Introduction
The Secretary of the UK/Ireland Chapter of Mayors for Peace, Richard Outram, was hosted by the Mayors for Peace Secretariat in a work placement in Hiroshima in January 2023.

As part of his placement, he requested the opportunity to visit a tram depot of the Hiroshima Electric Railway and see the trams which survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. Three of these still operate on the city’s tram network over 80 years after entering service. He also saw specially branded trams which celebrate the sister city relationship with Hannover.

In the Second World War, with male personnel called to the front, Hiroshima’s trams were staffed by teenage girls who were trained to become drivers and conductors.

This paper will highlight the history of these survivor trams and their female crew, and the significance of these trams to the people of Hiroshima.

Three days after the atomic bombing, on 9 August, one tramline had been sufficiently repaired to permit a limited service to resume. This first tram was courageously staffed by a young all female crew – girl power indeed. This paper is being issued on the 79th anniversary of that historic journey.

The Survivor Trams
Hiroshima was the largest military town in Western Japan, with extensive dockyards and industries. Consequently, to meet the transit needs of soldiers and a large workforce the tram network was well-established and operated by the Hiroshima Gas & Electric Railroad Company (now Hiroshima Electric Railway) with services commencing in 1912.

On the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 6 August 1945, much of the tramway and many streetcars were destroyed. Of the 1,241 employees of Hiroshima Electric Railway, 185 were killed in the atomic bombing and 108 of its 123 streetcars were destroyed or damaged, according to the company’s history.

However, just three days after the bombing, some sections of the tramway were repaired, and a limited service was in operation. Many trams damaged in the atomic bombing were also repaired and brought back into service.

Three A-bombed trams of the wartime 650 Series are still running in the city – numbers 651, 652 and 653. The first two are in commercial service whilst the third is deployed only on the anniversaries of the atomic bombings (6 and 9 August). A fourth vehicle, 654, is on display in a transport museum.

Built at the Kinan vehicle works in Osaka, the 650 series first entered service in 1942. The square and rounded body, which looks classical now, was rather modern when it was completed. The design employed a larger carriage to increase passenger capacity, but the most important feature was its bogie cart, which is now widely used in vehicles like the world-famous Shinkansen (the bullet train). The bogie cart swings from side to side along the curve of the rail, making it easier for these larger vehicles to negotiate turns.

Above: Car No. 651 running near Tōkaichi, Naka Ward, Hiroshima City, in 1943 (Photo: Hiroshima Electric Railway)

On the day of the bombing, No. 651 was running around the Chuden-mae area in Naka Ward,
about 700 metres from the hypocentre (the point above which the atomic bomb detonated). All
the roof and doors were blown off and the half-burned carriage was captured as shown in the
photograph below. Sadly, the driver and 88 passengers died, but amazingly one passenger
survived.
Streetcar 651 was repaired by surviving railway staff and brought back into service in March 1946.

Below: Car No. 651 after sustaining damage in the A-bomb blast (Photo: Mitsunori Kishida, courtesy of Teppei Kishida)

Above: The Chapter Secretary visiting Car. No. 651 at the Hiroden Tram Depot, Hiroshima, January 2023. Also present are staff from the Hiroshima Electric Railway publicity department who were keen to interview him for their company newsletter.

Car No. 652 was exposed to the bombing near Ujina but was only slightly damaged as it was 4 km away from the hypocentre. It was brought back into service at the end of August 1945. It also remains in service on the network, with the same livery as 651.

Below: Both trams in service together (Image: Livingnomads.com). The Chapter Secretary by
serendipity (or fate) caught Tram 652 to travel to the tram depot to see Tram 651.

In the bombing, Car No. 653 was wrecked near Eba, about 3 km away from the hypocentre. The tram was repaired and brought back to service in December 1945 and remained operational until 2006 when it was retired. In 2015, however, the tram was restored through the ‘Atomic-bombed Tram Special Operation Project’, jointly run by the Hiroshima Electric Railway and RCC Broadcasting Co. and was reborn as a special tram.

The tram was repainted in grey and blue, the same colour scheme as existed in August 1945. It is equipped with a monitor to show the testimonies of atomic bomb survivors and scenes of Hiroshima’s reconstruction. Today, the train is used as a vehicle for peace education and operates on the network on the atomic bomb anniversary dates (6 and 9 August).

Above: The No. 653 tram that survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima departs Hiroshima Electric Railway Co.’s Senda tram shed, adjacent to the company’s headquarters, in the city’s Naka Ward on Aug. 9 as train buffs watch. (Photo: Sonoko Miyazaki)

Car No. 654, which like 653 was damaged near Eba, was restored in February 1946. However, it was also retired in 2006. Later it was donated to the city and repainted in the same old colours as Car No. 653. It is now on display outdoors at the Numaji Transportation Museum where, on the third Saturday of each month, you can view its interior.

Above: Tram 654 at the Numaji Transportation Museum (Photo: Masahiro Hashimoto)

The girl tram drivers and conductors of Hiroshima
As in the UK, many male tram crews in Japan were sent to the war as soldiers, and this caused a staffing shortage in tram operations. To source more workers, the tram company founded the Hiroshima Electric Railway’s Home Economic Girls’ School in the Minami Ward, Hiroshima in April 1943. It was a boarding school accommodating an initial cohort of 72 girls, who after graduating from national advanced elementary school education at the age of 14, enrolled on a three-year
programme.

