Miyajima Island Images 1946

While officially named 'Itsukushima' after its famous Shinto shrine and the even more famous torii gate that stands in the estuary mouth in front of the shrine (ranked as one of Japan's three best views), the small island that lies just off the coastline in Hiroshima Bay is more commonly referred to as Miyajima Island (which actually means "shrine island").

For my father it was known as "Paradise Island" and, although we discussed it after I returned from my visit there in 2011, by that time his recollections of it were only faint.

However, the picture above shows the beautiful little box (5-6 cm across) that my father brought back from Japan. It was only after he died that I studied it properly and realised that it depicted scenes from Miyajima Island. On the lid are carved the torii, the Senjokaku hall or pavillion, the shrine itself (the buildings on stilts to the left of the torii) and the five-storey pagoda that appear in the pictures below; which were taken by my father in 1946 and by me when I visited the Island in 2011.

On the back of this photograph he has written: "Paradise Island the Gates of Paradise".

On this: "Lens looking out to sea".

Above and below are my own photographs of the extraordinary arch of the torii gate, which is made of huge, largely unmodified tree trunks. One or more torii gates mark the approach and entrance to all Shinto shrines; here though both the gate, standing in the centre of the estuary mouth and the shrine itself which is set on stilts to stand above the high tide, are unique for being built over the water.

The trunks are massive. People push coins into the vegetation that covers the base of each trunk. Below is the view towards the land with the Itsukushima shrine standing on its stilts; here the sea can be seen in the bottom half of the picture. On the back of the photograph my father has written: "Shrine.. (and what I assume to be his interpretation of the name Itsukushima)".

On this he has written: "View of Gate from the shore".

This next photograph shows the five-storey pagoda standing next to the Senjokaku hall whose roof is also visible. Senjokaku means "pavilion of 1000 mats" in Japanese and apparently the  name describes the spaciousness of the building, as the hall is approximately the size of one thousand tradional straw-made tatami mats. My father wrote on the back: "Paradise Island 46, Temple - Buddhist"; and indeed the hall dates back to 1587 and was commissioned for the purpose of chanting Buddhist sutras for fallen soldiers by one of the three unifiers of ancient Japan, Toyotomi Hidiyoshi. Formally it is known as the Hokoku Shrine. The Five-Storied Pagoda is believed to have been built around 1407 and is also an important Buddhist site.

Some of my own photographs of the pagoda. An extraordinary structure and painted bright orange.

The great Senjokaku hall . A beautiful combination of tree lined corridors, polished wooden floors and vaulted ceilings.

The outer structure frames vistas across the little town and the wooded hills beyond (see below).

The rafters of the hall are decked with pictures, many of them faded and old. The very special representation below shows a samurai warrior together with his horse swimming across a river. This image is quite amazing and says so much about the celebration of the relationship between the man and the horse, the culture of the warrior, his basic toughness and determination. I wonder if my father saw this image when he was there himself? When I showed it to him he was clearly moved by it; he was a man who had ridden horses and who understood the imagery very well.

Hiroshima, Japan 1945

The Second World War is a big chapter in my father's life story. He joined the War in 1942, relatively late but he'd been working in an important management role for GEC Marconi, producing parts for the Halifax bomber, and they had been reluctant to let him go. This story is about part of his time in Japan, by which time he was a Major in the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

His unit beached in Normandy three days after D-Day and followed the Canadian fourth armoured division through Europe up to the German border. At that point he was pulled out to begin combined operations training that took him first to Yorkshire and then, eager for action, onto a troopship bound for India where he was due to rejoin his regiment.

When he arrived in southern India to join his regiment he took the train to the north only to find that they weren't there (!). Finally, after adventures with the Gurkhas, he went back south and soon shipped out with his troops to Singapore, eager for action. Two days before they arrived there, the Japanese army in Singapore surrendered; at this point he left his platoon on a detail to care-take the Japanese prisoners. It seems that this was when he was given a standard issue Japanese officer's sword that had been broken in two, presumably a gesture of surrender.

My father in India, 1945. He is on the right (he liked his hats too!).

From Singapore they were shipped out to Hong Kong, which also surrendered just before they arrived, for a pre-invasion massing of forces. Here they were kept aboard ship in Hong Kong harbour for most of the time, being allowed only six hours shore leave in case a rapid departure was required. At this point the Americans were in Okinawa and the Japanese were fighting a desperate rearguard action.

In preparation for invasion the Americans were conducting a firebombing campaign that destroyed many Japanese cities; on 26th July 1945 in the Potsdam declaration America, Britain and the Republic of China called for Japan's surrender, threatening an alternative of "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum and, whilst my father was on a troop ship heading for Tokyo, the United States then delivered the promised "destruction" when they dropped two nuclear bombs on Japanese cities.

American airmen dropped the bomb Little Boy on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by Fat Man over Nagasaki on 9 August. The Japanese formally surrendered a week later.


Atomic bomb mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)

My father arrived in Tokyo soon after the bombs had been dropped. He was due to go to the island of Etajima in the Inland Sea near the coast of Hiroshima City. Hiroshima was then a city of 300,000; an estimated 80,000 people were killed in the blast; tens of thousands more died within a year from radiation poisoning[1].

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay on Tinian Island before the fateful mission to drop the atomic bomb Little Boy

Little Boy in the bomb pit on Tinian island, before being loaded into Enola Gay's bomb bay.


Before they left for Etajima Island, my father's regiment trooped the colour in front of the Imperial Palace; as he put it, a metaphorical “two fingered salute” to the emperor, but also a chance to re-establish the routine of 'proper' soldiering after weeks of travelling at sea. He spoke often of the famous regimental mascot, a goat from a long line of special Royal goats that were always named "Billy", loved by all the soldiers who took any opportunity to make a fuss of the animal, which always headed up the column.

