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Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Mid-October, wounded cared for in auditorium, with remnants of cremation site outside

by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer

In mid-October 1945, survivors of the atomic bombing could be seen laid up in beds in the auditorium of Kusatsu National School (Hiroshima’s present-day Kusatsu Elementary School, in the city’s Nishi Ward), which had been turned into one of the hospitals of Nihon Iryodan (Japanese Medical Corps) after a two-month relief period mandated by Japan’s wartime disaster protection law had ended on October 5. There, Nippon Eigasha (Japan Movie Co.) filmed a patient being fed rice gruel.

The school, located around 4.7 kilometers southwest of the hypocenter, had avoided collapse and the fires after the atomic bombing and admitted wounded who had fled for safety immediately after the bombing. The Kusatsu battalion of the Hiroshima City Citizens’ Volunteer Corps, made up of local residents, cared for the wounded. Their strenuous efforts to treat the patients and secure supplies are recorded in, among other sources, a battalion journal (entrusted to the Hiroshima Prefectural Archives), which was left behind by the late Sanae Ogawa, leader of the battalion.

In the journal entry dated August 6, Ms. Ogawa wrote, “Evacuees are coming in droves. Most have burns ... We care for them in the auditorium and seven classrooms, separating those in critical condition from those in fair condition.” With no way to contact the prefectural government offices and the city hall, both located in Hiroshima’s devastated city center, around 50 residents took it upon themselves to begin conducting relief activities, and by 4 p.m. on August 6, 545 people had been admitted to the school, including 21 lost and orphaned children under the age of around 10 who were taken care of by a group of young girls.

On August 6, 650 roughly 180-milliliter bottles of milk were brought to the school from a Chichiyasu Co. dairy farm in the village of Ono (in present-day Hatsukaichi City), located relatively close to the school, and distributed to the evacuees. A kamaboko (steamed fish paste) industry association supplied 2,250 alternative food dumplings on the same day. In addition, area residents joined forces to operate the relief station at the school, bringing with them eggs as well as cooking oil to apply to the victims’ burns.

Meanwhile, by August 14, 136 of those admitted to the school had died. Day after day, dead bodies were cremated on the school’s grounds using gathered wood. The relief activities were transferred to the Hiroshima Prefectural government on August 16, but residents continued to handle kitchen work for a time. In September, a physician from the Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital, which had been located in Kako-machi (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward) but was completely destroyed and burned to the ground in the atomic bombing, started work on treating the patients, continuing even after the relief station was turned into a Nihon Iryodan hospital.

A photograph taken by Shunkichi Kikuchi, who accompanied the Nippon Eigasha film crew, shows the remnants of the cremation site on the school’s grounds.

(Originally published on October 18, 2024)

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