WIDOWS OF HIROSHIMA: The Life Stories of Nineteen Peasant Wives

by Mikio--Ed. Kanda ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 1988

Poignant but repetitious autobiographical accounts of 19 elderly Japanese peasant women who lost their husbands (and some children) in Hiroshima in 1945. Kawauchi Nukui, located about ten kilometers from Hiroshima, is known in Japan as ""the atom-bomb widows' village."" At the time of WW II, it was a village of peasant farmers, many living at near-subsistence level; as members of the National Volunteer Corps, almost all of the able-bodied men and women were in Hiroshima dismantling buildings (as a fire control measure) when the US dropped the bomb. The entire volunteer squad was wiped out; the village survivors were mostly the aged or infirm, and women with infants who had been excused from volunteer duty. These women had to continue to farm the land and bring up their children without assistance; as the entire village was bereaved, no help could be expected from neighbors. The widows (mostly in their 70s and 80s when interviewed) tell of the hardships of peasant life--hoeing and weeding all day, traveling all night (often by foot) to obtain night soil (used for fertilizer) from Hiroshima--but also of their commitment to farming: most still work in the fields. They give horrifying accounts of searching for their husbands' bodies through piles of charred, maggot-infested corpses that were often rendered unrecognizable by the blast. They also speak out fervently for continued peace; and worry that their grandchildren don't understand and even romanticize the excitement of war. Most of these accounts were originally serialized in a Japanese newspaper in 1981, and each individual story is powerful and complete. Taken together, however, they offer little variation even as they contain essential reminders of the horrors of war.

Pub Date: Feb. 20, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION