)
Around the time of October 5–7, 1945, wounded A-bomb survivors continued to receive treatment at the steel-reinforced west building of Fukuromachi National School (present-day Fukuromachi Elementary School, in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward). Severely wounded patients were gathered in a classroom where mosquito nets had been hung from the ceiling as protection against flies. Hagie Ota, a woman physician who died in 2018 at the age of 96, engaged in the treatment of outpatients.
The school’s west building, located in the central area of the city, had avoided collapse after the atomic bombing and was being used as a temporary relief station in the bombing’s immediate aftermath. Masayuki Okita, a physician and chief of the Mihara public health office who died in 1984 at the age of 77, had started relief work at the school on August 17. In the personal account he wrote later, Mr. Okita revealed that around 350 patients were being treated at the temporary relief station in Fukuromachi National School on that day.
“The wounded patients, packed all together on the floor of the classroom, were difficult to look at, with burns over their entire body and other injuries.” The admitted patients, dying one after the other, were cremated on the school’s sports ground.
Previously working in the department of ophthalmology at the Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital, Ms. Ota was given the order to start providing treatment at Fukuromachi National School in September. Before that, she was situated at the Nihon Kangyo Bank’s Hiroshima Branch office, located in the city’s downtown, writing death certificates day after day for those who had died with no treatment available to them.
Ms. Ota later described in a roundtable session how, around October, “Some patients with ordinary injuries or had recovered to an extent began to return from the outskirts of the city.” She herself had experienced the atomic bombing at her home in Ushita-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Higashi Ward) before leaving for work. She was engaged in the work of treating patients despite her own ill health marked by a decreased number of white blood cells.
An emergency relief operations period during which intensive care was provided to victims of the atomic bombing ended on October 5. That period had been designated to last two months after the A-bomb disaster based on Japan’s wartime disaster protection law. According to Hiroshima Genbaku Iryoshi (in English, ‘History of Hiroshima atomic bomb medical treatment’), published in 1961, there were 11 relief stations in operation that day, as compared with 53 that had been put in place immediately after the bombing. In total, the relief stations still had 479 inpatients and 1,248 outpatients but, based on the law, free medical care for such patients ended that day.
The Hiroshima Prefectural government stepped in and reorganized the relief stations into what became known as the Nihon Iryodan (Japanese Medical Corps) Hospital under Japan’s National Medical Service Act. With that, patients were required to pay their own medical expenses out of pocket, with local municipal and town governments providing protection to patients suffering financial difficulties.
(Originally published on October 7, 2024)
