There had been one air-raid warning, and then the all-clear sounded; the sky was cloudless and blue. “Then there was the sound of a plane, very loud, so I looked outside. “Our house was on the tramline that led down to the port,” she remembers, “and every day I’d stand in front of the house with my daughter and wave the flag at the soldiers climbing on the trams. Conditions were getting worse, and we were always short of food, but we never believed that Japan could lose.” It was easier to believe this in Hiroshima than in most cities because, mysteriously, it had suffered almost no conventional bombing; but the longer the war went on, the more inevitable air raids seemed.On 6 August, Fumiko Kihara got up at dawn, saw to the baby, and started preparing breakfast. Her husband was on his way home from the post office, where he had worked all night. But plainly she was an unusual young woman: clever, practical and tough.On top of everything else, the Kiharas frequently had to put up soldiers who were billeted with Hiroshima families on their way to the front.
When Fumiko was 22, he married her.Her new family, the Kiharas, was comfortably middle-class but, as the war intensified, life became harder for everyone in Hiroshima Their first daughter, Kumiko, was born in 1942. At the same time, an elderly postmaster became sick, and Mrs Kihara was given the unprecedented responsibility of taking over his position. Suddenly, she had a husband, a baby, and a post office to look after. “Gomen nasai, gomen nasai,” she says, bowing as she explains this, meaning: I’m sorry, I’m sorry – it sounds as if I’m blowing my own trumpet. She won first prize: Fumiko, the flowerseller’s daughter, was now officially the fastest abacus operator in the Empire. A young colleague at the Post Office who was sent to mind her on her visit to the capital reported to his friends that “we have a genius in Hiroshima”. She became a champion manipulator of the soroban, or oriental abacus, the frame of rods and beads still seen in old-fashioned Japanese shops .She was more than fast, she was a whirlwind and, after representing Hiroshima in regional competitions, she went on to Tokyo and the national abacus championships.
Mrs Kihara is a hibakusha, a word coined soon after the bombing. At the time it was a euphemism, but over 50 years it has entered the language as a symbol of suffering, injustice and even pride. It means “explosion-affected person”.Her own parents grew and sold flowers from a little wooden house with a big, colourful garden. “Hiroshima people are forgetting things that they ought to remember There are so many big new buildings in the city centre. I look at the Atomic Dome, and every year it seems to get smaller and smaller.”
Shoji’s mother, Fumiko Kihara, is 82, the same age as the Atomic Dome. Like her contemporary, she’s a little age-worn and forgetful. It was built between 1913 and 1915 as the Industrial Promotion Hall, one of the proudest and most robust Western-style buildings in the city.
On 6 August 1945 at 8.15am, the atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” exploded almost directly overhead, incinerating at a stroke its 30 occupants. Recently, at a cost of Y200m (pounds 1.41m), the Atomic Dome has been renovated and reinforced so that it will stand forever, according to the plaque in front of it, as an eternal embodiment of the city’s slogan, “No More Hiroshimas” But Shoji Kihara is not so sure. Somehow the building, minus its roofs and the copper cladding on its great dome, remained standing, to become a symbol both of Hiroshima’s ruin and its survival. In our full investigation, we have talked to the man involved and he says he was keen to see Pedroso jump.”.