11. Nukui Volunteer Army Corps Monument
Any words of comfort or tears
Just float away with the wind.
Workers all fell in Hiroshima.
The thought of the lives of bereaved families,
Children and women,
Makes me choked and almost stops my breath.
Explanation
Kawauchi Village, Asa-gun was then an agricultural area in the suburbs of Hiroshima but has now been annexed into Hiroshima City. All the members of the Volunteer Army Corps of the village were killed by the atomic bomb while demolishing buildings in Nakajima Shin-machi area, 0.6 km from the hypocenter.
The inscription on the monument reads that 174 members were killed, but the actual number is said to be over 180.
At present, this Kawauchi area is well known as a Hiroshima Greens vegetable-growing district, but just after the war the village was nicknamed the “Village of Widows,” because the lives of its male workers were lost in the bombing. The villagers went through many hardships during postwar rehabilitation.
Their detailed story is in My Husband Was Taken Away by the A-bombing– Testimonies by Hiroshima' s Female Farmers by Mikio Kanda (published by Iwanami Shoten).
Location: Peace Memorial Park, Naka-ku