The SurvivorsJapanese man certified as double A-bomb survivor
TOKYO – A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II. Tsutomu Yamaguchi already had been a certified “hibakusha,” or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, and has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said March 24.
Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack.
“As far as we know, he is the first one to be officially recognized as a survivor of atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Nagasaki city official Toshiro Miyamoto said. “It’s such an unfortunate case, but it is possible that there are more people like him.”
– PeaceMeal, July/August 2009
by Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima
According to Japanese and Chinese tradition, a sixtieth anniversary begins a new cycle of rhythms in the interwoven fabric that binds humankind and nature. To understand what the next cycle will bring, Hiroshima must return to our point of departure and explore the meaning of these 60 years of survival, recovery, and growth.
After I took office in 1999, I issued a Peace Declaration highlighting the three primary contributions of the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors). The first was to transcend their infernal pain and despair. Hovering between life and death in a corpse-strewn sea of rubble, they opted to continue living when none could have blamed them for choosing death. We should never forget the will and courage required for the hibakusha to return to life as decent human beings.
Their second accomplishment has been to effectively prevent a third use of nuclear weapons. From Korea to Vietnam and even Kosovo, strong voices have advocated the use of nuclear weapons. I truly believe the hibakusha's courage in telling their stories, their eloquent argument that nuclear weapons are the ultimate evil, and their determination that such evil never be repeated have helped prevent such madness.
Their third achievement is the new worldview engraved on the Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims that stands in the middle of Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park: "Please rest in peace, for we [the human race] will not repeat the evil." The survivors make this pledge and totally reject the path of revenge and animosity because they know it leads to extinction.
How did the hibakusha, just ordinary people like you and me-except they happened to be in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945-become so determined that "no one else should ever suffer as we did?" Could it be that a mechanism, perhaps encoded in our genes, is triggered when a sufficiently large group of people confronts a threat to our collective survival? Such a mechanism may have shown the hibakusha the truth about nuclear weapons, and they, in turn, are telling us that we must eliminate these weapons if the human race is to endure.
People of faith tend to hear the hibakusha message as a revelation from God. Others react differently, but most of those who study and understand the hibakusha experience come to the same conclusion about nuclear weapons. Perhaps this is why more than 1,000 mayors around the world have responded to the Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign, which calls for the elimination of all nuclear weapons by the end of the next decade.
The vast majority of people and nations on Earth want to be rid of nuclear weapons. The hibakusha have done more than their share to create a safe and peaceful world for the generations to come. It is now our responsibility to champion the will of the majority and fulfill the hibakusha vision by ensuring their most cherished desire that no one else ever suffers as they did.
Tadatoshi Akiba is the president of Mayors for Peace. See: www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/mayors/english
– PeaceMeal, July/August2005
My Hiroshima experience
by Deidre Holmberg
My husband, David, and I visited Hiroshima in the winter of 2002. We took a speed train, a shinkansen, to the bright lights of what is now a very cosmopolitan, vibrant place. At first glance, Hiroshima looked like any other Japanese city. People crowded the sidewalks under the neon signs. The streets were crowded with Toyotas, mini-vans, and pedestrians. Old men and women headed for home with packages and groceries. School children, dressed in their navy blue uniforms, walked and laughed together in large groups.
We visited Hiroshima because we are very interested in World War II history. We have been fortunate enough to walk the beaches of Normandy, visit war cemeteries in Italy and Honolulu, and we finally found ourselves able to visit an historical place of great significance to both Americans and Japanese.
As the granddaughter of a World War II veteran stationed in the Pacific, I found myself at odds about our nuclear invasion of Japan before I visited. My grandfather had nearly starved to death on Guadalcanal as he fought seemingly endless and brutal battles with Japanese forces on the other side of the island. He watched from the beach as supply ship after supply ship was sunk just a couple of hundred yards from shore. Suffering from malaria and dengue fever, he would sneak into the Japanese camps and steal bags of rice from their kitchens. As he was driving in a truck on the island, the head and shoulders of the truck driver were blown into his lap. He said that knowing that he was the only person on Guadalcanal that could kill cockatoos with a slingshot, he had to survive. Who else would feed his men?
My grandfather turned 86 on September 11th and he still believes that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan saved his life and the lives of many other Americans. Uneducated as I was before my trip, I believed him.
Our hotel was situated on the banks of Motoyasu River, only a few hundred feet from the epicenter of the nuclear explosion of 1945. The river is peaceful now, just like everything else in the center of Hiroshima. Where once was scorched, hallowed ground, now is a public park lined with statues of remembrance. Sadako's statue is there, along with hundreds of thousands of paper cranes from all over the world.
The Peace Museum, home to all artifacts from that fateful day, is a sacred place. Faces of the lost line the walls. They were not military men. They were old men and women, children, babies, and young mothers. The atomic bomb wiped out most of the people and structures within a few thousand yards. They were the lucky ones. The people unlucky enough to survive the initial explosion were terribly burned, maimed, deafened, blinded, and poisoned. They crawled, fingerless and shredded, away from the epicenter only to die in agony days, weeks, months, or years later.
