The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Hiroshima, Japan—As United States President Barack Obama heads for Hiroshima on a historic trip next week, expectation is growing in the western Japan city that he would visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum that houses relics that tell the stories of the people who perished in or survived the world’s first nuclear attack.
The building—located at Hiroshima Memorial Park, where Obama is expected to visit for a wreath-laying ceremony— displays 420 items, including many belonging to people who were in the city at the time of the US bombing more than 70 years ago.
These are samples of some of the items on display:
A set of gruesome figurines purporting to recreate the moments after nuclear devastation befell the city grabs the attention of visitors as they enter the main hall of the museum.
Beside the figurines is a pocket watch around 4 centimeters in diameter, with its hands stopped at 8:15—the time the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. Released by the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay, the A-bomb exploded in midair.
The timepiece belonged to Kengo Nikawa, then 59, and had been given to him by his son. He had it with him all the time, according to the museum.
Heading for the city center, Nikawa was crossing a bridge 1.6 kilometers to the southwest when the bomb exploded. Suffering heavy burns on his head, right shoulder and back, he took refuge at a relative’s home but died 16 days later. A relative of Nikawa’s donated the watch to the museum in 1975.
Close to a replica of the atomic weapon dropped on Hiroshima, named Little Boy, a lunch box is on display that belonged to Shigeru Orimen, a first-grader from Hiroshima Daini Junior High School. The container was perforated by the blazing fire triggered by the explosion. He never had a chance to eat the meal his mother made, which was reduced to charcoal.
According to the museum, Orimen was one of the boys mobilized for building demolition work. He was exposed to radiation while he was being given instructions for his assignment on a river bank around 600 meters from the blast site. Along with almost all of around 320 other classmates there, he was killed instantly. He was 13.
Three days later, his mother Shigeko found the body of Shigeru, still holding the lunchbox and a water flask. A few of his classmates had survived the impact but perished within a week.
The meal inside lunchbox consisted of steamed rice mixed with wheat and soybeans, sautéed potatoes and strips of dried radish, according to an account left behind by his mother. The soybeans were from the first harvest in the field Shigeru worked on and that made him happy, according to his mother.
Steps away, a faceless lay figure in a torn school uniform and cap stands alongside a huge photograph of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the only structure left standing in the area struck by the bombing.
The figure is wearing a collection of items from what was left behind by three male students at a municipal junior high school who were hit by the blast while engaged in demolition work around 900 meters from ground zero.
The cap and belt were those worn by Eiichi Tsuda, a first-grader who died age 13, according to the museum. His body was found by his father. The boy’s face was swollen and red, and his throat and chest had been pierced by some objects.
The puttees, long strips of cloth wound spirally round the leg from ankle to knee for protection and support, were from Masayuki Ueda, a 12-year-old first-grader who suffered burns all over his body and cried for his mother. He died two days later without seeing his family.
The uniform belonged to Hajime Fukuoka, a 14-year-old second-grader. Her mother could not find his body but the father of one of his classmates discovered his uniform at the site and delivered it to his mother.
Stone steps etched with what appears to be a human shadow were taken from the entrance of the Hiroshima branch of Sumitomo Bank, now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., located some 260 meters away from ground zero. The object was donated to the museum in 1971 after the structure was rebuilt.
Heat waves from the midair detonation were believed to have instantly raised the ground temperature to a staggering 3,000-4,000 Celsius. The person sitting on the stairs was apparently incinerated and his body fused a dark shape into the blanched steps.
The stairs were left standing at the building for many years. Kenji Shiga, the 63-year-old director of the museum, said he often waited at a bus stop next to the shadow, “trying to imagine what the person was like.”
In another section of the museum is a white plastered wall stained with black streaks—marks of rain laced with radioactive dust from the mushroom cloud that descended on the city following the explosion.
The home of the late Akijiro Yajima, then 36, was located some 3.7 kilometers from the hypocenter. The blast dislodged the roof of his house, leaving an aperture that allowed thick, black rain to trickle down the walls inside. The streaks had been thick but were flattened out after they were swabbed.
Professor Kiyoshi Sizuma of Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Engineering studied samples of black rain stains after more than half a century and detected radioactive cesium 137, created by the nuclear fission of uranium.
The US atomic bombing of Japan is estimated to have killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima by the end of 1945. Another attack on Nagasaki City three days later killed 74,000 also by the end of that year.
Many Americans believe the attacks precipitated Japan’s surrender, saving the lives of many US soldiers who would have perished in a full-scale land invasion had the bombs not been dropped, according to public opinion polls and US media. PNA/Kyodo