The second floor of the University of Idaho Library now hosts a collection of artifacts from Hiroshima, Japan. The display showcases a series of gifts from Hiroshima University (HU), a response to forgotten correspondence between the two universities in the early 1950s, Courtney Berge, the University of Idaho Library archives and exhibits assistant, said.
“Bubbling” roof tiles sit in the display case, taken from buildings destroyed in the nuclear blasts of 1945, according to attached letters. The letters, sent by HU graduate student Rebun Kayo, state the tiles were recently fished from a Hiroshima riverbed.
According to a report by the 1947 U.S. strategic bombing survey, an estimated 70,000 people in Hiroshima were killed instantly in the atomic blast. Only 6,000 in the city were left uninjured.
“The lethal power of the atomic bomb can be roughly divided into three categories: the heat rays, the blast and the radiation,” Kayo stated in the letters.
Kayo stated in the letters. “This tile made it possible to demonstrate the lethal power of only the heat rays. Therefore, as we understand, this is one of few artifacts that can accurately convey a portion of its destructive power.”
A series of manga, a form of Japanese graphic novel, depicting mass destruction and violence based on fictionalized recounts of the bombing is another portion of the exhibit.
HU gifted these items because UI donated to HU as it rebuilt from the nuclear bomb.
In 1951, HU President Tatsuo Morito sent letters worldwide asking for books and tree donations, according to the letters on display. UI received one of these letters and Merrill Deters, a forestry professor, responded to Morito with a book donation and three dollars to purchase a tree, Berge said.
In 2011, after records of the original correspondence had been forgotten, UI’s Martin Institute received a package from HU, Berge said. Current HU students were repaying the small gifts universities around the world had sent them years ago with items to commemorate the bomb’s effects and communications between universities, Berge said.
Kayo collected and sent building fragments to more than 50 universities worldwide, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Last year, the Martin Institute contacted Berge with interest in putting the items on display in the library.
“The exhibit is more than just about the bomb,” Berge said. “It’s about the resilience of Hiroshima in rebuilding, and even though it seems like a small thing, UI contributed to the rebuilding… it’s an interesting, small story that was forgotten, so it’s important to be reminded about those small, good things.”
The display of HU artifacts will be in the library through the rest of October.
Cody Roberts can be reached at [email protected].