Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Around December, no traces remain of location where American POWs were held
Dec. 3, 2024
by Maho Yamamoto, Staff Writer
Around December 1945, in Motomachi (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), an area where military facilities and units had been concentrated, no traces remained of the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters. Located around 470 meters east of the hypocenter, the headquarters was one of the places where American soldiers who died in the atomic bombing had been held as prisoners of war.
Throughout the area were located the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters, enforcement units for infantry, artillery, and logistics soldiers, as well as the Army Hospital. In July 1945, crew members of several U.S. military planes shot down by the Japanese military around Hiroshima had been taken prisoner and held at the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters, south of the Western Drill Ground, and other locations. They are believed to have died in POW camps or at evacuation sites as a result of the atomic bombing by the U.S. military.
After the war, their deaths were conveyed through the testimonies of A-bomb survivors and the “A-bomb drawings” created by survivors. But the U.S. military did not officially acknowledge the deaths of the POWs for many years. It was not until 1983 that the U.S. military first stated its finding that eight Army and two Navy prisoners of war had been killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Shigeaki Mori, 87, an A-bomb survivor and a resident of Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward, concluded from his own research that 12 American soldiers had in fact died in the atomic bombing, adding two more to the U.S. total of 10 soldiers. Mr. Mori has collected documents from Japan and the United States, continued interviewing witnesses, and communicated with bereaved families. He said, “There was a wife of an American soldier who had waited all her life for her husband to come home.”
In 1998, at his own expense, Mr. Mori installed a plaque on a building at the site of the former Chugoku Military Police Headquarters with a photograph of the ruins of the headquarters taken around December 1945. There had been a proposal to erect the plaque in Peace Memorial Park (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), but Mr. Mori said, “I thought placing the plaque for the 12 soldiers at the place where they had been interrogated and held would serve as a memorial.”
Thomas Cartwright (who died in 2015 at the age of 90), a former captain of a U.S. plane that had been shot down and who lost his colleagues in the atomic bombing, visited Hiroshima for the first time after the war in 1983. He wrote in a book titled A Date with the Lonesome Lady: A Hiroshima POW Returns, published in 2004, that his visit brought back memories of the people and his colleagues who died in the atomic bombing and that he was filled with a sense of guilt for having survived.
Mr. Cartwright for some time felt an aversion to visiting Hiroshima. However, through communication with Mr. Mori and others, he visited the city again in 1999 and paid his respects in front of the plaque. The English translation of the plaque’s inscription, which he was asked to write, reads to the effect, ‘May the tragedy of war be eternally remembered.’
(Originally published on December 3, 2024)
Around December 1945, in Motomachi (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), an area where military facilities and units had been concentrated, no traces remained of the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters. Located around 470 meters east of the hypocenter, the headquarters was one of the places where American soldiers who died in the atomic bombing had been held as prisoners of war.
Throughout the area were located the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters, enforcement units for infantry, artillery, and logistics soldiers, as well as the Army Hospital. In July 1945, crew members of several U.S. military planes shot down by the Japanese military around Hiroshima had been taken prisoner and held at the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters, south of the Western Drill Ground, and other locations. They are believed to have died in POW camps or at evacuation sites as a result of the atomic bombing by the U.S. military.
After the war, their deaths were conveyed through the testimonies of A-bomb survivors and the “A-bomb drawings” created by survivors. But the U.S. military did not officially acknowledge the deaths of the POWs for many years. It was not until 1983 that the U.S. military first stated its finding that eight Army and two Navy prisoners of war had been killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Shigeaki Mori, 87, an A-bomb survivor and a resident of Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward, concluded from his own research that 12 American soldiers had in fact died in the atomic bombing, adding two more to the U.S. total of 10 soldiers. Mr. Mori has collected documents from Japan and the United States, continued interviewing witnesses, and communicated with bereaved families. He said, “There was a wife of an American soldier who had waited all her life for her husband to come home.”
In 1998, at his own expense, Mr. Mori installed a plaque on a building at the site of the former Chugoku Military Police Headquarters with a photograph of the ruins of the headquarters taken around December 1945. There had been a proposal to erect the plaque in Peace Memorial Park (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), but Mr. Mori said, “I thought placing the plaque for the 12 soldiers at the place where they had been interrogated and held would serve as a memorial.”
Thomas Cartwright (who died in 2015 at the age of 90), a former captain of a U.S. plane that had been shot down and who lost his colleagues in the atomic bombing, visited Hiroshima for the first time after the war in 1983. He wrote in a book titled A Date with the Lonesome Lady: A Hiroshima POW Returns, published in 2004, that his visit brought back memories of the people and his colleagues who died in the atomic bombing and that he was filled with a sense of guilt for having survived.
Mr. Cartwright for some time felt an aversion to visiting Hiroshima. However, through communication with Mr. Mori and others, he visited the city again in 1999 and paid his respects in front of the plaque. The English translation of the plaque’s inscription, which he was asked to write, reads to the effect, ‘May the tragedy of war be eternally remembered.’
(Originally published on December 3, 2024)
