Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: In December, junior high school student tears up school withdrawal certificate with broken heart
Dec. 22, 2024
by Maho Yamamoto, Staff Writer
In December 1945, a school withdrawal certificate was issued to Hiroshi Nakamura (who died in 2016 at the age of 84), 13 at the time and a second-year student at a junior high school under the former education system located in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. He experienced the atomic bombing at the site where he had been mobilized to work as a student. Thereafter, his health deteriorated and he suffered harsh words from his classmates, which would lead him to request that he be allowed to drop out of school.
Mr. Nakamura had been working as an engineer’s assistant at the Hiroshima First Engine District of the Hiroshima Railway Bureau, located in the area of Nishikaniya-cho (in Hiroshima City’s Minami Ward). On August 6, he experienced the atomic bombing at employee housing located around 1.8 kilometers from the hypocenter, because he had taken the day off due to ill health. Uninjured, he engaged in relief activities for the wounded and in the recovery of dead bodies immediately after the bombing. On August 8, he returned to his family home after transferring between trains.
Mr. Nakamura could not forget the feeling of grabbing the bones of decomposed corpses as he loaded them onto a truck. He was welcomed by his family at home, but he later wrote in a personal account that, “Even though they were happy to see me back home, I was simply unable to hold their hands.”
He continued to suffer from poor health even after returning home. About one month after the bombing, he found when he awoke that his pillow had turned completely black. His hair had fallen out, and “in about one week, I was completely bald,” as described in the collection titled “Kuhaku no Junen,” Hibakusha no Kuto (in English, ‘“Ten blank years”; the struggles of A-bomb survivors’), published in 2009. In October, his gums continually bled when they would come into contact with food as he ate. With that, he turned to sipping rice porridge.
His good friends at school prior to the bombing no longer approached him, saying “Someone who experienced ‘pika’ [the Japanese vernacular for the flash generated by the atomic bombing] would lose hair, vomit blood, and die,” adding, “If we touch you we’ll get infected.” Even after leaving the house in the morning for school, Mr. Nakamura would spend time in the nearby mountains or elsewhere, a situation that continued for more than one month. On December 31, he submitted an application to withdraw from school, which was accepted by school officials.
“In actual fact, I wanted to continue attending school and in the future become a junior high-school teacher.” Filled with frustration, he tore up the school withdrawal certificate. Believing he had thrown it away, he later found the bottom half of the certificate in the back of a cabinet at his home around nine months before he died. It served as “proof of his enrollment at school.”
(Originally published on December 22, 2024)
In December 1945, a school withdrawal certificate was issued to Hiroshi Nakamura (who died in 2016 at the age of 84), 13 at the time and a second-year student at a junior high school under the former education system located in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. He experienced the atomic bombing at the site where he had been mobilized to work as a student. Thereafter, his health deteriorated and he suffered harsh words from his classmates, which would lead him to request that he be allowed to drop out of school.
Mr. Nakamura had been working as an engineer’s assistant at the Hiroshima First Engine District of the Hiroshima Railway Bureau, located in the area of Nishikaniya-cho (in Hiroshima City’s Minami Ward). On August 6, he experienced the atomic bombing at employee housing located around 1.8 kilometers from the hypocenter, because he had taken the day off due to ill health. Uninjured, he engaged in relief activities for the wounded and in the recovery of dead bodies immediately after the bombing. On August 8, he returned to his family home after transferring between trains.
Mr. Nakamura could not forget the feeling of grabbing the bones of decomposed corpses as he loaded them onto a truck. He was welcomed by his family at home, but he later wrote in a personal account that, “Even though they were happy to see me back home, I was simply unable to hold their hands.”
He continued to suffer from poor health even after returning home. About one month after the bombing, he found when he awoke that his pillow had turned completely black. His hair had fallen out, and “in about one week, I was completely bald,” as described in the collection titled “Kuhaku no Junen,” Hibakusha no Kuto (in English, ‘“Ten blank years”; the struggles of A-bomb survivors’), published in 2009. In October, his gums continually bled when they would come into contact with food as he ate. With that, he turned to sipping rice porridge.
His good friends at school prior to the bombing no longer approached him, saying “Someone who experienced ‘pika’ [the Japanese vernacular for the flash generated by the atomic bombing] would lose hair, vomit blood, and die,” adding, “If we touch you we’ll get infected.” Even after leaving the house in the morning for school, Mr. Nakamura would spend time in the nearby mountains or elsewhere, a situation that continued for more than one month. On December 31, he submitted an application to withdraw from school, which was accepted by school officials.
“In actual fact, I wanted to continue attending school and in the future become a junior high-school teacher.” Filled with frustration, he tore up the school withdrawal certificate. Believing he had thrown it away, he later found the bottom half of the certificate in the back of a cabinet at his home around nine months before he died. It served as “proof of his enrollment at school.”
(Originally published on December 22, 2024)
