News

by Minami Yamashita, Staff Writer

On August 6, 1959, Hiroko Kajiyama, a first-year student at Gion High School at the time, wrote a diary entry that touched on what she had been thinking on “the same day 14 years ago.” Her entry reads, “How many thousands of parents and children are not able to live together because of the death of one or the other?” Ms. Kajiyama was 15 years old. Her heart went out to those who, because of the atomic bombing, had been torn from family or were suffering painful injuries.

In Hiroshima’s central downtown area 14 years after the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb remained the ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Hall, now known as the A-bomb Dome, which continued to evoke the horrors of the bombing in its location near the hypocenter. According to a summary of Ms. Kajiyama’s diary, she had written, “It is my belief that the forlorn Industrial Hall on its own will forever be able to make an appeal to the world about the terror of the atomic bombing,”

On August 6, 1945, Ms. Kajiyama, one year old at the time, experienced the atomic bombing at the family’s home in the area of Hiratsuka-cho (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), located around 1.3 kilometers from the hypocenter. With Ms. Kajiyama on her mother’s back accompanied by her grandmother, the three of them fled from their collapsed home. After the war, her father was discharged from the military and returned home. Living with her family in the town of Fuchu-cho in Hiroshima Prefecture, she attended elementary school and junior high school.

Epitome of health

Masahiro Terada, 81, a resident of Hiroshima’s Asaminami Ward who was Ms. Kajiyama’s classmate at Fuchu Junior High School for all three years, said, “Cheerful and funny, she lifted the mood the whole class.” When graduating from junior high school, she left a message in the school yearbook addressed to her class friend, writing, “Be happy, and study hard!” Mr. Terada said, “She was the epitome of health, so I was not even aware she had experienced the atomic bombing.”

Starting March 8, 1959, the day of the junior high-school graduation ceremony, Ms. Kajiyama began to write down daily events and her feelings in a notebook. She described her graduation from junior high school with mixed feelings of happiness and longing, and her new experiences in her life in high school, including about how she was commuting to school by train with friends and swimming in the ocean at a seaside school.

In her diary entry dated August 6, she expressed empathy for victims of the atomic bombing and even touched on her own health. She was not suffering from specific symptoms at the time, but that did not ease her mind since she had heard stories about how those who had experienced the bombing would die young. She wrote, “When I heard that, I started thinking I might die tomorrow or even today.”

Four months later, something abnormal happened to her body. On December 27, two days after Christmas, during which she and her sister had fun exchanging gifts, Ms. Kajiyama “collapsed in the living room.” In March 1960, purple spotting appeared on her legs. On March 11, she wrote about how on her way home from school, “On the train, I felt dizzy and short of breath, and my legs grew heavy.” Her last entry in the diary was on that day.

Diagnosed with leukemia

Her mother, Kimiko, wrote a personal account in a pamphlet collection titled Bakushinchi (in English, ‘Hypocenter’), published in 1967, detailing how Hiroko was doing at the time. She described that her daughter had been suffering symptoms similar to the common cold and, despite seeing a physician in the neighborhood, had failed to recover. Hiroko was then examined at Hiroshima Citizens Hospital, which resulted in her diagnosis of leukemia.

At the end of March, she was urgently admitted to the hospital. With continuous bleeding from her gums and nose, she cried out, “Dad, it’s so painful! Mom, it hurts!” Unable to drink even water, she passed away on April 5.

The following month, on May 5, Kimiko sent a message to school children who were participating in a gathering to commemorate the second anniversary of the unveiling of the Children’s Peace Monument. Expressing her lingering sense of loss, she wrote about how she would not have experienced such sorrow if the atomic bomb had never been dropped. She continued on, with the following sentiments.

“Some people are of the mistaken notion that leading countries should possess many of the horrific atomic bombs and conduct tests using them. Everyone, though, why don’t we go hand-in-hand together and make an appeal to people around the world to ensure that such a horrific event is never repeated and to achieve a truly peaceful world?” Ms. Kajiyama’s diary entry of August 6, 1959, was also read aloud at the event.

In February 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test. With that, France became a nuclear-armed nation, along with the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. The date of the atomic bombing, August 6, 1945, continued to fade into the past with time. The A-bomb Dome was becoming more and more dilapidated with its exposure to the elements. Inspired by Ms. Kajiyama’s hope for “permanent preservation” of the Dome in consideration of its condition, young people in Hiroshima united and stood up to take on that task.

(Originally published on April 2, 2025)