Hiroshima A-Bomb Victim’s Remains Returned to Family

Hiroshima, March 23 (Jiji Press)–The western Japan city of Hiroshima returned on Sunday the remains of an atomic bomb victim to bereaved family members, marking the first such handover since May 2023. The city, which suffered a U.S. atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II, identified the victim as Hatsue Kajiyama, who died at the age of 13, through DNA analysis of the victim’s hair. Her remains had been stored in the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound in the city’s Peace Memorial Park. The victim’s nephew, 60-year-old Shuji Kajiyama, contacted the city last May after finding that the list of victims stored in the memorial mound included a name resembling that of Hatsue’s living sister. The city government asked Kanagawa Dental University to conduct a DNA analysis of the hair stored in the victim’s urn along with the bones, and announced in December that year that the individual’s identity had been confirmed. “I am overcome with feelings I cannot describe when I imagine that (Hatsue) will spend time with her family starting today,” Shuji said after receiving the remains. Following the identification made through the DNA analysis of the lock of hair, the Hiroshima city government announced that it has inspected 813 urns containing remains for which the victims’ names were known but their living relatives had not been found, and confirmed that victims’ hair has been found in 52 of them. It plans to conduct analyses of the hair at the request of bereaved families. The remains of roughly 70,000 victims are stored at the memorial mound. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]