To get an idea of what this must have been like, the regimental goat can be seen in the picture below in front of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, in Tokyo somewhere between 1946 and 1948. The picture shows the white goat from Royal stock which always heads the Battalion on ceremonial parades followed by pioneers carrying picks, shovels and axes to commemorate the period in the Regiment's history when the Pioneers cleared the way into battle. 

Hanging from the collars of the tunics of the Fusiliers who are standing to attention in the foreground of the picture, down their backs, are black flashes - a distinctive characteristic to commemorate the fact the the Royal Welch was the last British Regiment to wear 'queue bags' or pigtails (and another feature that my father always commented on: "...special" he would say, "from the days when the Fusiliers were fighting in the American Civil War and missed the general command that all soldiers should remove their pigtails and the flashes. Seven inches for other ranks, nine inches for an officer, it had to hang exactly down the seam in the middle of the uniform shirt..."). (Photograph taken by a New Zealand Army photographer; from the National Library of New Zealand).

Within a day of arriving on the coast, his commanding officer (Appreece-Jones) had suggested that my father should “take a look” at the impact of the bomb on Hiroshima and gather intelligence. It is worth noting that, whilst by now the average soldier knew about the atomic bomb, there was much ignorance surrounding its detonation and after-effects. For instance, there was little awareness of the effects of radiation; remarkably there was also a growing fear that “the world would explode” - apparently there was a widespread belief that an atomic explosion could ignite the oxygen in the atmosphere and turn the world into a fireball. 

Permission to enter was gained from the Americans and with a jeep and a couple of men he carried out a reconnaissance mission and then, the day after he returned, close to 2 weeks after the bomb was dropped, he took two jeeps and men to make a fuller assessment of the situation. The Americans had used bulldozers to move the rubble off the roads (apparently these men succumbed very quickly to radiation poisoning and died); but otherwise the site was physically much as it had been in the direct aftermath of the bombing. 

He still has 35 mm contact prints taken during the first visit, including shots of the now iconic metal framed dome of the one of the few buildings that remained standing (the Hiroshima Commercial Museum) on the site.

The Hiroshima Commercial Museum as it is now; an iconic image in the Hiroshima Peace Park.

His reflections on his experience were always mixed. On the one hand there was a job to do; on the other there was shock and horror at the extent of the destruction wreaked by a single device. Those feelings would always come back strongly every time he retold the story. I gained a sense of the awe they felt on seeing the bombed city; flattened apart from a few stone buildings. He said: “..the Americans had cleared the roads and we were able to drive around the site..", and "...among all the destruction, some stone structures and iron window frames were all that was left”.

He also had an opinion about the motives of the allies in bombing the site: "...yes, it ended the War, but the site itself was an island” (whilst just inland off the coast, it is indeed bordered by water on two sides of the roughly triangular site) and, on that basis, “...the Americans probably chose it because it was an isolated laboratory that would allow them to test the effects of the bomb”.

Finally he was left with an impression of “incredible devastation”, which he could compare with the Coventry blitz, where “no one was left alive”. Extraordinarily he was in Coventry on the night of the bombing raid that destroyed the cathedral. He himself would often reflect on the circularity of that.

Not long after his visit he said that “the site was closed off”. I imagine that his report lies in a file somewhere that may one day be opened again. When they got back “Doc Thomas” examined all of them and said: “we have to keep an eye on you”. At this time there was very little knowledge about the potential impacts of radiation poisoning but as far as I know he never suffered any adverse physical effects from his experience - and made it to the age of 94. 

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[1] ."In the moment of its incomparable blast, air became flame, walls turned to dust. 'My God,' breathed the crew of the B-29 at what they saw. Members reported, 'there was a terrific flash of light, even in the daytime ... a couple of sharp slaps against the airplane.' White smoke leaped on a mushroom stem to 20,000 feet where it spilled into a huge, billowy cloud. Then an odd thing happened. The top of this cloud broke off the stem and rose several thousand feet. As it did so, another cloud formed on the stem exactly as the first had done." -- From the article "War's Ending," LIFE, 8/20/1945. The Hiroshima bomb, codenamed "Little Boy," was the first of the only two nuclear devices ever used, by any nation, against an enemy in wartime. See: http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/46282/never-seen-hiroshima-and-nagasaki#index/2

[2] "Japanese doctors said that those who had been killed by the blast itself died instantly. But presently, according to these doctors, those who had suffered only small burns found their appetite failing, their hair falling out, their gums bleeding. They developed temperatures of 104, vomited blood, and died. It was discovered that they had lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles. Last week the Japanese announced that the count of Hiroshima's dead had risen to 125,000." -- From the article "What Ended the War," in LIFE, 9/17/1945. Descriptions of the suffering endured by survivors in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- burns that would not heal; agonizingly bent, twisted limbs; ceaseless, excruciating headaches - lend weight to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's oft-quoted (and perhaps apocryphal) utterance that, in the the event of an all-out nuclear war, "the living will envy the dead." See: http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/46282/never-seen-hiroshima-and-nagasaki#index/8 

[3] "In the following waves [after the initial blast] people's bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled." -- From the article "Atom Bomb Effects," LIFE, 3/11/1946. To this day, of course, historians, politicians, and military men and women the world over argue whether the American use of atomic weapons in WWII was, in fact, justified. That the bombs hastened the end of the war is, on the other hand, something that even the United States' fiercest critics generally concede. One week after the obliteration of Nagasaki, Japan surrendered. See: http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/46282/never-seen-hiroshima-and-nagasaki#index/4

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