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Hiroshima : 70 Years After the A-bombing

Hiroshima: 70 Years After the A-bombing: Depicting the A-bombing 6

Family vanishes, wife’s death is confirmed with maternity belt

Miyoko Doi, 84, a resident of Asakita Ward, Hiroshima, feels unease each time she visits Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. On the east side of the grassy square stands a stone monument with the inscription “Former Zaimoku-cho.” This is the place where she was born and raised. Most people, though, citizens as well as tourists, pass by without even noticing this marker.

Survivors experienced hell on earth

“How many people today know that there was a friendly neighborhood here?” she wondered aloud. “How many know what happened to it?” Ms. Doi once lived at 78 Zaimoku-cho, her father’s birthplace. There were seven people in her family, but everything changed when the atomic bomb exploded on August 6, 1945. “The survivors saw hell on earth,” she said.

Shigeru Miyoshi, Ms. Doi’s father (1904-1980), drew pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombing, this “hell on earth,” in response to a call from NHK Chugoku Headquarters (now NHK Hiroshima Station), which began collecting A-bomb pictures in 1974. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which now holds these pictures made by survivors, asked those who drew them, or members of their families, for permission to show the pictures on its website. That was the first time Ms. Doi saw the eight pictures drawn by her father.

“The picture which shows my mother is so cruel,” she explained, “that my father never showed it to me when he was alive.”

Her father had written on the picture: “I found my wife’s maternity belt. She was wearing it because she was in the last month of her pregnancy. I found no arms or legs, only her skull.” In this way, Mr. Miyoshi found his wife, Yoshiko, then 37, at the site of his home on August 7, the day after the bombing.

According to the article Mr. Miyoshi wrote in A-bomb Experiences: What I Want to Say, published in 1977, after the blast on August 6, he headed for Zaimoku-cho from his workplace in Funairi Saiwai-cho (now part of Naka Ward), walking along the Motoyasu River. Because the fires which consumed the houses had not died down, he spent the night by the riverside. The next morning, he finally arrived where his house used to stand, wiping tears from his face and scattering water with a broken bucket he picked up along the way.

As pieces of bone were scattered across the area, it was difficult to identify the victims, but Mr. Miyoshi determined his wife’s remains from her maternity belt. Then he looked for his second daughter, Tokiko, then 13, a first-year student at Fukuromachi National Advanced School, his eldest son, Shigeharu, 9, a fourth grader at Nakajima National School, his third daughter, Hiroko, 6, a first grader at Nakajima National School, and his fourth daughter, Misao, 3.

Ms. Doi was his eldest daughter, and she was a second-year student at Hiroshima Girls Commercial School. She had been mobilized to work at the branch office of the Hiroshima Postal Savings Bureau, on the 7th floor of Fukuya Department Store. She experienced the atomic bombing there, about 710 meters from the hypocenter, but miraculously survived.

“I was able to meet my father and my sister Tokiko at the relief station in Kaita-cho,” Ms. Doi said. After the bombing, she evacuated to her relative’s house in Itsukaichi-cho (now part of Saeki Ward), and on August 12, while still wearing a bandage, she went from there to Kaita-cho, carrying some peaches. Tokiko asked her many times about their mother, but Ms. Doi could only say, “Mom will come here soon.” Tokiko died on August 14. The remains of Ms. Doi’s brother and her two other sisters were never found.

A-bomb account held at the National Peace Memorial Hall

After the war, Mr. Miyoshi learned that the ironworks where he used to work was facing difficulties after the president died due to the atomic bombing, so he helped rebuild the company. He married the late president’s eldest daughter and had two sons. Ms. Doi also married the president’s second son, who eventually took over the ironworks.

In 1952, when the company was getting back on track, the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims was unveiled. Father and daughter never visited the cenotaph together but continued visiting their family grave at Joenji Temple, which had been moved south from its original location to today’s Nakajima-cho, Naka Ward, when Peace Memorial Park was built.

“My father had a new family, and the city was reconstructed, but he couldn’t forget his deep sorrow over his lost family and old neighborhood. That must have driven him to draw these pictures,” Ms. Doi said, seeking to understand her father, who died of pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Miyoshi drew not only pictures of the horrifying scenes he saw when he was searching for his family but also a picture of his childhood, showing himself swimming in the Motoyasu River. Ms. Doi saw these pictures when Peace Memorial Museum contacted her. At that point, she decided to write for the first time about her own A-bomb experience and about Tokiko’s death, which her father had not depicted.

Ms. Doi wrote at the end of her memoir, “My father and I cried, holding each other. Tokiko was my only sibling left. Including her, five people in my family died. Only my father and I survived.” Her account is now preserved at the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

(Originally published on October 13, 2014)