FUKUTOME Minako

In 1942, Minako’s mother, Shina, left Nagasaki for Shanghai due to her husband’s work. Thinking her children would be better off staying in Nagasaki, she left Minako and her elder brother with their aunt and uncle.

Cared for by her aunt and uncle as if she were their own child, Minako enjoyed school life at Shiroyama Elementary School.

At the time of the nuclear bombing, Minako was reading a book on the second floor of her aunt and uncle’s house in Nagasaki’s Takenokubo neighbourhood, roughly 1 kilometre from the hypocentre. The bomb’s shockwave destroyed the house. Minako sustained a serious injury to her head and was trapped in the rubble.

Her aunt, Tsue, and brother had no visible injuries. They desperately pulled Minako out of the wreckage and carried her to an acquaintance's house.

Minako died nine days later, on 18 August. It was her 10th birthday. Tsue, in tears, dressed Minako’s body in a kimono and applied light makeup to her face.

Another girl, 12-year-old Oshima Chikako, had died the day before in a neighbouring house. The two girls were cremated together in a nearby vegetable field. Chikako was dressed in a kimono as well. On the evening of 19 August, they prepared a pyre of wood and laid Minako and Chikako on top of it, folding their hands neatly over their chests.

Just at that moment, a junior high school student named Matsuzoe Hiroshi happened to pass by. He had sustained a slight burn injury from the bomb’s heat at his home 3.8 kilometres north of the hypocentre and was returning home from seeing a pharmacy student about the injury.

Hiroshi was struck by the sight of the two girls in beautiful kimonos and came to take a closer look, wondering how they had died.

Soon the pyre was set alight, and Hiroshi fled, not wanting to watch the girls burn. He didn’t know their names, but the beautiful, mournful scene was etched in his mind forever.

In 1974, Hiroshi learned that a television station had put out a call for artwork related to the bombing. He had always wanted to paint the girls in kimonos, and knew the time had come. Completing the painting all in one night, Hiroshi shed tears as he reflected on how the lovely, innocent girls had fallen victim to the nuclear bomb.

In 1988, Hiroshi ran into a former neighbour in a hospital waiting room by chance. The woman was able to identify the girls in his painting as Minako and Chikako, and from there Hiroshi pieced together more of their story.

Minako’s mother, Shina, had learned of her daughter’s death after returning to Japan from Shanghai. Upon learning of the painting, she was grateful that her daughter had been preserved in such a way.

Hiroshi’s painting, A Sad Farewell, is on display at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. He also published a picture book titled Girls in Kimonos.

Shina hoped to also commemorate her daughter and the other victims with a statue; a sculpture titled Children Trusting in the Future was placed in the museum’s rooftop garden when the current building was opened in 1996.

In Nagasaki and beyond, the image of Minako and Chikako in kimonos has become a well-known and poignant symbol of nuclear tragedy and the wish for a peaceful world.