1. Please tell us about the labor service you began performing in your first year at First Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Girls High School, as well as the student mobilization that began partway through your third year. Where did you work, what kind of tasks did you perform, and for what length of time? We have enclosed a list of labor service and student mobilization assignments for each school year. Please use it for reference.
* In the enclosed list, Toyo Industries is listed as 5.3 km from the hypocenter, but my Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Handbook records it as 4.1 km. For your reference.
(1)Locations, Tasks, and Other Details of Labor Service During My First Year
(April 1942 - March 1943)
・ For our excursions, we marched from Tomo-mura over Koi Pass while carrying sandbags.
・Our service involved planting sweet potatoes at the General Ground in Kan-non-machi, which had been created through labor service by second- and third-year students from the city.
・Digging up pine roots on Mt. Ushita.
・Harvesting wheat at a farmhouse in Fuchu-cho.
・Working at the school farm in Takeya-cho.
(2) Work Service Locations, Tasks, and Other Details During My Second Year (April 1943–March 1944)
(The order may differ slightly from what I listed above.)
Since 1943 was the year when student soldiers were sent off to war, we too felt increasingly pressed and cornered.
・Clothing Depot: We sorted military uniforms, some of them stained with blood—perhaps brought back from the battlefield.
・Monopoly Bureau: We collected the scraps produced when tobacco was rolled and cut.
・Rations Depot: A canned-goods factory. (The smells of tobacco and of canned food was unbearable.)
・Armaments Depot: I recall organizing small parts and materials.
(3) Work Service Locations, Tasks, and Other Details During My Third Year
(April 1944–September 1944)
Around that time, our curriculum included
・Naginata practice during physical education class.
・Lessons on how to eat edible wild plants during cooking class, along with penmanship practice using the One Hundred Patriotic Poems.
・Supplementary Japanese readings such as The Tale of the Heike and Sundai Zatsuwa.
・We had purchased the Tsuda English Readers up through the third-year level, but perhaps because English was the language of the enemy, it seemed to be avoided.
Up to that point, we still performed labor service only after arriving at school. However, in our third year, a mobilization order was issued, and we third-year students were sent directly to the Clothing Depot for work.
2. From October 1944, you were mobilized year-round—as a student worker at the Clothing Depot (Deshio-cho). Please provide the following information:
① Where did you work? Please indicate your location on the layout diagram (created by Mr. Hideo Hashimoto). If you remember the arrangement of equipment in the workroom, please sketch it in the blank space.
② Please describe your job duties and any other details.
1944 Third Year
Once the mobilization order was issued, we no longer attended school; all third-year students commuted directly from home to the Clothing Depot. My house was about 3-4 km from Hiroshima Station. I walked to the station, took what I believe was the 6:38 train on the Ujina Line and got off at Oko Station. I made this commute day after day. My job was stitching the buttonholes for the brass buttons on military uniforms. Others were assigned to spreading out the fabric, setting the patterns, cutting the pieces, or packing them. We were divided into these various roles, and everyone worked diligently. Inside the brick warehouse it was dimly lit, and it was there that my eyesight deteriorated. I can’t clearly recall where my workstation was located. We experienced one air raid. We fled into the air-raid shelter, and hearing the anti-aircraft guns firing from Hijiyama for the first time filled me with fear. And the lunchtime ojiya, the watery rice gruel ladled from a huge pot, was terribly unappetizing. We even had bamboo-spear training, carried out under the direction of an officer.
3. From May 1945, you were mobilized to Toyo Industries. Please provide:
① A general layout diagram of the factory
② The department where you worked
③ The nature of your work
1945 Fourth Year
Within Toyo Industries, we were assigned to Plant No. 11. Among the many lathes there, one machine was mine alone. The oil-covered, pitch-black machine, unlike anything we'd ever seen, seemed enormous to us schoolgirls. From that day on, I was a lathe operator. My job was to bore out the interior of Type 38 infantry rifle barrels. Inside the mostly pre-drilled barrel, a spindle would rotate. To the tip of this spindle, we had to quickly attach a tool called a reamer that was about 10 cm long, I think, with vertical blades cut around it like the ridges on a ballpoint pen shaft. We attached it swiftly and then, as it spun again, used it to scrape and cut the inside of the barrel. Large amounts of heavy oil flowed over the machinery to keep everything moving smoothly. Because we worked with bare hands, the skin on my left thumb and index finger was often scraped raw, sometimes bleeding. Standing all day, performing this task at about waist or chest height, was truly exhausting. My work clothes became completely saturated with oil, stiff and greasy to the touch. Washing did nothing. Of course, this was a time when adequate detergent wasn’t available. As I recall, male students from the Higher Normal School operated the same machine during the night shift. The work went on around the clock. Still, every day we went, wearing white headbands, with emergency bags on our backs and air-raid hoods in hand. Even now, I can clearly picture our oil-soaked feet, the factory floor, and the oil-covered machinery. Despite it all, complaints or grumbling was unthinkable. As “militarized girls,” we lived earnestly, and in our own way as schoolgirls, seriously, cheerfully, and with pride.
4. On August 6, 1945, where were you and what were you doing when the atomic bomb was dropped? Please describe your situation at the time of the bombing, including what happened at Toyo Industries until you were allowed to return home.
