Silent Witness: Female student’s monpe work pants
Jan. 20, 2025
Mother would embrace the pants when sleeping every night
by Kyoko Niiyama, Staff Writer
A piece of tattered fabric. The discolored and blackened part of the fabric might have been scorched by the thermal rays from the atomic bombing. The fabric was part of a pair of baggy monpe work pants that Miyoko Matsumoto, 14 at the time, was wearing on August 6, 1945.
That day, Miyoko, a second-year student at Hiroshima Jogakuin Girls’ High School (present-day Hiroshima Jogakuin Junior and Senior High School), was in the area of Zakoba-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward) to engage in the work of demolishing buildings for the creation of fire lanes in preparation for air raids. She experienced the atomic bombing at a location 1.2 kilometers from the hypocenter.
Her mother, Masa, who was working at the time of the bombing in the fields behind their home in the area of Ushita-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Higashi Ward), searched for Miyoko, walking around the city areas of Hiroshima, which had been turned into an incinerated ruins. Her family described Masa as “weeping every night” with thoughts of her daughter, who she had been unable to locate despite her efforts.
On the commemorative date of the atomic bombing the following year, 1946, her family found underneath the ground a pair of striped work pants of the sort that Miyoko had worn, near the area where the building-demolition work had taken place. As long as she lived, Masa was said to embrace the pants when she went to bed every night.
In 1997, Sachiko Miyata, Miyoko’s older sister, donated the pair of pants to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Ms. Miyata herself experienced the atomic bombing at home, 2.3 kilometers from the hypocenter, with her entire body covered in blood from broken glass shards. She also suffered severe injuries to her head, leaving exposed bone. Until she died in 2001, Ms. Miyata continued to share her experiences in the atomic bombing with others and call for the elimination of nuclear weapons, with the regrets of her younger sister and others in mind.
(Originally published on January, 20, 2025)
