The Girls' Diary

On the morning of July 28, 1945, at 8:15, 367 students from the first grade of Hiroshima Prefectural Girls' High School were working on a labor assignment approximately 1.5 kilometers from the hypocenter of the explosion when they were all killed instantly. On that day, due to illness, Kajiyama Masako had taken a leave of absence and thus survived. Later, Oono Michiko from the same grade collected and published the diaries of the deceased students into a book titled "The Maidens in August." Following this, many relatives of other deceased students sent their loved ones' diaries to her. To date, over 100 diaries have been made public. These diaries recount school life, family matters, and reflections on the war. In this drama, the daily lives of these young girls struggling to survive are recreated through excerpts from the diaries. The events described in these diaries, along with testimonies collected by Kajiyama from the families of the victims, document the details of their lives from the time they entered school on April 1 until the day of the bombing on August 6. Through these accounts, the drama conveys what was most precious and tragically lost in the atomic bomb's devastation.