Photo/Illutration A service planning diagram for the then-Japanese National Railways’ Tohoku Line between Ichinoseki and Shiriuchi stations indicates that trains operated despite severe delays on Aug. 15, 1945. (Provided by the Railway Museum)

SAITAMA—Japan continued to operate its rail network even after Emperor Hirohito for the first time addressed his subjects through radio at noon on Aug. 15, 1945, to announce the nation’s surrender in World War II, documents show.

A service planning diagram being on display for the first time at the Railway Museum here shows that Japanese National Railways trains were running on that day despite delays and suspensions apparently caused by fuel and crew shortages.

“I hope those who view the diagram will appreciate the role and purpose of the railways that continued to operate even when the public was uncertain about what the future held,” said Satoshi Okuhara, chief curator at the museum.

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Chief curator Satoshi Okuhara explains how trains operated at the time of Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, at the Railway Museum in Saitama on July 22. (Masafumi Ueda)

The diagram shows the operational status of trains on the Tohoku Line between Ichinoseki station in Iwate Prefecture and Shiriuchi (present-day Hachinohe) station in Aomori Prefecture for Aug. 14-16, 1945.

It was found when East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) employees were organizing materials at a company facility in Iwate Prefecture around autumn 2019.

Museum curators and JR East representatives said they had never seen JNR’s train schedule for Aug. 15, 1945.

The horizontal axis shows the time and the vertical axis denotes the stations, with train movements represented by red and blue diagonal lines.

The chart dated Aug. 15 shows rippling and jagged diagonal lines all over it, indicating that trains operated with severe delays.

There are also yellow lines representing train suspensions here and there.

Okuhara said JNR, which was privatized into JR East and other companies in 1987, was running short of coal to power its trains and that skilled drivers and other engineers had ended up on battlefields.

“It (JNR) was barely able to keep up with its operations,” Okuhara said.

He added that any delay caused a chain reaction further down the line because many tracks were single lines back then.

The chart dated Aug. 16 is not on display, but it also shows numerous diagonal lines, he said.

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Train tickets around 1947 are half the size of their original versions due to a paper shortage. (Provided by the Railway Museum)

On display near the diagram is a panel introducing a section from “Jikokuhyo Showa-shi” (Showa history of timetables) by travel writer Shunzo Miyawaki (1926-2003).

Miyawaki describes a scene in which he listens to Hirohito’s announcement with his father and sees a JNR train at Imaizumi Station on the Yonesaka Line in Yamagata Prefecture on Aug. 15, 1945.

Under a scorching midsummer sun, “people streamed into (an open space in front of the station) in silence as noon approached, gathering around a radio in a half circle,” he wrote.

People straightened themselves and bowed their heads. For the first time, they heard the emperor’s reedy voice through static as he delivered the speech with a unique intonation. Hirohito, known posthumously as Emperor Showa, died in 1989 aged 87.

“People remained standing in silence like sticks even after the broadcast was over,” Miyawaki wrote. “The train was running even though time had stopped.”

Watching how the train “ignored the historical moment” to keep running as if nothing had happened, the author continued: “The time that had stopped in me started moving again.”

A special exhibition titled “150-Year History of Railways and Tourism in Japan” is being held at the Railway Museum in Saitama’s Omiya Ward to celebrate the 150th anniversary of railway operations in this country.

It features documents and photos to introduce changes in the relationship between railway operations and the Japanese people’s travel and transportation habits from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) to the present day.

The event will run until Jan. 30, but the service planning diagram dated Aug. 15 is on display only during the first part that ends Oct. 24.

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A close-up of a service planning diagram for the then-Japanese National Railways’ Tohoku Line between Ichinoseki and Shiriuchi stations on Aug. 15, 1945 (Provided by the Railway Museum)

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