On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the world changed for Hiroshima. A single atomic bomb—Little Boy—detonated roughly 600 meters above the Aioi Bridge, unleashing catastrophic heat, shockwaves, and destruction across the city. Within seconds, Hiroshima was engulfed in a firestorm of proportions previously unimaginable: buildings flattened, rivers filled with debris and wounded people seeking water, and infrastructure obliterated.
Amid this chaos and devastation, one story of human resilience stands out—but remains little known.
At the Ushita (sometimes written Ushiba) purification plant—about 2.8 km from the hypocenter—the roof and walls of the pump house were blown away and seven motorized pumps disabled. Disaster loomed: without water, hemmed in by fire and ruin, the city risked succumbing not only to the bomb’s devastation but also to thirst and epidemic.
Kurō Horino, a 51-year-old engineer with the Hiroshima Waterworks Bureau, had been near the train station when the bomb exploded and suffered burns. Yet, he refused to remain idle. Racing to the damaged Ushita plant, Horino took swift, decisive action. He fired up a heavy oil-operated backup pump powered by an internal-combustion engine—and by approximately 2 PM, he had the water flowing again to the city’s distribution reservoir.
His quick thinking and resolve ensured that, despite shattered pipes and broken infrastructure, water continued to flow. Alongside his colleague Kumekichi Nishimoto—who worked on valve closures despite a back injury—Horino’s efforts sustained roughly 40% of a typical day’s water supply. As the day wore on, gravity helped reservoir water reach the city center, averting a total outage.
Without this intervention, the city may have faced a second catastrophe—mass dehydration and water scarcity atop the horrors of nuclear devastation.
In the following days, the Waterworks Bureau continued a grueling campaign to repair the city’s shattered water network. Pipes spewed water through countless cracks; workers hauled wooden plugs into leaks, trudged across debris-clogged streets with tools and carts, and improvised makeshift solutions—all while the city’s ruins still smoldered.
Today, the pump house at Ushita stands as a silent testament to these efforts. Designated an A-bombed building, it now houses the Museum of Waterworks. Educational narratives, including a picture-story show titled Inochi no Mizu (“The Water of Life”), commemorate how vital water was—and how Horino’s act of engineering heroism sustained it.
Reflections from Horino himself, included in Hiroshima’s official post-war record (published 1966), are poignant. He recalled seeing survivors drinking from fire hydrants amid the catastrophe, and in that moment, understood the preciousness of water—and the weight of his responsibility hiroshimapeacemedia.jp.
Decades later, the city continues to honor that legacy—pride preserved in uninterrupted water service since 1898 and taught in schools as a lesson in resilience, duty, and hope.
