Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound

Completed: August 5, 1955

Built by: The Society for Praying for the War Dead

Please click photo.

This area near the hypocenter was strewn with corpses after the bombing. Many corpses, including those pulled out of the river, were brought here and cremated.In 1946, individual donations enabled the construction of a temporary memorial mound, a temporary vault, and a chapel. Ten years later in 1955, Hiroshima City took over the project and rebuilt the decrepit vault. Unclaimed ashes that had been kept in various other places were also brought to the new vault. The vault lies under the mound and contains the ashes of roughly 70,000 victims. These were persons whose ashes were unclaimed because the entire family perished or persons of unknown identity.

Every year, Hiroshima City publishes a list of people whose identity has been learned, hoping that relatives will emerge to claim the ashes. Of the 2,432 individual containers of ashes in the vault in 1955, 840 remain unclaimed and continue to sleep in this memorial mound. (As of June 20, 2002)Since 1946, an ecumenical memorial service jointly sponsored by different religions and sects is held in front of the vault on August 6.