Hiroshima University Archives undertook some restoration on July 17, after receiving water-damaged documents from the local elementary school. They incurred damage during the torrential rain disaster in West Japan.

During the torrential rain, Fukawa Elementary School in Asakita-ku in Hiroshima city was flooded with muddy water, causing the school documents to be submerged in water. Based on the “Mutual cooperation agreement on the protection of historical materials at the time of a disaster,” Hiroshima City Archives requested Hiroshima Prefectural Archives for support, and Hiroshima Prefectural Archives in turn requested Hiroshima University for support. This led to book-restoration to be conducted on the Higashi-Hiroshima campus.

About 20 administrative members from Hiroshima prefecture and Hiroshima city, plus some students from HU, all worked together to clean and restore about 870 water-damaged documents.

The restoring work involves the following steps: First, inserting paper towels between the water-damaged pages, which are then dried indoors using electric fans. After that, if it is necessary, you may need to remove mud, or to store the documents in the freezer to prevent corrosions/deterioration. It usually takes about two or three weeks to restore damaged documents, but it all depends on the extent of the water damage.

Associate Professor Masaharu Ishida at the Compilation Room of 75-year History of Hiroshima University said, “Upon receiving request for restoring disaster-damaged documents and cultural properties, we would like to respond to the request as much as possible, by cooperating with the other two organizations concerned.”