In this series, The Asahi Shimbun traces the impact on children of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Their stories are told through interviews with their families, and from the memoirs of survivors and records compiled by Hiroshima city. The photos were provided by the bereaved families. Some of the images were colorized using artificial intelligence technology with the help of Hiroshi Ishikawa, professor at Waseda University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering, whose team developed the technology.

This is the first installment in the series.

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About one month before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima, education officials, military representatives and officers from the Hiroshima prefectural and city governments were gathered in a conference room at the prefectural office.

The discussion was heated.

They were asked to decide whether first- and second-year junior high school students should be mobilized for demolition work. The children would help to pull down wooden houses to prevent the spread of fires after air raids.

The discussion is recorded in the memoir of the late Takeshi Hasegawa, a former prefectural official. His text is in the Hiroshima Prefectural Archives.

Air raids were targeting large cities across Japan. It was an “urgent situation to demolish densely populated houses as soon as possible and be fully prepared to prevent fires,” Hasegawa wrote.

Many students had already been mobilized for work in places such as munition factories. There was a shortage of labor for demolition work.

Younger, unmobilized schoolchildren were potential candidates.

However, Hasegawa noted that if an air raid occurred during the work, there would be “no place to evacuate” large numbers of students.

School officials were “unanimously opposed to involving the children in dangerous work as much as possible.”

But military officials were adamant. It was an “urgent matter that could not wait even a day under the disaster prevention plan,” Hasegawa wrote.

Eventually, officials reached an agreement. Children would be mobilized by increasing the number of teachers accompanying them and ending their duty two hours earlier than advocates wanted.

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On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay was heading for Hiroshima with an atomic bomb aboard.

That morning, about 8,000 children set out for central Hiroshima. Among them was 13-year-old Masumi Yamamoto, a junior high school first-grader.

At 8:15 a.m. the atomic bomb was dropped.

Around 6,000 of the children are believed to have died. Many of them were first- and second-year junior high school students.

SACHIE’S STORY

“I’m leaving,” 13-year-old Sachie Morimoto said cheerfully as she left home that morning. She was among the children heading for central Hiroshima, mobilized with her classmates for demolition work.

At 8 a.m., she was taking a break and sitting with friends. Suddenly there was a commotion.

“Three parachutes.”

“How beautiful.”

“I want to see them too,” Sachie said. She stepped forward and looked up.

There was a bright flash.

At the time the atomic bomb was dropped, the U.S. military also dropped devices attached to parachutes to measure the force of the explosion.

Sachie found herself trapped under the gate of a temple. When she squirmed out, her friends were screaming. Their eyes had bulged out, and their hair and clothes were burned.

“Dad, help me.”

“Mom, help me.”

“Teacher, help me.”

Sachie squatted, but the heat was so ferocious she could not bear it.

She found that two friends had not damaged their eyes. They decided to evacuate.

“Let’s run as far as we can,” Sachie said. But one of them collapsed, saying “I’m going to die.”

Sachie seized the other friend’s hand. “Let’s not get separated,” she said.

They went down to the river, where the second friend fell into the water, saying, “I’m going to die.”

She dragged her friend to dry land, and passed out.

When Sachie awoke, a soldier noticed her and took her to an aid station.

She was reunited with her mother a few days later. She had few burns but had a fever and diarrhea due to exposure to radiation.

Seven days after the bombing, Sachie died.

Her last words were, “Dad, Mom, sister, thank you for everything. I'll go ahead. Goodbye, goodbye.”

At Sachie’s girls' school in Hiroshima, 541 first- and second-year students were mobilized for building demolition work. None survived.

Her mother later gave the school a memoir in which she related Sachie’s story.

SKIN BURNED AWAY

Masumi Yamamoto was among the students who had gone to the city center to carry out demolition work. He, too, was exposed to the blast and badly disfigured.

Two hours later, Masumi made it back home.

“His whole skin had peeled off, and there was a red, naked body standing there,” said his father, Yasuo. “If I did not have intuition, I probably would have denied that he was my child.”

(His testimony is contained in “Stars Are Watching,” edited by Masayuki Akita.)

Masumi’s mother put the injured boy to bed at around 11 p.m. As she did so, Masumi asked: “Is there really a pure land?”

“Yes, there is. It's a peaceful place where there is no war,” his mother replied.

Masumi continued, “Does it have ‘yokan’ (sweet jellied adzuki-bean paste)?”

“There is yokan or whatever you want,” the mother said.

“Oh, then I'll die.” At dawn, Masumi passed away.

‘HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ME?’

Hiroko Yoshimura, 14, was a second-year girls' school student. She was a cheerful girl who often used to whistle.

Hiroko, too, was exposed to the blast while assigned to a demolition team.

With no doctors or medicine available, her family members tended to her injuries themselves, removing maggots from her wounds.

“It hurts, it hurts,” she screamed.

Eleven days after the bombing, Hiroko called out, “Mom ...”

Her mother rushed to her, but Hiroko was dead.

“How much pain she must have endured,” her mother wrote in a memoir 30 years after the war.

Hiroko's younger sister, Junko Kayashige, now 84, survived the bombing. She later taught art in Hiroshima, where she shared her experiences with children.

When Kayashige sees the keloid scars on her hands, she is reminded of her sister.

“I feel as if she is scolding me, saying, ‘Have you forgotten me already? Me, who was eaten alive by maggots,’” she said. “That's why I can't stay silent during the summer in Hiroshima.”

(This article was written by Tetsuaki Otaki and Yukiko Nagatomi.)