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Hiroshima : 70 Years After the A-bombing

Hiroshima: 70 Years After the A-bombing: Depicting the A-bombing 1

Father and daughters amid the flames Signboard painter Memorial painting

A bloodied man and two young girls walk amid the flames, clinging to each other. All three are barefoot. In the upper left corner, where part of the coarse paper has been torn away, the date and time are written: August 6, 1945, 9 a.m.

The artist was Santaro Takenaga (1897-1963). “It’s my father, my elder sister and my youngest sister. They had escaped from our house in Ebisu-cho and fled,” said Mr. Takenaga’s second daughter Kiyoko, 83. She still resides in the same part of Ebisu-cho (now Horikawa-cho, Naka Ward), where she was born and raised. She lives with her daughter and her family.

According to Kiyoko, Mr. Takenaga had finished the watercolor when he returned to Ebisu-cho, where he put up a shack amid the debris and lived with Kiyoko and her sister.

Loss of wife and two daughters

Mr. Takenaga never found the remains of his wife, Shin, 43. His eldest daughter, Takako, 17, a first-year student at Hiroshima Jogakuin Vocational School, died on the day of the A-bombing. His third daughter, Teruko, 12, a first-year student at Jogakuin High School, died 17 days later. She had been working as a mobilized student on the demolition of buildings for fire breaks.

The watercolor depicting the father and daughters amid the flames is both a record of August 6 and a sort of memorial portrait.

Mr. Takenaga was a native of Obayashi in what is now Asa Kita Ward. After studying under a Western-style painter in Kobe, he returned to Hiroshima. When he was 27 he opened a signboard shop under his nickname “Takesan.” The building, which also housed his residence, was located in Ebisu-cho, then one of the city’s busiest shopping areas. In a membership directory published by the local chamber of commerce in 1937, Mr. Takenaga is listed as a “Japanese- and Western-style graphic artist.”

Mr. Takenaga was popular as a signboard artist for the city’s 22 movie theaters and other businesses. According to Kiyoko, he had about 10 apprentices. After the war, Mr. Takenaga’s younger brother Makio (1913-1997) pursued his artistic ambitions while working at the signboard shop. He went on to become one of the leaders of the artistic circle in Hiroshima.

Mr. Takenaga had four daughters. The family had two organs and a phonograph, and their home was filled with music. Even after his brother Makio, to whom he had turned over the shop, evacuated Hiroshima with his family, Santaro stayed behind in Ebisu-cho. Prior to the atomic bombing there were 95 households and 380 residents there, and Santaro served as president of the neighborhood association.

On the day of the atomic bombing, Mr. Takenaga pulled Takako and his youngest daughter Yuko, 6, out from under the beams of the house that had trapped them, and the three of them fled amid the flames. Takako died in Sentei (now Shukkeien Garden) about 800 meters east of the hypocenter. But amid the confusion he lost track of her body. “Takako was a really good organist and a good artist too,” Kiyoko said. Then a third-year student at Jogakuin High School, Kiyoko was working as a mobilized student at the Hiroshima Finance Bureau in Hatchobori (now part of Naka Ward) and was unharmed.

Painting with injured hand

Mr. Takenaga and his two surviving daughters recuperated in Obayashi. Kiyoko said her father was determined to depict his experiences as soon as possible lest he forget. So he took up his brush with his injured right hand. Kiyoko has a photograph taken around the time she was shown the vivid watercolor at their shack in the burned-out city. The photo shows the family prostrating themselves before a wooden memorial erected in Ebisu-cho.

The monument bears the single word “Alas” and states that it was erected by Santaro Takenaga and marks the graves of his wife and daughters. It carries the date of May 25, 1946. The watercolor painting also served as a sort of memorial to be offered to the three on the first anniversary of their deaths.

The first efforts to depict the atomic bombing in art began with the works of Western-style painter Yoshiro Fukui (1912-1974), who had a work accepted for the Imperial Art Exhibition (Teiten) (now the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten)) when he was 16, and other local artists who experienced the atomic bombing. Although it was one of the earliest works of its kind, Mr. Takenaga’s painting remains little known.

After the war, Mr. Takenaga ran an antique shop and worked to rebuild Ebisu Shrine, which had been totally destroyed in the A-bombing, serving as head of an organization established for that purpose. He died of esophageal cancer at the age of 66.

Kiyoko, who had displayed the watercolor beside the family Buddhist altar in remembrance of her father, donated it to the Peace Memorial Museum 12 years ago so that people would know about the signboard painter who decorated the streets of Hiroshima. “He painted it hastily in an effort to depict the scene as he remembered it and to convey his sadness, but I want as many people as possible to see it,” Kiyoko said.

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This series reexamines survivors’ artwork depicting the atomic bombing, which serves as both a record of the event itself and of their memories.

(Originally published on September 8, 2014)