Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Around November, temporary housing at Hiroshima Communications Bureau office building
Nov. 4, 2024
by Minami Yamashita, Staff Writer
Around November 1945, Toshio Kawamoto, a member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Police Department’s photography team who was traveling around the city taking photographs of damages from the atomic bombing, photographed the Hiroshima Communications Bureau office building, located around 1.3 kilometers northeast of the hypocenter (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward). As a result of the bombing, the unique, four-story L-shaped ferroconcrete building’s south side had been completely incinerated, and the fourth floor on its north side was also destroyed by fire.
The Communication Bureau handled a variety of work, including such services as postal, banking, as well as telephone and telegraph. According to the Chugoku Branch of the NTT West Corporation, employees at the bureau numbered about 650 people before the atomic bombing. Around 60 staff members died in the bombing. Surviving employees also suffered serious damage, including the loss of homes.
Emergency repairs were made to the bureau building’s north side, which was used as an area for work involving recovery. The late Shunji Sakurai, an employee at the bureau at the time, described the dire situation faced by employees until the end of 1945 in the publication Hiroshima Yusei Genbaku-shi (in English, ‘Journal of Hiroshima postal service’s A-bombing’), published in 1983. “Employees who had lost their homes commuted to the bureau from places that took three or four hours, or lived together in the Communications Bureau office building,” wrote Mr. Sakurai. The building had been turned into a temporary residence for employees, with washed clothes hanging in airy rooms. In 1946, shacks for lodging were hastily erected in an area near the building.
The Communications Bureau was also used to accommodate wounded survivors who could not be admitted to Hiroshima Teishin Hospital, which was located next to the bureau. In her personal account in the 1997 Tsuioku no Shuki-shu (‘Collection of accounts of reminiscences’), Suzuko Numata, who died in 2011 at the age of 87, wrote, “The first floor of the Communications Bureau office building had become a temporary holding area for patients, and I was also admitted there.” She wrote about how she was “hospitalized” in the building for around a year and a half.
Ms. Numata, 22 at the time of the bombing, had been trapped under the rubble of the Communications Bureau, where she was working. The wounds to her injured left ankle had worsened, necessitating amputation of her left leg on August 10. She was devastated further after learning soon after the end of the war that her fiancée had died. “I lost my ability to think much less live,” she said, adding, “For a time on a daily basis, I became obsessed with the idea of killing myself.”
After undergoing four operations and being released from the hospital in March 1947, Ms. Numata found that an A-bombed Chinese parasol tree, located in the inner garden of the Communications Bureau building, had begun putting out new growth. “That tree taught me the importance of wanting to live.” She continued to share her experiences in the atomic bombing until the end of her life under that Chinese parasol tree, which had been transplanted in Peace Memorial Park (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward) in 1973.
(Originally published on November 4, 2024)
Around November 1945, Toshio Kawamoto, a member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Police Department’s photography team who was traveling around the city taking photographs of damages from the atomic bombing, photographed the Hiroshima Communications Bureau office building, located around 1.3 kilometers northeast of the hypocenter (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward). As a result of the bombing, the unique, four-story L-shaped ferroconcrete building’s south side had been completely incinerated, and the fourth floor on its north side was also destroyed by fire.
The Communication Bureau handled a variety of work, including such services as postal, banking, as well as telephone and telegraph. According to the Chugoku Branch of the NTT West Corporation, employees at the bureau numbered about 650 people before the atomic bombing. Around 60 staff members died in the bombing. Surviving employees also suffered serious damage, including the loss of homes.
Emergency repairs were made to the bureau building’s north side, which was used as an area for work involving recovery. The late Shunji Sakurai, an employee at the bureau at the time, described the dire situation faced by employees until the end of 1945 in the publication Hiroshima Yusei Genbaku-shi (in English, ‘Journal of Hiroshima postal service’s A-bombing’), published in 1983. “Employees who had lost their homes commuted to the bureau from places that took three or four hours, or lived together in the Communications Bureau office building,” wrote Mr. Sakurai. The building had been turned into a temporary residence for employees, with washed clothes hanging in airy rooms. In 1946, shacks for lodging were hastily erected in an area near the building.
The Communications Bureau was also used to accommodate wounded survivors who could not be admitted to Hiroshima Teishin Hospital, which was located next to the bureau. In her personal account in the 1997 Tsuioku no Shuki-shu (‘Collection of accounts of reminiscences’), Suzuko Numata, who died in 2011 at the age of 87, wrote, “The first floor of the Communications Bureau office building had become a temporary holding area for patients, and I was also admitted there.” She wrote about how she was “hospitalized” in the building for around a year and a half.
Ms. Numata, 22 at the time of the bombing, had been trapped under the rubble of the Communications Bureau, where she was working. The wounds to her injured left ankle had worsened, necessitating amputation of her left leg on August 10. She was devastated further after learning soon after the end of the war that her fiancée had died. “I lost my ability to think much less live,” she said, adding, “For a time on a daily basis, I became obsessed with the idea of killing myself.”
After undergoing four operations and being released from the hospital in March 1947, Ms. Numata found that an A-bombed Chinese parasol tree, located in the inner garden of the Communications Bureau building, had begun putting out new growth. “That tree taught me the importance of wanting to live.” She continued to share her experiences in the atomic bombing until the end of her life under that Chinese parasol tree, which had been transplanted in Peace Memorial Park (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward) in 1973.
(Originally published on November 4, 2024)
