Features

by Michiko Tanaka, Senior Staff Writer

Tsunehiro Tomoda has lived in Osaka for over 60 years. Now 89 years old, he says all of his happy childhood memories are in Hiroshima. Born and raised in Hiroshima’s Otemachi (now part of Naka Ward), the Motoyasu River was the perfect place for him to play. He swam in the shallows, caught river shrimp, and took a rented boat with Yukio, his younger brother. “My mother taught me how to row a boat many times,” he said.

His mother, Tatsuyo, ran a tailoring business. The store seemed to have been prosperous. His father, Taichi, died of illness when Mr. Tomoda was seven years old, but the family was relatively well off.

She always dressed her sons in high-quality clothes she made herself. Even though she was busy, she made time for her children. She also taught them how to ride a bicycle.

In the early summer of 1945, Mr. Tomoda evacuated to northern Hiroshima Prefecture with a group of students. He could not adapt himself to the local life, however, and soon became unable to eat. His mother came to pick him up right away after learning about it. “She wasn’t angry. She was kind,” he recalled. However, a parting came to them soon.

On August 6, Mr. Tomoda went to school with his brother. Looking up at the sky in front of the school gate as he heard an engine sound, a senior student grabbed his arm and said: “Hey, come over here, quickly.” Mr. Tomoda shook off the student’s hand and ran down to the basement of the school’s west building, where the shoe cupboards were located. Suddenly, an intense light flashed, and he was blown away by the blast. When he crawled outside with his classmates, who had also been in the basement, he saw the charred bodies of children lying in the schoolyard. Among them was his brother, a shoe of his with the name “Tomoda” written on it, had escaped the fire.

At the time of the bombing, approximately 160 students, teachers, and staff were considered to have been at the school, located about 460 meters from the hypocenter. All but a few were killed, including three students who were in the basement of the west building made of ferroconcrete. Mr. Tomoda is the only one of those three still alive. He testifies: “The school’s wooden building was blown off, and I could see the distant mountains.”

Mr. Tomoda had no other choice but to run for safety by following surging crowds. He strayed from his classmates while fleeing. He spent two nights in a place in Hijiyama (now part of Minami Ward) that looked like an air-raid shelter. On the third day, he headed to his home with hard dry biscuits and some water, which a soldier who looked in a dugout had provided. At the site, however, he could only see the wreck of the bicycle his mother bought for him. Countless swollen bodies were floating in the Motoyasu River. “I think my mother was in those bodies, but I couldn’t find her,” he said.

That day, he headed for the city hall without realizing it, and slept by scores of bodies that had been carried there. The next day, someone said to him: “Tsune-chan.” It was a Korean man who was renting a room in his family’s house. He called himself Kaneyama. From that day on, the two began living in a shack.

The man, who seemed to have already been thinking about returning to his home country, decided to do so when the Makurazaki Typhoon hit Hiroshima on September 17. He probably could not leave the boy, who depended on him, alone. Their shack was flooded by the typhoon. Mr. Kaneyama headed for a port in the west by train, taking the boy with him.

Mr. Tomoda did not utter a word of Japanese, even after they boarded a large ship, as he had been told to do. Instead, he called the man “Aboji,” a Korean word for “father.” After getting through checkpoints, they finally reached Seoul, where Mr. Kaneyama’s older brother lived.

(Originally published on June 11, 2025)