Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: October 19, Hiroshima’s Koi area holds “festival” with commitment to recovery
Oct. 19, 2024
Without surrendering to A-bombing, tradition maintained
by Maho Yamamoto
On October 19, 1945, in conjunction with the holding of an autumn festival at the local Asahiyama Shrine in the area of Koi-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Nishi Ward), located in the western part of Hiroshima, a “recovery festival” took place ahead of other areas’ events in different parts of the city. The festival venue, with its provisional stage, was full of spectators enjoying dance and guitar performances and a giveaway event called kakimaki (involving the tossing of persimmons to the crowd), in place of the more typical mochimaki (involving rice cakes) event. Lines formed in front of a makeshift restaurant serving dango dumpling soup as a substitute for rice and a stand-up bar for patrons to drink beer.
The festival was organized by the Chugoku Recovery Foundation, a body affiliated with the Hiroshima Prefectural Association of Commerce and Industry (present-day Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry). The foundation was established after the atomic bombing with the aim of promoting the recovery of culture as well as of small and mid-sized businesses.
Parishioners of Asahiyama Shrine also engaged in the traditional shrine event tawaramomi while carrying portable mikoshi shrines made of straw bales, marching around the neighborhood in appreciation of a good harvest. Harumasa Saeki, 81, a resident of Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward, recently looked at a photograph of parishioners carrying the portable shrines as well as spectators along the road and recalled that time. “The festival was the most important annual event for the community. People must have received encouragement from it,” said Mr. Saeki, a researcher of local history who experienced the atomic bombing in the Koi area when he was two years of age.
The Koi area is located more than two kilometers from the hypocenter and, with that, it was able to avoid complete destruction from the atomic bombing. However, about a dozen houses had collapsed and around 80 houses were burned down. On the mikoshi parade route, houses that had undergone emergency repairs with corrugated metal sheeting and other materials stood out. According to Mr. Saeki, despite there not being enough festival costumes for all the participants and the difficulty in obtaining straw bales for the mikoshi, the festival tradition was successfully maintained.
At the recovery festival’s exhibit site for the local specialty of bonsai, there was a notice reading, “Flowers to be placed at Buddhist altars for the deceased are free of charge only in the case of the war dead.” Shunkichi Kikuchi, a photographer who visited the festival together with the film crew of Nippon Eigasha (Japan Movie Co.), took a photo of the notice.
Koi National School (present-day Koi Elementary School), which was turned into a relief station after the bombing and where around 1,000 of those admitted died, still held on to the remains of unclaimed victims. On October 20, Masao Yamanaka, a staff member of Nippon Eigasha, listened to the school’s principal telling of the story and witnessed the remains firsthand. Mr. Yamanaka wrote in his film log for that day, “The scene made me imagine vividly how so many people passed away while cursing the war.”
(Originally published on October 19, 2024)