Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: October 30, “My heart is torn with anguish,” says principal at First Municipal Girls’ School memorial ceremony
Oct. 30, 2024
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
On October 30, 1945, Hiroshima First Municipal Girls’ School (First Girls’ School; present-day Funairi High School), located in the area of Funairikawaguchi-cho (in Hiroshima City’s present-day Naka Ward), held a memorial ceremony in the school’s auditorium. A total of 666 students and 10 teachers had died in the atomic bombing. Among the victims were 541 first- and second-year students who had been mobilized to help with the work of demolishing buildings to the south of what is now Peace Memorial Park, in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward.
“My heart is torn with anguish,” wrote school principal Zoroku Miyagawa, who died in 1975 at the age of 74, in a eulogy preserved by the Funairi High School and First Girls’ School Alumni Association. He mourned the students whose lives had been taken while being mobilized for the war effort. “With pure and selfless hearts, they devoted themselves to the building-demolition work to protect Hiroshima City from incendiary attacks.”
On the morning of August 6, Mr. Miyagawa visited the mobilization site, facing the west bank of Motoyasu River, for the first- and second-year students. After the morning assembly, he headed for other work and managed to escape with his life near Hiroshima Station. Meanwhile, at the work site around 500 meters from the hypocenter, the students, with no shielding to protect them, were burned by the intense thermal rays from the atomic bombing.
His eulogy read, “Corpses were lying in heaps at the site, a horrific scene that defied description. We searched for the bodies of the teachers and students but were unable to distinguish among them.” Besides a few students whose name tags on their clothes were unburned, there was no way to identify the individuals. The staff had no choice but to gather the bodies and ask the military to cremate them.
They took the cremated remains back to the school. The First Girls’ School’s daily progress log involving the disaster of August 6, 1945, records the situation in which a Buddhist monk chanted sutras and divided the remains of the deceased at the school, with around 100 bereaved family members in attendance, on August 14.
The surviving teachers, staff, and students set about repairing the damaged school building, located around 2.2 kilometers from the hypocenter. The late Kamota Furuta, a former staff member, wrote in his personal account about how classes fully resumed in late October. However, Mr. Miyagawa wrote in his eulogy, “Every night, whenever I awaken, the faces of my colleague teachers, with whom I worked harmoniously for so long, appear before my eyes. The faces of the students, standing proudly and gracefully in line, appear as visions.”
(Originally published on October 30, 2024)
On October 30, 1945, Hiroshima First Municipal Girls’ School (First Girls’ School; present-day Funairi High School), located in the area of Funairikawaguchi-cho (in Hiroshima City’s present-day Naka Ward), held a memorial ceremony in the school’s auditorium. A total of 666 students and 10 teachers had died in the atomic bombing. Among the victims were 541 first- and second-year students who had been mobilized to help with the work of demolishing buildings to the south of what is now Peace Memorial Park, in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward.
“My heart is torn with anguish,” wrote school principal Zoroku Miyagawa, who died in 1975 at the age of 74, in a eulogy preserved by the Funairi High School and First Girls’ School Alumni Association. He mourned the students whose lives had been taken while being mobilized for the war effort. “With pure and selfless hearts, they devoted themselves to the building-demolition work to protect Hiroshima City from incendiary attacks.”
On the morning of August 6, Mr. Miyagawa visited the mobilization site, facing the west bank of Motoyasu River, for the first- and second-year students. After the morning assembly, he headed for other work and managed to escape with his life near Hiroshima Station. Meanwhile, at the work site around 500 meters from the hypocenter, the students, with no shielding to protect them, were burned by the intense thermal rays from the atomic bombing.
His eulogy read, “Corpses were lying in heaps at the site, a horrific scene that defied description. We searched for the bodies of the teachers and students but were unable to distinguish among them.” Besides a few students whose name tags on their clothes were unburned, there was no way to identify the individuals. The staff had no choice but to gather the bodies and ask the military to cremate them.
They took the cremated remains back to the school. The First Girls’ School’s daily progress log involving the disaster of August 6, 1945, records the situation in which a Buddhist monk chanted sutras and divided the remains of the deceased at the school, with around 100 bereaved family members in attendance, on August 14.
The surviving teachers, staff, and students set about repairing the damaged school building, located around 2.2 kilometers from the hypocenter. The late Kamota Furuta, a former staff member, wrote in his personal account about how classes fully resumed in late October. However, Mr. Miyagawa wrote in his eulogy, “Every night, whenever I awaken, the faces of my colleague teachers, with whom I worked harmoniously for so long, appear before my eyes. The faces of the students, standing proudly and gracefully in line, appear as visions.”
(Originally published on October 30, 2024)