Family receives remains of Hiroshima A-bomb victim 81 years after his death

The city of Hiroshima on Wednesday returned the remains of a boy who died in the 1945 atomic bombing to his family.

The remains of Toshiaki Wakamoto had been kept at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

It marks the first time the city returned the remains of an atomic bomb victim whose name had been found to be recorded incorrectly in its registry during a comprehensive inspection of urns.

Shigeko Miyoshi, Wakamoto’s 91-year-old younger sister, received the remains and fought back tears.

“I’m not so much happy as simply overwhelmed with sadness,” Miyoshi said. “If they had found him a little earlier, how happy my mother would have been.”

After a moment of silence in front of the memorial mound on Wednesday morning, the urn was handed over to the family in an underground room where other remains are kept.

Wakamoto was 13 when he died shortly after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 81 years ago.

“Every year when Aug. 6 came around, my mother’s heart ached, and she kept saying, ’Toshiaki, Toshiaki.’ It was painful for me to watch her,” Miyoshi said, remembering her late mother.

The memorial mound houses the remains of approximately 70,000 people.

Between February and March this year, the city conducted a comprehensive inspection of 813 urns containing remains whose identities were known but whose families had not been located. The inspection revealed errors in the names or ages of 37 people.

An envelope containing Wakamoto’s remains was labeled “Toshiaki Wakamoto,” but some of the characters overlapped with a fold in the paper. As a result, his name was incorrectly entered in the registry as “Toshiaki Ishimoto.”

The inspection also uncovered locks of hair belonging to the deceased in 52 urns. The city has released the names attached to the urns and is seeking information from the public to help locate the families. It has received no inquiries so far.

At the end of last year, the identity of one victim was confirmed for the first time through the DNA testing of preserved hair.