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Exhibition of personal effects of A-bomb victims opens at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Staff Writer

On March 18, an exhibition titled “Exhibition of Newly-donated Items,” which features A-bombed artifacts and personal effects of victims donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum last year, opened in the east wing of the museum in Naka Ward. On display are 74 items including clothing and a postcard left behind by A-bomb victims, which family members had treasured as keepsakes. These items convey to visitors the tragic and destructive nature of the atomic bombing.

On August 6, 1945, Hajime Hamada, 17, headed for a work assignment at Chugoku Haiden (now the Chugoku Electric Power Company), located in Komachi (now part of Naka Ward). That same day, his younger sister Mitsuko, 13, a first-year student at Hiroshima Girls’ Commercial School, was mobilized to help tear down buildings to create a fire lane. In the exhibition, the jacket worn at the time by Hajime and Mitsuko’s fabric pouch with a flowery pattern are displayed side by side. Their photos also appear next to their possessions. Both died at home 13 days after the atomic bombing.

The items were donated to the museum by Yoshiko Hamada, 66, their younger sister who is a resident of Asakita Ward. She decided to donate them after reading a series of feature articles in the Chugoku Shimbun titled “Hiroshima: 70 Years After the A-bombing,” which conveyed the horror of the bombing through depictions of personal effects. When she was growing up, Yoshiko sometimes found her mother, who died in 2003, looking through her siblings’ old belongings and weeping. “I feel sad that I’ve let go of them a little,” Ms. Hamada explained, “but I want other people to understand the tragedy of the atomic bombing and the sorrow of family members of the victims.”

Over the previous fiscal year, 44 people donated a total of 205 items to the museum. The exhibition also features a postcard left behind by the father of Masaharu Kiba, 83, a resident of Asaminami Ward. Like Ms. Hamada, Mr. Kiba read the same series of newspaper articles and offered this memento of his father, who was killed by the atomic bomb, to the museum. Also on display are A-bombed roof tiles and photos of the city taken during the post-war reconstruction period. The exhibition will run until November 30 and no admission fee is asked.

(Originally published on March 18, 2016)

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