On August 6, the first atomic bomb went off in a small, rural island just south of Hiroshima, where thousands of the dead and dying were transported by military vessels with crews trained for suicide attack missions.
Only a few hundred people were still alive when the field hospital closed on August 25 due to poor medical care, according to historical records. In chaotic and rushy operations, they were interred in various locations.
People in the area are still searching for the remains of the missing despite decades of a desire to hold accountable and honor the victims and to comfort survivors who are still betrayed by their loved ones’ memories.
Rebun Kayo, a researcher from Hiroshima University who frequently travels to Ninoshima to search for remains, said, “The war is not over for these people until that happens.”
Kayo has been digging for remains since 2018 on a hillside plot in the forest since a recent morning. He sprayed insect repellent onto rubber boots, a helmet, and a helmet.
Kayo carefully began shoveling gravel from a bathtub-sized hole after praying and planting chrysanthemum flowers. He sifted the soil for bone fragments when it was sufficiently soft.
Around 100 bone fragments have been discovered by Kayo, including pieces from a baby’s jawbone and pieces of skull. The resident of Ninoshima whose father had witnessed soldiers burying bodies transported to the island by boat from Hiroshima 80 years ago suggested that he find the bones there.
Near the hypocentre, which is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Ninoshima, were the city and tens of thousands of people killed by the US atomic attack on Hiroshima. By the year’s end, 140 000 people had died.
Within two hours of the blast, Hiroshima’s island’s Number 2 quarantine center’s victims began arriving by boat from there. Its hospitals are filled with patients who have suffered severe injuries. On the island, there were many fatalities.
Eiko Gishi, a 18-year-old boat trainee, was in charge of transporting patients from the pier to the first-aid quarantine area. He and other soldiers used bamboo to create cups and trays.
Gishi wrote in recollections written by the city years later that soldiers first handled bodies slowly and slowly before being overwhelmed by the large number of decomposing corpses and using an incinerator originally built for military horses.
Even this was insufficient, and bodies were soon discovered as they ran out of space, eventually ending up in burial mounds and bomb shelters.
In 1992, a former army medic, Yoshitaka Kohara, wrote, “I was speechless from the shock when I saw the first group of patients that landed on the island.”
He claimed that while I was used to seeing many seriously injured soldiers on the front lines, I had never witnessed anyone in such a cruel and tragic state. It was a “inferno,” the author said.
Only about 500 people were left alive at the facility after it was closed, so Kohara remained there until it was over. When he explained that the war had ended on August 15 to the surviving patients, he said, “Tears flew from their crushed eyes, and nobody said a word.”
The island was used to train suicide attackers using wooden boats meant for deployment in the Philippine Sea and Okinawa, according to Kazuo Miyazaki, a historian and guide from Ninoshima.
In the atomic bombing, Miyazaki, 77, lost several relatives. He has first-hand knowledge of the events that occurred on Ninoshima, a significant army quarantine facility during Japan’s militaristic expansion, from neighbors and relatives. His mother worked at the island’s field hospital, which was a military hospital.
Since 1947, about 3, 000 of the remains of those who were brought to Ninoshima by atomic bombs have been discovered.