Just as we were about to begin work inside the factory, there was a flash and a boom. A powerful blast struck us. Not knowing what had happened, I instinctively covered my eyes and ears with both hands and lay face-down onto the oil-soaked floor. When I cautiously lifted my head, I saw that the glass from the ceiling windows had all fallen, shattered to pieces and scattered around my body. Fortunately, I was not seriously injured. Under our teacher's direction, we ran to the lateral cave-type air-raid shelter on Mt. Kogomori. It was a large shelter, tall enough to stand and walk in, but hundreds of people had already crowded inside. Soil kept crumbling from the earthen walls, and it was packed so tightly that there wasn’t even space to turn around. It was extremely suffocating. I have no sense of how long we stayed there. Eventually, following the teacher’s instructions, we exited the shelter. By that time, the old Route 2 road was already filled with a long, slow-moving line of victims.
5. Please freely write down any thoughts about labor service, student mobilization, the atomic bombing, or other experiences you wish to pass on to the next generation.
A mass of people—bewildered, burned, staggering. A boy, looking utterly drained, sat on a stone by the roadside, staring vacantly at his own hand sticking out from the charred remains of his sleeve…After that, we went to the lobby of the Toyo Industries main building. Upon coarse mats which entirely covered the floor, were countless bodies, charred black and laid so tightly there was no room to step. People, people, people. People gasping faintly for breath, people begging for water... And already, loathsome flies had arrived, swarming over the injured, and even those who no longer moved. When we were told to nurse them, all we could do was wave fans to drive away the flies and create a bit of a breeze. There was no medicine. Water was not permitted. Simply seeing it all was almost too painful to bear. What I will never forget is the woman who had to be placed alone on an oil-stained workbench inside the factory because the lobby was already full and could hold no more. Her entire body was burned black; her face was unrecognizable. She seemed a little older than we were. From the remains of her fading consciousness came the repeated cry, “Mother… Mother…” Watching her twist and writhe in agony was beyond heartbreaking. It took my breath away…
That one woman has never once left my mind throughout my entire life. We spent the day doing what little could be called caregiving until evening, and then, following our teacher’s instructions, we returned home. (For a very long time afterward, I could not bear oily grilled fish such as mackerel or saury. I also felt a strong resistance to microwave ovens, which burn food through without any visible flame.)
And then came defeat. I listened to the imperial edict of August 15 at home.
Hiroshima burned for three days and three nights, becoming a city of ruins. A strange mood hung over everyone, as if we had all lost the will to move. And then, to make matters worse, a typhoon struck. During all of this, we stayed in touch with friends and went out to help clear the burned remains of our school building. Among the rubble were narrow footpaths formed only by people passing through. A streetcar in Hatchobori remained where it had burned, its frame charred. Carrying a hoe over my shoulder, I crawled across the Inari-machi steel bridge, where the tracks were too damaged for streetcars to pass.
In one part of the schoolyard, melted glass from the science laboratory had flowed into rippling shapes. In an air-raid shelter, we found a scorched scrap of kasuri-patterned monpe trousers…We all cried together.
Before long, word came that classes would resume, and we were told that we could attend whichever site was more convenient: the Yagi Training Hall or the Kusatsu Sakura Dormitory (a mother-child dorm). I initially chose Yagi, commuting from Yaga Station to Fukawa-mura (back then, the ceilings of the Geibi Line trains were black with flies), then taking the Fukawa ferry and walking along the Yagi embankment. It was terribly tiring and difficult. I switched to Kusatsu, but the trains were terrifyingly crowded, with people hanging from the deck. Both the Sanyo Main Line and the Miyajima Line suburban trains were packed to overflowing every single day, and commuting was a constant struggle.
After that, the former Clothing Depot site was cleared, and we all felt relieved.
Desks from Otake Diving School were allocated to us. And so, it was yet another round of labor service.
The wooden desks (with chairs attached) were brought as far as the beach in Kusatsu. Somehow, about four girls would carry each desk, forming a line as we transported them all the way to Minami-machi.
A corner partitioned with plywood became our classroom. But inside the brick structure, the echoes were so loud that classes were terribly difficult, day after day. Amid all this, beginning with our cohort, fourth-year students were permitted to graduate early. Some went on to higher schools such as women’s colleges or women’s normal schools, some became homemakers, and others advanced to the fifth year.
Although we had never been separated into different classes since the time we entered school, we now went our separate ways.
Spring 1946 Graduation
1931 Mukden Incident (I have no memory of it, but for those born in 1929, it may have marked the beginning of the wartime era.)
1936 Entered elementary school
I attended Tonoko Elementary School in Ondo-cho until third grade, so I grew up seeing things such as lantern processions when hospital ships entered port after the fall of Nanking, as well as the battleships and destroyers coming and going from Etajima and Kure, and sailors undergoing strict cutter training.
1937 Second Grade Xi’an Incident
1938 Third Grade
1939 Fourth Grade
1940 Fifth Grade
1941 Sixth Grade Outbreak of the Pacific War
1942 Prefectural Girls School Year 1 (as described on a separate page)
1943 Prefectural Girls School Year 2
1944 Prefectural Girls School Year 3 Mobilization order issued (Clothing Depot)
1945 Prefectural Girls School Year 4 Defeat (Toyo Industries)
1946 Graduation
As you can see, my entire school life was shaped as if I were a child born of war.
When I look back now, at the age of 86, I am truly grateful that I was allowed to survive. I have no regrets about a life I tried to live as earnestly as I could. But I pray that future generations will never again face such times. And to the children who know nothing of our generation: do not become complacent in this “peace.” These events existed until just yesterday. I sincerely hope you will study this part of Japan’s history with genuine seriousness.
My handwriting must have been difficult to read. Thank you for taking the time.
If there are any errors in my recollection, please forgive me.
|
