SUZUKI Kimiko

A third-grade student at Fukuromachi Elementary School, Kimiko was cheerful and mischievous. She was close with her 11-year-old brother Hideaki, a sixth-grade student remembered as kind, smart and well liked.

At the time of the nuclear bombing, both siblings were at school: Kimiko out in the schoolyard, and Hideaki inside the concrete school building. Kimiko was badly burned all over her body by the bomb’s searing heat.

Hideaki, who did not have any visible injuries, carried his little sister on his back to a relief station about 2 kilometres away. “I’ll come back and get you,” Hideaki told Kimiko, who tried to show her spirit even as they parted. This was the last time anyone in the family saw her; Kimiko’s remains were never found.

An uncle later found Hideaki at a different relief station and brought him home. However, days later he died from the bomb’s radiation, suffering a sudden, severe nosebleed.

Before the bombing, Kimiko’s father, Rokuro, had run a barber shop in downtown Hiroshima. Relatives found the bones of Kimiko’s three-year-old brother Mamoru and one-year-old sister Akiko in the burned ruins of the shop.

Their father was also seriously injured and soon died at a relief station. Their mother, who had suffered burns but survived, killed herself by jumping into a well after learning of the deaths of everyone else in her family.

Rokuro’s hobby had been taking photographs, especially of his children. Many of his photos were later donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum by his nephew.