Toshi, left, and Iri Maruki
Maruki Gallery Photo
Iri Maruki was a Japanese artist noted for creating, with his wife Toshi Maruki, The Hiroshima Panels, a series of paintings which portray the horrific consequences of the destruction of that city by an American atomic bomb. Iri Maruki's father, uncle, two nieces and many friends died in the bombing.
Maruki was the eldest son in the Maruki family. Born in Hiroshima on June, 20, 1901, with a port-wine stain over the right half of his face after his mother fell down a flight of stairs in their small village home, he escaped military service in the war against China. Later, he survived the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. He also survived the American saturation fire raids on Tokyo near the end of the Second World War.
After the raids, with the Allied invasion of Okinawa looming, he attempted to rejoin his family in Hiroshima, but lacked the necessary papers to board the already full trains and so he was still in Tokyo when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
See the Hiroshima Panels, free from the Maruki Gallery.
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