XIV: Aftermath
On August 15th, Japan acceded to the Potsdam Declaration and the war came to an end. The first American military men to enter Hiroshima were a Colonel Renoir and two Negro captains. On meeting with some 21 officials of the Prefectural and National Governments, they wore unassuming air and offered them all cigarettes. The Americans were not in the least playing the heavy victor, according to the September 27th entry of the Prefectural Administration records. However, it is reported that later on, some occupation soldiers, swaggering about among the remains of the city and turning over shards of tiles, picked up whitened bones and carried them off as souvenirs.
In Hiroshima, only ruins remained. The life of the people was hard. Flies, fleas and lice abounded. Returning soldiers and evacuees for the most part found no homes; those protected from the weather by roughly thrown-up shacks were the fortunate ones, but on the night of September 17, a typhoon destroyed even these shelters. When the typhoon season was over, autumn was already upon the people, and gathering together wrecked timbers groups of them warmed themselves by bonfires. Silent, they sat staring vacantly into the flames.
Blue fox fire burned here and there every night and the shocking prediction was spoken around, "For 70 years, no vegetation !" This was proved false, however, when by the end of August the burned fields were already turning green with new grass. It was called "the life saver" for it served both to reassure the stricken people and to extend their scanty diet. Carefully gathered, it was mixed into dumplings as a substitute for rice. At Eba these were sold as "Eba dango."
About that time, the Occupation forces distributed a large amount of canned goods. On opening the cans, the ole found only cherries, but deciding these were easier to eat than grass, at least, they shared them around and appeased a little of their hunger. Some time later, GHQ began regular distributions of flour, which continued for two years.
In the meantime, however, famine spread day by day. Delivery of rationed rice was often delayed, or failed altogether. As sweet and white potatoes, squash and other rice substitutes grew scarcer, the people fended off starvation by bartering clothing and other possessions for food.
The city authorities and suburban youth associations, concerned over the food emergency, distributed sweet potato, corn and pumpkin sprouts and seedlings, encouraging the citizens to plant even a six-foot square of garden. In addition, the black market stalls offered cucumber, onion and eggplant seedlings. Many people planted around their shacks. Having no work, they spent their days "stretching their necks" and waiting for the harvest.
Two years later, the cash expenditure per household in January-February of 1947 was measured in 26 cities. Hiroshima ranked 6th among the 26 cities surveyed whereas in ratio of cash expended for food, Hiroshima ranked first.
The Black Market
Under the circumstances, it was natural that black markets should spring up. They sold rice, salt, sugar, soy sauce, sake, tobacco and clothing. Soon after demobilization, clothing and blankets from military storehouses had been distributed to disaster victims, and in the face of the coming cold of winter, were undoubtedly a strong factor in the recovery of the stricken city.
However, some of this clothing was also released for legal sale, and a great deal became immediately available through extra-legal channels. Along with that which desperate people had traded for food, it was being bought and sold at stalls in front of Hiroshima Station by August 20th.
By December there were more than 400 such black market shops in the city
Food was rationed, and rationed items were also for sale there, most of doubtful origin and composition, and costly far beyond the limits of government price controls. Soy sauce often proved to be colored salt water, and cigarettes to be made up from shreds of discarded butts.
Little by little, disorder spread, rules were forgotten, and finally gambling began. The black market became the thieves' market and underground gang violence reared its head. Within the gangs were even some who only a few months before and been looked up to as heroes, those air force men trained as suicide pilots.
A City Revives
Slowly, however, life and function returned to Hiroshima. Not long after the bomb dropped there were 83,000 people in the city; a half year later they had increased to 169,000 and by July of 1946, to 185,805. Some attempt was made to keep the number down, in view of the food shortage, but people returning from the army and from abroad came looking for their homes, or just for some place to live, and crowded into the outer areas where houses still remained standing.
The Prefecture distributed lumber and glass for building homes. Military warehouses were released as living quarters by the order of the prefectural government in December. In February of 1946, the Governor called together a group of twenty religious and professional leaders to discuss restoration of the city, and by May, a plan had been drawn up for a newly-born Hiroshima. It included 28 miles of main-stem highways ranging from 65 to 325 feet in width, and lined with trees. In Memory
In August, 1949, the national government passed a law claiming Hiroshima a Peace Memorial City, and authorizing construction of a Peace Park to be designed by Kenzo Tange. Again, in July of 1952 a cenotaph was ordered, and unveiled on August 6th. It bore the inscription: "Rest in peace — the mistake shall never be repeated."
Another kind of memorial emerged by December of 1945, when the Chugoku Cultural Federation was formed. In spite of a shortage of paper and strict control of the press by GHQ, the so-called "Press Code", there was an amazing upsurge of literature, the first of which, a 48 page volume, included Sadako Kurihara's poem, "Let it be Born." It was followed by one book after another, some published at the authors' own expense, and all centering upon the one theme: the inhumanity of the nuclear attack.
On the first anniversary of the atomic bombing, memorial services were held for the victims by several religious groups and sects. However, in the second year, leaders from temples, shrines and churches came together and formed Hiroshima Prefectural Religious Association. This group resolved to hold a joint memorial ceremony every year, at what is now Peace Park. This has continued into the present year, 1971.
This brief account of the world's first atomic disaster may well close with a quotation from the Peace Declaration of Mayor Setsuo Yamada given at this twenty-sixth anniversary memorial service.
" The general situation of the world is marked by a keen armament race frantically contested by enlisting the whole scientific and technological force, thereby developing a nuclear weaponry system of growing monstrosity and diversification that has aggravated the fear of the world to the limit of its incredible destructive
"While all men are born free and equal in dignity and rights, war violates the fundamental human rights and as such is an inexcusable crime. All the more so is a modern war, inasmuch as it is clear that, if carried to the extreme, It would invite nuclear retaliations which would plunge mankind into the crisis of total annihilation.
"The wound inflicted on Hiroshima by the atom bomb of twenty-six years ago today was of far-reaching nature: the human lives deprived by it reached a quarter-million, and the survivors exposed to its radiation still live under a constant threat to their life, while its fullest effects yet lie hidden from man's knowledge. The lesson of this terrible experience teaches that the nuclear weapons should be abolished and all wars totally renounced.
"Thus we offer this proposition: Now is the time to formulate a well-defined concept on human existence; to fully realize the fact that we as inhabitants of the earth all share one and the same destiny; and by setting up a new world structure founded on the awakened consciousness of world-citizenship, to build a human community free from all wars. This will entail upon all nations of the world that they act upon the fundamental spirit in which the Japanese Constitution has renounced wars, and liquidate their military sovereignty completely by transferring it to a world organization binding mankind in solidarity. As prerequisite to this, we strongly demand immediate halting of all current wars on earth and speedy conclusion of an agreement banning the use of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, in order that the meaning of war and peace may be handed down infallibly to the coming generations, education for peace should be promoted with vigor and cogency throughout the world. This should be the absolute way to avoid the recurrence of the tragedy of Hiroshima."