Search for missing continues decades after atomic bomb
When the first atomic bomb exploded on August 6, 80 years ago, thousands of dead and dying was brought to the Small, rural Ninoshima Island just south of Hiroshima by military boats, which were trained for suicide attack duties.
Many of the victims burned their clothes and their meat was hung from their faces and limbs. They moaned in pain.
According to historical records, due to bad medicine and maintenance, the field hospital was only a few hundred when it was closed on August 25th. They were buried in various parts of chaotic and rush operations.
Nezly years later, people in the region are looking for lost remains with the desire to take into account the victims and to honor the victims and to torture the memories of the lost loved ones.
“The war was not over for these people until this happens,” said Rebun Kayo, a researcher of Hiroshima University, who visited Ninoshima regularly.
Last morning, Kayo has visited a slope plot in the forest he had dug for remains since 2018. He wore rubber boots and helmets and sprayed insect repellents.
After the chrysanthemum sewing flowers and praying, Kayo carefully began to pull the gravels from a hole -sized hole. When the soil was soft enough, it was elegant for bone pieces.
As he worked under the scorching sun, he dreamed of the pain and sadness that the victims felt when they died.
Kayo has found about 100 pieces of bone, including the jaw bone of a baby with skull pieces and small teeth.
His father found an area proposed by a Ninoshima resident who witnessed the soldiers buried in the corpses brought from Hiroshima 80 years ago to the islands.
“The little boy buried here was alone for all these years,” the bones he believed to belong to the child who began to walk. “This is just unbearable.”
The US atom attack on Hiroshima instantly destroyed the city and killed tens of thousands of people near Hypocenter, about 10 km north of Ninoshima. Until the end of that year, the death burden was 140,000.
When he was a three -year -old child, Tamiko Sora was with his family and two sisters in their homes, just 1.4km away from the hypocenter. The explosion destroyed their homes and Sora’s face was burned, but most of his family survived.
On his way to a relatives, he met a five -year -old girl who described herself as Hiroko and a woman with severe burns that wanted to save the baby she carried from desperately people. Sora still thinks of them often and regrets that her family cannot help. His family visited the orphanages but could not find the girl.
Sora now thinks that his lost aunt and uncle may have ended in Ninoshima, as well as the people he met that day.
Within two hours of the explosion, the victims began to come by boat from Hiroshima in the quarantine center of the island. The buildings are full of patients with severe wounds. Many died on the way to the island.
According to Hiroshima City documents, the empire’s service members had night and night changes for the creams and burials on the island.
Eiko Gishi, a 18 -year -old interviewer at that time, controlled patients from the scaffold to the quarantine area for first aid. He and other soldiers cut bamboo to make glasses and trays. Most of the wounded died shortly after sipping water.
Years later, Gishi wrote that the soldiers took care of the bodies one by one at the beginning, but soon drowned by a large number of decompositions and used a burning furnace designed for military horses.
This was not even enough, and soon they put the bodies in the bomb shelters and grave mounds.
In 1992, an old army doctor Yoshitaka Kohara said, “When I saw the first group of patients descending to the island, I was silent from shock.”
“I was accustomed to seeing many bad wounded soldiers on the battlefields, but I haven’t seen anyone in such a ruthless and tragic state.”
“This was a hell.”
Kohara was a facility until only 500 people survived when they survived.
When he told the survivor to the surviving patients that the war ended on August 15, he remembered that they seemed emotionless and “tears flowing from the crushed eyes and no one said a word”.
Thousands of remains found in Ninoshima, but more are still missing
Kazuo Miyazaki, a historian and guide born in Ninoshima, said that the island was used to educate suicide attackers using wooden boats intended to be deployed in the Philippine Sea and Okinaawa towards the end of World War II.
“Hiroshima was not a city of peace since the beginning. It was actually the opposite.” He said.
He continued: “It is very important to learn from the older generations and to continue to explain the lessons next to the next.”
77 -year -old Miyazaki lost a series of relatives in atomic bombing.
During the militarist expansion of Japan, he heard the first person stories from his relatives and neighbors about what was happening in Ninoshima, which hosted a large army quarantine. His mother was an army nurse deployed to the field hospital on the island.
The remains of approximately 3000 atomic bombing sacrifices brought to Ninoshima have been found since 1947, many of them were dug from bomb shelters. Thousands of more people are thought to be missing.
After learning the remains of the atomic bomb that was shot by the girl and the baby he met after the explosion, he went to the island twice to pray in a Cenotaph, who commemorated the dead.
Orum I feel they expect me to visit, ”Sora said.
“When I pray, I talk about the names of my relatives and tell them I’m good and tell them happy stories.”
During a recent visit to Sora in the nursing home, the researcher Kayo brought a plastic box containing his baby jaw containing small teeth and skull pieces he found in Ninoshima. The bones were carefully placed on a swelling cotton bed.
Kayo said he wanted to show Sora’s fragile pieces from a child who met 80 years ago and a child of the same age. He finally plans to take the bones to a Buddhist temple.
Sora prayed quietly while looking at the bones in the box and then spoke to them.
“I’m very happy to finally be in,” he said. “Welcome back.”
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