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2017 Peace Memorial Hall Special Exhibition
"The Twinkling Stars Know Everything:
Collection of Memories by Fathers and Mothers of the Annihilated
First-Year Hiroshima Itchu Students"
Period: January 1 (Mon.)－December 29 (Sat.), 2018
Place: Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims B1F
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At the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, a special exhibition is held every year on a set theme and A-bomb testimonies are introduced, to communicate the reality of the bombing.
This year, the exhibition is about the memoirs contained in a book, The Twinkling Stars Know Everything: A Collection of Memories by Fathers and Mothers of the Annihilated First-Year Hiroshima Itchu Students.
The exhibition has the same title as the book.
Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Daiichi Junior High School (Itchu) was established in 1877, and as it was renowned as one of the most prestigious schools in the prefecture that produces many people with promising talent, it was a school that many young boys aspired to go to.
First-year students who started at the school in April 1945 were mobilized together with older students, as the war conditions became tougher.
On the morning of August 6, the first-year students gathered together, and after the attendance check and some explanations about the work they would do, odd-numbered classes were sent to clean up building demolition sites in the area behind city hall, and even-numbered classes were told to wait in the classroom.
They experienced the bombing at
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The Twinkling Stars Know Everything:
A Collection of Memories by Fathers
and Mothers of the Annihilated First-
Year Hiroshima Itchu Students
(Publisher: Masu Shobo / August 3,
1954)
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point-blank range, less than one kilometer from the hypocenter when the bomb was dropped.
Some of the students who were working outside died immediately, most of them suffered burns and serious injuries, and even the students who somehow managed to make their way home all died.
Many of the students who were trapped under the school building, which was completely destroyed, also died.
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Parents of the children who died and others involved with Hiroshima Itchu school gathered at the
memorial monument (August 1946 / Photograph: Syoyo Akita) |
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In the 3-screen theater that is the central part of the exhibition, a video of A-bomb drawings together with narration is screened, showing the memories of the children in those days and their final days.
These are seven selected memoirs written by the parents and an older sister of first-year students who died in the bombing.
The final memoirs of the seven is by Toshie Fujino, and it moves many visitors who come to the exhibition:
"There was absolutely no change in the beautiful sky from the previous night.
I remembered my son said 'I hope that war will stop. There should be no war on the earth.'
I thought that these words were not from 14-years-old boy, but from God.
Hirohisa and his friends of Itchu who died together with him…I felt that the spirits of all these boys had risen up into the sky and become stardust, hoping that such a disaster would never again occur on the earth.
I felt that they are watching over us quietly."
At the venue there are displays of the clothes that the students were wearing when the bomb hit, a notebook in which one of the Itchu teachers, Mr. Goro Toda, had recorded the details of the situation at the time of the bombing and is kept in the Peace Memorial Hall, and other articles, in addition to the 26 notes.
The exhibition video may be viewed in the Memorial Hall Library as well as on the homepage>>, and includes footage filmed in the past as well.
The video will be available for rental as a DVD for peace studies.
Please contact the Peace Memorial Hall if you would like to borrow the video.
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