5 Memorial Monument for the Hiroshima Municipal Commercial
and Shipbuilding Industry Schools
(Hiroshima Municipal Commercial School -
today: Hiroshima Municipal Commercial Senior High School)
Date of completion: August 6, 1963
Established by Hiroshima Municipal Commercial School Alumni Association Bereaved Families of the Municipal Shipbuilding Industry School
Shape
A big natural granite rock with an Epigraph (height 2m, width 3.5m).
Motive for the erection
To pray for the happiness in the next world for the students and employees who all died and to pledge never to repeat such a tragedy.
Epigraph(epitaph)
"It was indeed a thunderbolt out of the blue when on August 6, 1945 at 8:15AM our hometown Hiroshima was turned into hell on earth and distroyed in one moment by only one atomic bomb (...)" (opening)
Noteworthy characteristics
1. The school's transition
The Hiroshima Municipal Commercial School was turned into the Municipal Shipbuilding Industry School by governmental decision during the last stages of the war. After the war, the Shipbuilding Industry School was closed. Later, it became the Hiroshima Municipal First Commercial School, and in 1948, it became the Hiroshima Municipal Commercial High School.
2. Victims of the Municipal Shipbuilding Industry School
When the bomb dropped, 195 first year students and 5 employees of the Municipal Shipbuilding Industry School students were working on building demolition 500 meters from the hypocenter in the vicinity of Seiganji Temple in Zaimoku-cho. Except for a student who felt ill while working and went to a hospital, all perished. Because of the proximity to the hypocenter, their remains were virtually unidentifiable. Nothing was found except for lunch boxes or burnt clothing fragments here and there.
The school lost a total of 270 people, including those working at other mobilization sites and those exposed on their way to school.
