HIROSHIMA--When the tram started running again here only three days after the U.S. atomic bombing, 14-year-old Satoko Sasaguchi served as the conductor for the somber ride amid the devastated city.

All the passengers were silent. When Sasaguchi told those who were going to pay the fare that it was free of charge, they thanked her.

“Looking back now, it’s amazing how we could manage to resume operation,” said Sasaguchi, 89, who resides in the city's Nishi Ward, recalling her experience on Aug. 9, 1945. “But we were all desperate to carry out our job at hand.”

Exactly 75 years later, the No. 653 tram, which survived the atomic bombing, ran along the same route the first tram took with Sasaguchi aboard when the service resumed in a limited section. 

The tram departed Hiroshima Electric Railway Co.’s Senda tram shed, which is located next to the company’s headquarters in the city’s Naka Ward, and spent about an hour running between Hiroden Nishi-Hiroshima and Hiroshima stations.

About a 1.5-kilometer section between Hiroden Nishi-Hiroshima and Tenmacho stations overlapped the route taken by the first tram that resumed service in 1945.

Of 1,241 employees of Hiroshima Electric Railway, 185 were killed in the atomic bombing and 108 of its 123 cars were destroyed or damaged, according to the company’s history.

The No. 653 tram was heavily damaged in the bombing, but resumed operation after being repaired.

Although the tram was temporarily retired in 2006, it started running again in 2015 only during summer under a joint project of Hiroshima Electric Railway and RCC Broadcasting Co.

Usually, residents ride on the No. 653 tram during its annual summer operation, but it ran without passengers this year as a precaution against novel coronavirus infections. Instead, the company live-streamed footage of the scenery as seen from a tram window online.

SCHEDULED TO WORK ON AUG. 6, 1945

In April 1945, four months before the bombing, Sasaguchi entered a women’s vocational school set up by Hiroshima Electric Railway to make up for a shortage of drivers and conductors since most of the men in Japan at the time were called up for military service.

Sasaguchi’s sister Kikuko was two years older than her and enrolled in the school the previous year. At their parents’ home in Omori, Shimane Prefecture, which is now Oda city, the sister told Sasaguchi that she could study while working on a tram, prompting her to follow in her sister’s footstep.

Excited by the big city life of Hiroshima, Sasaguchi started living in a school dormitory with her sister and practiced greeting passengers and learned the names of tram stations during classes.

After a one-week probation period, she rode on a tram wearing a white “hachimaki” headband. As the tram approached a local Gokokujinja, a shrine for the war dead, she would ask her passengers through a microphone to offer a prayer. She would push her way through a crowd on her tram to punch passengers’ tickets.

Sasaguchi was scheduled to work an afternoon shift on Aug. 6, 1945. While she was having breakfast in her dormitory that morning, she saw a flash from the atomic bomb detonating about 2.5 kilometers away.

She took refuge at a sister school that was distant from central Hiroshima and gave aid to people who were injured in the bombing.

NO NEED TO CHARGE PASSENGERS FARE

On Aug. 8, 1945, Sasaguchi's teacher told her surprising news.

“Tram services will resume from tomorrow. Serve as the conductor,” the teacher said.

The teen headed to Koi Station, the current Hiroden Nishi-Hiroshima Station. A supervisor at the site instructed her to ride on a tram that was going to run between Koi and Nishi-Tenmacho stations and added that she did not need to charge passengers the fare that day.

The resumption of the tram services contributed to the reconstruction of the city.

“The area was all burned down, but we were desperate (to resume operation),” said Sasaguchi, recalling the difficult days after the bombing.

Seventy-five years later, as more new models of low-floor trams have been introduced, the only remaining trams that survived the bombing are the Nos. 651 and 652 that are still in operation and the No. 653, which runs only during the annual event.

“I hope the trams will keep running forever. They are an essential means of transportation in Hiroshima,” said Sasaguchi.