IMANAKA Hiroko

Prior to the nuclear bombing, 17-year-old Hiroko and her family had evacuated Hiroshima for fear of US air raids. They were living in a suburb at the time of the attack.

However, Hiroko continued to enter the city each day to work at a bank, including on the morning of the bombing. Her parents spent days searching for her in the aftermath, to no avail.

“My mother couldn’t stop thinking about my sister and, until she died, would ask the family to keep a door or window open so Hiroko could get in whenever she returned home,” recounted her younger brother Keisuke, who was nine years old at the time.

The children’s father died around two months after the bombing due to his exposure to radiation.

Before the war, Hiroko and her family had lived in the Nakajima district of Hiroshima, which served as the city’s main shopping and entertainment hub. Where the home once stood is now the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Reflecting on the bombing, Keisuke remarked in 2023: “Humans do horrific things.”