The expression "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy" certainly applies here. I know now that no group of human beings is so bad that they should be punished with the brutality and inhumanity that nuclear bombs bring.
The people of Hiroshima have moved on, have forgiven as best they can, and have made a point of working for peace. On display for the world to view are the scorched school uniforms, buildings, and lunch pails of the unfortunate Japanese civilians who died at the hands of nuclear energy.
Instead of a way to end the war, the atom bomb attacks of August 1945 seem to have been a cruel science experiment or maybe a heinous way of showing the Soviets what we were capable of.
In Hiroshima, I learned that only one U.S. president has visited the Peace Museum. Not surprisingly, it was Jimmy Carter. Today, as we desperately seek out "terrorists" that have "dirty bombs," we fail to examine our own history, our own motives, and our own responsibilities with regard to nuclear power. Instead of peace, we have again sown war. Today, we use nuclear weapons as a threat to lord over other nations and we wonder why we are so despised. Even when not in use, nuclear weapons only bring fear, hatred, and astronomical costs to taxpayers. The making of these bombs does nothing positive for our environment or for our international image.
May there never be another nuclear attack. May those that support the propagation of nuclear weapons visit the people and museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thank you all for working for my child's future and for the peoples of every nation.
Deidre Holmberg of Richland teaches biology at Pasco High School. She brings her peace presence to the sidewalk when she can, at times accompanied by husband, David, and their infant son, Thomas. Deidre shared her Hiroshima experience at the Atomic Cities Peace Memorial on August 9th, the anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing.
– PeaceMeal, Sept/October 2004
by Jim Stoffels
Dr. Shuntaro Hida, 84, director of a Tokyo counseling center for A-bomb sufferers (hibakusha) visited the Hanford community in October to meet with downwinders and discuss medical treatment. He also shared his personal story of witnessing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and treating the victims.
In 1945, Dr. Hida was a young medical officer stationed in the Hiroshima Military Hospital. Around 2:00 AM on August 6, he was roused from sleep by an old farmer whose granddaughter was seriously ill. Dr. Hida rode on the back of the farmer's bicycle to the village of Hesaka six kilometers away to treat the girl, and stayed overnight. He awoke at ten past eight and, as he prepared to give the girl an injection, saw a silvery B-29 flying at high altitude toward Hiroshima.
Suddenly he saw a bright flash and felt heat on his face and arms. He heard no sound but, looking toward the city, saw a white cloud growing from a ring of fire in the sky. Underneath, a black cloud of dirt and debris kicked up by the blast spread out and raced toward him. Seconds later, the blast blew him through two rooms of the farmer's house into a wall and collapsed the roof on top of him.
Dr. Hida escaped from the rubble and began to bicycle back to the hospital in Hiroshima. On the way he encountered a strange figure, human only in shape — all black, bloody and covered with mud. The body and face were burnt and swollen. What seemed to be shreds of clothing hung from the body, but on closer approach was seen to be skin. The "man" fell at Dr. Hida's feet and died. It was the first A-bomb victim he saw.
More people in the same condition became walking out of Hiroshima, so many Dr. Hida could not ride is bicycle through them. So he got into the river which borders the city in order to make his away. He talked to people, asked if they were alright, but they didn't respond — just stared and walked straight ahead. Dead bodies of women and children floating in the river bumped into them, so many he became distraught. Besides, a firestorm was raging in the city. So he turned back to the village to help set up an emergency field hospital.
In Hesaka, the streets were already so full of bodies, other people fleeing had to walk on them. When he remembers these events even now, Dr. Hida said, he feels shame because he could do nothing for the horribly injured victims. He had no medicine or instruments, and he could not look into the eyes of those he knew were going to die.
A young mother with a burnt face entreated Dr. Hida to treat the baby she carried on her back before the others. The woman was insanely desperate. Her other three children burned to death when their house erupted in flames. The baby was already dead, but Dr. Hida bandaged it and told the mother to let him sleep. She was so happy. Three days later, she died vomiting blood.
Many others exhibited the same symptoms. They developed an intense fever, began bleeding from the mucous membranes and losing their hair. Within hours they died. It was radiation sickness — the atomic bomb disease, but no one knew it at the time.
Thirty thousand victims died in Hesaka alone. By the end of 1945, 140,000 died in Hiroshima and 70,000 more in Nagasaki.
During the American occupation, Japanese people were forbidden to talk or ask about what happened. If they did so, they were arrested. The United States didn't want the Soviet Union to get any information about the atomic bomb or its effects. Dr. Hida was arrested four times. The freedom to talk about their experience didn't come until ten years after the bombing.
A-bomb sufferers began to gather around Dr. Hida, and he became their advocate. He was the first one to urge the hibakusha to seek medical treatment and compensation from the American government. For doing so, he was labeled an extreme leftist.
"I am a doctor," Dr. Hida said. "That's why I respect human life. It's more important than power or money."
- PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2002