Popular Protest in Post War Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku Gorō

Hayashi Sachiko

Our Poems Member Hayashi Sachiko was 16 years old and working at a factory with other mobilized high school student at the time of the bombing. Her mother and younger brother perished when their house collapsed and burned; her father escaped from the house, but died a month later of radiation sickness. Hayashi published poems from the first issue of Our Poems. With mentoring from Tōge and other circle members, Hayashi produced her most admired poem about the bombing “Hiroshima’s Sky” in December 1950. Hayashi wrote about more than the bomb. Several of her poems concern the July 1950 arrest of young Japanese and Korean antiwar protesters accused of violating Occupation regulations forbidding criticism of the U.S. Among the protesters was Hayashi’s boyfriend, an Our Poems and Japan Communist Party member, who was forced underground.

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