Students divided their time between learning sewing and typing skills in the classroom or training on the tram network learning how to drive streetcars or carry out the duties of conductors. However, towards the end of the war, the schedule changed, and they were working as drivers or conductors from early morning until late at night.

Below: The obligatory class photo, with senior staff front row. (Photo: unknown).

At some point students were also relocated to the Hiroshima Jissen High School.

On the day of the atomic bombing, most of the school’s 300 students were either working on the streetcars or were in their dormitory located 2.1 kms from the hypocentre. Twenty-nine students and one teacher were killed in the blast.

Three days later, the first tram service between Koi and Nishitenma was restored, and students, who were not seriously injured, were again reassigned streetcar duties.

After the war, male tram drivers and conductors returned from service to their pre-war duties. In October, the school was closed, and the female students were dispersed. Despite the sacrifices they had made in relocating to a new city and living apart from their families and the hardships they had endured during the war, sadly none of the girl students graduated.

In 2020, the Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, published an article on the experience of one girl conductor who rode on one of the first operational trams when a limited service resumed on 9 August.

14-year-old Sasaguchi Satoko enrolled in the vocational school in April 1945, four months before the atomic bombing and one year after her older sister Kikuko. At their parents’ home in Omori, Shimane Prefecture, Sasaguchi was told by her sister that she could study while working on a tram, prompting her to follow in her footsteps.

Excited by the big city life of Hiroshima, Sasaguchi started living in a school dormitory with her sister and practiced greeting passengers and learned the names of tram stations during classes.

Above: Satoko Sasaguchi, left, when she was a student at a women’s vocational school operated by Hiroshima Electric Railway Co., and her senior who was a school dormitory leader (Photo: Satoko Sasaguchi)

As the tram approached a local Gokokujinja, a shrine for the war dead, she would ask her passengers through a microphone to offer a prayer. She would push her way through a crowd on her tram to punch passengers’ tickets.

Sasaguchi was scheduled to work an afternoon shift on August 6, 1945. While she was having breakfast in her dormitory that morning, she saw a flash from the atomic bomb detonating about 2.5 kilometres away.

She took refuge at a sister school that was distant from central Hiroshima and gave aid to people who were injured in the bombing.

Immediately following the bombing, Japanese military engineers and marines rushed into the city centre from outlying army bases; amongst the many reconstruction tasks they began with gusto was a programme of repair work on the tramway.

Consequently, on August 8, 1945, Sasaguchi’s teacher gave her some surprising news: “Tram services will resume from tomorrow. Serve as the conductor.”

The teenager headed to Koi Station, the current Hiroden Nishi-Hiroshima Station. A supervisor at the site instructed her to ride on a tram that was going to run between Koi and Nishi-Tenmacho stations and added that she did not need to charge passengers the fare that day. On the journey, all the passengers were silent. When Sasaguchi told those who were going to pay the fare that it was free of charge, they thanked her.

Though these trams were travelling on only a hastily repaired line through a badly damaged city that was also irradiated, Sasaguchi and the other girl tram crew members did not hesitate to perform their duties.

Recalling her experience in 2020, whilst again riding on a survivor tram through the city, Sasaguchi, still a Hiroshima resident and then aged 89, said: “Looking back now, it’s amazing how we could manage to resume operations. But we were all desperate to carry out our job at hand.”

Despite the personal sacrifices made by these young women, and their courage and selflessness in taking out that tram on 9 August, and in the days thereafter in a war-ravaged city, one ultimate tragedy befell the girls: their displacement by male staff returning from the war meant that none of them was able to formally graduate from the vocational school.

Above: Hiroshima in September 1945 after it was devastated by the Aug. 6 atomic bombing. A tram crosses the Aioibashi-T bridge, which is thought to be the target of the bomb. (Photo: Asahi Shimbun)

The significance of the trams to the people of Hiroshima.
Trams continue to be one of the most popular forms of public transport within the city of Hiroshima and its environs, and the Hiroshima Electric Railway Company has just celebrated its 110th anniversary of operations.

It seems incredible now that, after only three days, on August 9 a tram service was restored and the sight of trams again in service must have been an immense restorative to a population who had just witnessed the deaths of their family members, friends, and co-workers, totalling over 70,000, and seen the complete devastation of their city.

Even now, it is impossible not to be moved if you have the great privilege of boarding any of the survivor trams (as I did), two of which remain in service after eight decades. They now share the same great age as those remaining residents who survived the atomic bombing (the noble Hibakusha).

The third tram (no 653) remains an incredible educational resource on which students hear the testimonies of those who survived the bomb and learn the invaluable lesson that Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never happen again.

Above all these trams remain both a symbol of humankind’s indomitable spirit to survive and a testament to the enduring folly of humankind’s pursuit of war.

Trams remain an essential part of city life. In her interview with the newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, former conductor Sasaguchi put it this way: “I hope the trams will keep running forever. They are an essential means of transportation in Hiroshima.”

Also seen

The Hiroshima Electric Railway currently also operates several bespoke trams which highlight the city’s sister city link with Hannover (below).

Author: Richard Outram,
Mayors for Peace UK/Ireland Chapter Secretary,
Manchester City Council Email: richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
9 August 2024