One day, when he was a high school student, Senkichi was advised by his minister to read Kanzō Uchimura's The Biblical Studies, which impressed him and made him a devout Christian.

[5] In March 1922, Awaya married Sachiyo Andō, who gave birth to four sons and three daughters, five of whom survived beyond infancy.

[4] In July 1924, Awaya was assigned to the prefectural government of Hokkaidō, where he was appointed chief of the city planning division the following year.

[4][5] On 17 June 1933 occurred what is later called the Go-Stop Incident, in which the verbal altercation between two young men—an off-duty soldier in uniform who had ignored a traffic light and a policeman who warned the soldier— developed into fistfights, and finally into a ministerial-level conflict between the Home Ministry and the Army.

He sequestered himself at his house in Setagaya, Tokyo, devoted to faith at the Marunouchi Bible study group led by Toraji Tsukamoto, the leader of the Nonchurch movement after Kanzō Uchimura's death.

[12] On 3 August, three days before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Senkichi and Sachiyo Awaya invited their 2-year-old granddaughter Ayako Sakama.

[1] When the United States Army Air Forces dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya was eating breakfast with Shinobu and Ayako.

On 9 August, Awaya's chief secretary, Kazumasa Maruyama and his coworkers went there to confirm that the half-burnt corpses were those of the mayor and his son.

After finding a skeleton which appeared to be Ayako's, they carried out the unburnt parts of the bodies to cremate them at the park near the city hall.

Toraji Tsukamoto delivered a eulogy for Awaya and his family at their official funeral service held in December 1945.

[20] In August 1995, a half-century after the bombing, the government of Hiroshima created a monument in commemoration of Awaya's death where the mayoral residence used to stand.

[23] Awaya's third daughter, Chikako, graduated from the International Christian University, receiving a scholarship from an anonymous donor who turned out to be an American woman.

[24] While a student at today's Ochanomizu University, she was conscripted to work at an armaments factory in northern Tokyo during the closing months of the war.