X: The City's Schools
World War II became known in Japan as "Everybody's War." Without complaint, every man, woman and child was drafted into its furtherance. Students of the secondary schools, preparatory schools and colleges, of course, but even the older elementary school children were impressed into such auxiliary military duties as building warships, making ammunition, and packaging shoes. In April of 1941, elementary schools had been renamed "Citizens' Schools" and compulsory education increased from six to eight years. Then, in August of 1944, a general mobilization of students was directed and in November, the Ministry of the Interior ordered the house demolition for firebreaks. As a result, on the day of the bomb, 8,911 children were engaged in this work. 5,618 died.
One-third mile from hypocenter, at Nakajima Honmachi, 343 eighth-grade boys of the Prefectural Middle School were lined up for roll call. All died instantly, and it was impossible to recover, or even distinguish, their bones.
A half mile from the center, at Hachobori, 514 7th and 8th grade boys of the Sotoku Middle School, and seven of their teachers died while engaged in the demolition work. Only two or three survived.
360 first and second year girl students of the Yamanaka College Preparatory School, (12th and 13th Graders) and three of their teachers were working at Zakoba, two-thirds of a mile away. Only one student, Ritsuko Kamada, survived. She writes, "I was on the roof of the wrecked house, removing tiles, when suddenly, 'Pah!' came the flash. As I threw myself prone, along with the shock wave everything became black dark. I thought the sun had gone away. My classmates were crying and screaming, and when I could see again, all their shirts were burned away, and they had on only bloomers."
Elementary "Citizen's Schools"
At Honkawa Citizen's School, a quarter mile from the or Teacher Katsuko Horie caught the flash in front of the teachers' room. Glass pierced her face and body until she was covered with blood. She ran to the Motoyasu River, and clutching at the stones of the retaining wall, watched the bodies of other teachers and children float past. At school that day there had been only 218 children who had not been evacuated to the country. All of these and most of the teachers were killed. At Fukuromachi Citizen's School, three children who happened to be in the basement were saved. At Nakajima and Hirose and many other schools, most died. There were 39 Citizen's Schools in the city, 15 of which were completely destroyed, 12 remained usable, but the balance suffered varying degrees of damage. Of the 30 middle schools, only one could be used. The seven colleges and preparatory schools were all destroyed.
Evacuation
In July of 1944 the order had been given to evacuate all children from the third through the sixth grades. The census on May 1st, 1945 showed 41,638 such children in Hiroshima. 17,471 were sent to relatives outside the city, and 8,365 were evacuated in groups to live with their teachers in such places as country temples. For various reasor including sickness, however, 15,802 children remained Hiroshima. These, with the first and second graders, were divided into small groups and dispersed among temples and other gathering places for their lessons. Large numbers of such elementary school children thus fell victim bomb.
In April, over 300 pupils of this age group from the Takeya Citizen's School had been evacuated to five small towns. At Kabe, one day, Masafumi Takai and Kango Kodama took their classes to call on a benevolent townsman. He gave each child a dried persimmon, and since sweets were rare at the time, the children were overjoyed.
The cold in Kake seemed to strike into the body. Rice was so scarce that what appeared in the children's rice bowls was watered down to a thin gruel in which floated white potatoes. On August 6th, Mr. Kodama had taken his 5th and 6th graders to gather apples on the mountain side, and on the way they saw the sudden flash. Fifteen minutes later, black smoke billowed over and around Hiroshima, and soon pieces of paper came fluttering down. They were scorched pages of a Buddhist Scripture.
Schools had great difficulty in reopening after the war. In May of 1946, the first classes were set up out of doors on the grounds of the burned-out Noborimachi School. Then, in the gutted concrete building at Fukuromachi Citizen's School, three teachers began classes with 37 children in June, and by July 15, ten classrooms had been provided in a barrack-like building. However, teaching materials were almost unobtainable.