An Orphan Camp on Atomic Bombed Land

Hiroshima Peace Program TSS ARCHIVE PROJECT
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An Orphan Camp on Atomic Bombed Land~ Yorito Kamikuri, Father of 2,000 ~
Broadcast schedule: 9:50 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Friday, August 6, 2021
Program Contents
“I believed that the only way to live was to steal like this or kill people and steal their money to survive.”
Feelings spewed by an “A-bomb orphan” after the atomic bomb robbed him of his family.
According to a survey conducted by the then Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1948, the number of orphans in Japan was approximately 120,000. Hiroshima Prefecture had the largest number at 5,975, surpassing any larger metropolitan area.
The atomic bombing 76 years ago instantly scorched the entire city of Hiroshima. Just two months later, amidst the ruins, a 26-year-old young man set up a camp for orphans with his own money. He named it Hiroshima Shinsei Gakuen, meaning Hiroshima new life school. The facility filled up with A-bomb orphans, war orphans, repatriated orphans, and many other children who had lost their families in the war.
The name of this young man who founded the facility was Yorito Kamikuri (who lived to be 76 years old). It all started with his own experience of the atomic bombing. On August 6, 1945, Kamikuri witnessed groaning people who had collapsed from exhaustion and crying babies clinging to their mothers who had taken their last breath. He would later spend his whole life regretting not being able to do anything.
This program traces the unknown history of a facility that once stood on scorched land, as it conveys the wishes for peace that has brought us to the present, and sheds light on the fact that many children were at the mercy of war.
Sayuri Fukai, Director
My encounter with Hiroshima Shinsei Gakuen, currently in Higashihiroshima City, was about five years ago when I heard about a facility that was successfully rehabilitating boys and girls through group sports instruction. When I went to visit the school, I noticed many war-related objects such as a cenotaph for the victims of the atomic bombing, A-bombed rocks, and an ossuary. The facility had originally been in Motomachi, near the hypocenter, but moved to its current location.
I am a third-generation hibakusha from Naka-ku, Hiroshima City, but I had never heard of Shinsei Gakuen before. I also conducted a survey of hibakusha groups across Japan, to which most responded that they had also never heard of the name. As I continued my search, I was surprised to find that there was very little information about how orphans lived after the war. Why did Kamikuri reach out to these children at a time when it must have been hard enough just for him to survive?
Conflicts and war continue to occur even now, some say that we are facing the greatest challenges since WWII. It begs the question, are we able to hear the “small voices” calling for help, as Kamikuri did? This might be the ideal opportunity to think about it.
Through the interviews, I was reminded that in conflict, those who get hurt, those who do the hurting, and those able to reach out to help others are all human beings. I felt an urgency to tell the history of the love and hardships of one unknown citizen, who worked hard to rise from the ruins of an atomic bombed city. I felt the need to do so before the facts get buried in the past. This is why, using the few remaining references that I could find as clues, I created this program.
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