The Tram Girls of Hiroshima
Teenage Women Who Sacrificed Their Youth to Save a City
62 Years ago today the Japanese Emperor's Tram Girls, some as young as 14, worked desperately to bring their city back from devastation.
History
Hiroshima was a thriving city of 350,000 late in the war. It suffered from the same fate as most Japanese cities of that time, a shortage of men. Women were pressed into labor making all the essentials of war-time society leaving young girls to carry out the tasks of civil service – they did so with joy and pride. The Tram Girls were born!
Aside for being a military staging point Hiroshima served no military purpose. In the diaries of President Truman he said: “we need to know what ‘the gadget’ can do” he told his military generals. General Curtis E. LeMay, the father of the US Strategic Air Command, said: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.”
But history has its own tale and the facts are that Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr. and the American B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay, at 0815 local time, dropped Little Boy and unharnessed “the basic power of the universe".
Hiroshima Electric Railway Company
By 1943 Japan started using young male students in new battle tactics that were to become known for their barbarianism and self-sacrifice. Women were taking more roles in industry while young girls (as young as 14) were pulled from schools to perform many civil service duties. “We were conscripted to serve in the Student Mobilization Corps,” said Yasuhiko Taketa.
“We went to the school [training school run by the tram company to teach the girls how to drive] but we were not good,” remembers Haruno Horimoto*. However, the citizens accepted the girls immediately. Hiroshima was a thriving city and public transportation was it life line. During the pre-blast peak the girls were carrying 20,000-40,000 riders a day. “The boys would hang on the sides and we felt so proud.”
Tram 101
“We all knew what trams had what girls working them,” said Hiroshi Toshiyuki in an interview on the Witness program presented by Rageh Omaar on August 6th 2007.
“Tram 101 always had the best looking girls and we boys ran to the tram all day riding back and forth until the girls finished work.”
Over 300 girls worked the trams nearly around the clock with the older girls (17-19) working late night and early morning shifts.
The Bomb
The gadget was dropped at 8:15 AM, the height of the morning rush hour. Much has been written about the thousands killed instantly. What is unique is what happened after the attack. By the end of the first day the citizens began rebuilding the tram track. Remarkably there was nearly 1 km of track 24 hours after the blast. Akira Ishida remembers “The tram ran through a city that was like a desert. At first it just went a short distance between Koi and Nishi-tenma-cho. The driver was just a schoolgirl. I saw the strength of those girls. Watching them was like seeing the strength of the city returning”. “We all worked hard, digging or laying track all day but it was welcome work.” recalls Yasuhiko Taketa.
Haruno Horimoto says “I had gone through hell, but I had not cried once. When the school [the Electric Company Training School] closed down, though, something broke inside me, tears suddenly streamed out of me like a waterfall. I have been crying ever since. Nothing makes me happy.”
Writer Ken Kimura put it best in the Journeyman Documentaries: “The nature of the railway is to connect people. On the first day there was only one kilometer of track, but it was the symbol of hope for the people of Hiroshima and so was the sound of the tram bell.” Hope given by Hiroshima’s young teenage Tram Girls!
Further reading:
Hachiya, Michihiko, Hiroshima Diary (1955)
