Work of Mourning and Collective Memory of War

Remembering Hiroshima’s Perished Students

Abstract

 In an attempt to draw out the relationship between an act of mourning the war dead and the collective memory of the war, I look at three groups that have collectively memorialized the deceased mobilized student-workers who were killed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima: the Hiroshima Prefectural Daiichi High School, the Hiroshima City Daiichi Women’s High School, and the Hiroshima Prefectural Association of the Victimized Mobilized Student-Workers. These three groups have published accounts in memory of perished student-workers from the early postwar years to the present. These accounts, written mostly by students’ bereaved family members and the surviving student-workers, are analyzed in relation to the three dominant narratives of remembering the wardead in postwar Japan: 1) the “foundation of peace” narrative, 2) the “martyrdom for the country” narrative, and 3) the “pacifist” narrative. Analyzing the relationship between these groups’ collective memory and their member’s way of coming to terms with the students’ deaths, we can conclude as the following. First, three groups differ in their members’ ways of making sense of the students’ death. Second, one’s way of mourning the dead differs according to ones relationship with the dead, either as a family member or a classmate. Third, collective memory of the atomic bombing in Japan have had a greater influence on how one mourns the death of the student-workers than group’s collective memory or one’s relationship with the dead. Finally, while individual acts of mourning are not entirely determined by the collective memory, as the mnemonic collectivity, such as family and school, begins to disintegrate, memories of the dead student-workers are likely to be subsumed under Japan’s collective memory of the bombing and thus become more abstract.