Features

The faces of men with hair marked by grey appeared deeply emotional when holding in their hands the “military code” their deceased friends were wearing at the time of the atomic bombing. They remarked, “When I went to school, I always wore this in a small pouch on my waist.” And, “We were forced to recite the official military ethics code inside that document one after the other. When one of us faltered, the teacher would scold us all, saying ‘it’s everyone’s responsibility.’”

On November 16 and 17th, 1999, the Chugoku Shimbun ran a series of feature articles titled “Photographs of the Dead Speak: Hiroshima Second Middle School.” In response to the newspaper’s request for an interview, five former students who had entered the school in April 1945 and were in their first year at the time of the bombing, met in person at the Chugoku Shimbun head office building, standing on the right bank of the Honkawa River. Their classmates experienced the atomic bombing and perished on the riverbank opposite the building.

Contacting the few surviving classmates

Atsushi Tokiyasu, 66, a resident of Hiroshima City’s Minami Ward who took the initiative for the gathering, reached out to the small number of remaining classmates to join him, thinking, “If we could be of use to those who died.”

Hiroshima Second Middle School was located at Nishikanon-machi 2-chome (present-day Kanon-honmachi 2-chome, in Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward), with six classes of first-year students. Around 60 students are said to have belonged to a single class, but the memories of the five are inconsistent on that issue, because the time spent together at school was short and disrupted by the bombing.

“Textbooks and school uniforms were not available for all the students,” said Hajime Fujiyama, 66, a resident of the town of Miyajima in Hiroshima Prefecture, who was in Class 1 of the first year. Yasuki Miyazato, 66, a former student in Class 6, who had matriculated to the middle school from Itsukushima National School (present-day Miyajima Elementary School), the same school Mr. Fujiyama had attended, recalled the time after entering the school. “We studied English at school, but it was considered to be the language of the enemy. So for ‘gaiters,’ an English word, we used the traditional Japanese term maki-kyahan.”

According to the wording “Pursuant to provisions of Article 5 of the National General Mobilization Act…” of the Student Mobilization Order issued the previous year, third- and fourth-year students at the school were mobilized to work the full year at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ machinery plant, located in Hiroshima’s Nishi Ward. Following the mobilization of second-year students, first-year students also began, one month after attending the school, to engage in the work of digging holes for air-raid shelters and dismantling buildings for the creation of fire lanes or evacuation sites.

Two former students found to be alive

“We prepared necessary tools such as shovels on our own and were allowed to use streetcars in the city only when engaged in the mobilization work. That altered our fate,” said Akiyoshi Inoue, 67, who belonged to Class 3, locking eyes with Yasuyuki Kurata, 67, who belonged to Class 5. They were both commuting from what is now Higashihiroshima City. In the morning on “that day,” August 6, 1945, the two had been waiting to transfer to a streetcar at Hiroshima Station.

The boys were set to engage in mobilization work at the former Nakajima-shinmachi area, located around 500 meters from the hypocenter. A memorial monument, built in 1961 at the site of the tragedy, has the names of 321 first-year student victims inscribed on it.

Through the reporting done for this feature series, it was found that two former students with names inscribed on the monument were still alive. One, a man who had transferred to another school after he experienced the atomic bombing at his home in Hiroshima, stated briefly, “Two years ago when I retired, I found for the first time that my name was inscribed on the monument. But partly because I blame myself for being alive, I don’t want to recall that time.”

The leader of the gathering Mr. Tokiyasu, who never fails to attend the memorial ceremony for his school’s A-bomb victims held in front of the monument every year on August 6, revealed his feelings, below, as one of the “survivors.”

Friends in same class had been mobilized for work

“My friends in the same class had been sent to work, but I had not. I cannot erase my sense of guilt about that. I believe that in the absence of the atomic bombing many of my friends would not have died. I believe their sacrifice contributed to the war’s end, which led to what we have now … It’s hard for me to describe my feelings in words.”

All five of the men have never spoken publicly about their own experiences in the atomic bombing except with relatives or at private gatherings. They all said they simply do not feel like talking about that time. Three of the group, excluding the two who had experienced the bombing at Hiroshima Station, were absent from the mobilization work on the day of the bombing due to injuries they had suffered working until the previous day or because they had been busy with the effort to procure food. Some had met with each other individually, but this meeting was the first time in 51 years, since they had graduated from school at a makeshift building, that all of them together had gathered in one place.

(Originally published on November 20, 1999)