Hiroshima Survivors Speak About Past

Yesterday afternoon, four hibakusha—survivors—of the Hiroshima bombing spoke to the packed Common Room at 2 Divinity Ave, focusing on their personal experiences as children and adolescents during the atomic attack, the gruesome aftermath, and the complicated guilt of being a survivor.

The group was part of the “Hiroshima/Nagasaki 2005: Memories and Visions” conference and film festival organized this past weekend at Tufts University.

The speakers, Miyoji Kawasaki, Junko Kayashige, Tadahiko Murata, and Miyako Yado, all spoke through a translator to the crowd.

Murata was five years old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

“I’m just going to talk about my family tree,” he said.

His eldest brother, Hirohiko, 18, a fighter pilot, had been killed the previous year. Murata himself was playing “soldier in the street” when the bomb hit.

“Miraculously, when the bomb dropped, I only received a little burn just above my knee,” he said. “Six months after, I was in critical condition in the hospital. By February, I was completely bedridden.”

Immediately after the attack, his eldest sister, Sachiko, 20, was pinned under their collapsed home. He and his sister Setsuko, eight, tried to free her but were unsuccessful as fire spread to their building. Murata’s older sister, Sadako, 13, was working near the epicenter of the attack, and there were no remains of her body.

“There were no bones, nothing,” he said.

As Murata’s mother hurried home to Hiroshima after hearing news of the attack, she was shot and killed by enemy fire while on the train, Murata recalled.

“My mother did not die in the bombing, but to me it is the same thing.” Setsuko had been so badly burned that maggots infested her skin and continually returned. She died on September 10, 1945.

Yado, then a 14-year-old schoolgirl, had a stomachache and didn’t go to work with her classmates in the center of the city on August 6.

“I was at my home, four kilometers away,” she said. “My family was very lucky, most survived. All my classmates were 500 meters from the epicenter; they all immediately died.”

Yado reiterated the group’s message: the need for universal nuclear disarmament.

“Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, that is what I am here to tell you,” she said.

“While I’ve seen pictures of children who were victims of Hiroshima, but to hear these people talk was extremely graphic and sad,” said Ko Yada ’07.

Yada said that members of his family fought on both the Japanese and American sides of World War II.

Visiting Professor of Anthropology Yasuko Takezawa, who is on leave from Kyoto University, attended the presentation with her husband and young daughter.

“I have great respect for the speakers,” she said. “The desire [of the hibakusha] to be the last people to experience nuclear attack, that keeps me coming back.”

Tufts Professor Hosea Hirata, who organized the conference, said its goals were to heighten awareness of issues surrounding nuclear arms and to prompt teaching and learning on the subject. The conference is also timed to coincide with the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review session on May 2.

“Bush has been saying that it was a mistake to sign the treaty,” Hirata said.