Visiting Hibakusha
Kunihiko Bonkohara
“I experienced the atomic bombing while living in Funairi, Hiroshima, about 2 kilometers from the hypocenter. I was five years old at the time. We had a family of six. My older brother and sister were primary school students and had been evacuated. Another older sister and my mother were mobilized to work and so had gone into central Hiroshima. Only my father and I were at home at the time. When the atomic bomb was dropped, at the moment of the bright light, my father pushed me under a desk and placed himself on top of me to protect me..."
Shoso Hirai 
Mr. Shoso Hirai was exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima when he was 16 years-old. He was born on July 20, 1929. Mr. Hirai was exposed to the atomic bomb at his friend’s house, 4 kilometers from the epicenter, while going to a munitions factory as a mobilized student. He entered into the city center the following day to look for his father who had gone to work and his younger brother who was also a mobilized student. He only found his father’s bones and his younger brother is still missing...
Michimasa (Michi) Hirata
“August 6, 1945 is a special day for me as if it were my second birthday. On that day at the age of nine, I was A-bombed in the living room of my house located about 1.2 miles away from the epicenter in Hiroshima. All of a sudden brilliant flash hit above my head. It changed the city of Hiroshima thoroughly. The scene that developed afterwards was beyond description and just like a hell on the earth. During early period after the bombing, most Hibakusha hid up their bombed experience for fear of discrimination..."
Hirosi Iso
“I was exposed to the atomic bomb at the age of four, about 2.5 kilometers away from the hypocenter in Hiroshima. My father, mother, older sister, younger brother and I were living there. On August 6th, 1945, it was a beautiful morning. At 8:15 am, after my father and my sister already left for work, one nuclear-bomb was dropped on us, and instantly, thousands of people were incinerated and the rest were seriously burnt and injured. The city turned into a hell. By the end of 2009, an estimated death toll due to Hiroshima nuclear bomb reached 140,000...
Cynthia Miller
Cynthia Miller has become Hibakusha Stories first American-born Fellow. She is an artist, photographer and survivor of radiation and plutonium poisoning whose vision is to advance planetary peace. Her father worked as an engineer alongside Dr. Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project (the project that envisioned and created the atom bomb) and he was eyewitness to the explosions of 131 atomic and hydrogen bombs. Reconciling bombs, atomic radiation, nuclear fallout, and war has been Ms. Miller’s life-long focus. Ms. Miller’s story is about the effects of radioactive isotopes at all levels of production and deployment...
Takashi Morita
Morita san is the President of the Association Hibakusha-Brasil Pele Paz (Association of Hibakusha-Brazil for Peace). In 2008 both he and Junko Watanabe travelled with the Peace Boat to talk about his experiences in many countries. In Vietnam, for example, Mr. Morita interacted with the second and third generation of victims of Agent Orange. You can read a brief article, The Day the Sun Fell, about Mr. Morita on Radio Mundo’s website...
Keiko Murakami
“When I was 8 years old, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Most people died who were within 1.5 miles of the hypocenter. I luckily survived although I was one mile from the hypocenter. After many years, I have met a lot of people, including people from various foreign countries. I have always tried to tell them, both domestic and foreign, about my A-Bomb experiences of survival. I have contributed weekly essays entitled I Sow Seeds of Nuclear Abolition to the local Joyo Newspaper since July, 2005..."
Hiroko Sakaguchi
Hiroko Sakaguchi is a second generation hibakusha from Nagasaki who was born on July 22, 1949. Ms Sakaguchi's mother was exposed to the atomic bomb at age 23 in Nagasaki, 3.5 kilometers from the hypocenter. She passed away from rectal and lung cancer. The children of Ms. Sakaguchi's uncle and aunt were 500 meters from the hypocenter and passed away within 10 days after the bomb. Ms. Sakaguchi is the former manager of the Nagasaki Prefecture Association of Children of Atomic Bomb Victims and of the Liaison Council of Children of Atomic Bomb Victims in the Nagasaki Prefectural Government employees’ union...
Shigeko Sasamori
Shigeko was 13 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Hearing the sound of a plane, she looked up to see a B-29 flying overhead — seconds later she was knocked unconscious by the blast. When she came to, she was so badly burned that she was unrecognizable. Shigeko repeated her name and address over and over until she was finally found by her father. Years later she would travel to the United States in 1955 as part of a group of young women known as the Hiroshima Maidens. While in New York, she underwent numerous plastic surgery operations and met her adoptive father, Dr. Norman Cousins...
Toshiko Tanaka
What kind of person did you image when you heard you were going to meet “a 72 year-old survivor of the Atomic bomb”? Do I look in better shape than you imagined? Until recently I never talked about my dire experience of the atomic bomb even to my own children. One of the reasons is because I always wanted to forget about it and wanted to live cheerfully with positive spirit. The other reason is I hated to make people sad when I talk about my experience. But I realized I can never get away from it....
Setsuko Thurlow
As a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I feel a powerful commitment to tell the story of Hiroshima. The survivors are getting old and passing away, leaving a smaller number of us. We feel it is imperative to tell the younger generation of that terrible dawn of the nuclear age. All of us are familiar with the scenes of devastation in New York following the terrorist attacks. But that devastation extended only several blocks. Imagine the devastation of an entire city.....
Michiko Tsukamoto
“I was born in Hiroshima in 1934, and when I was ten years old (Grade 5 in Primary School) I was evacuated to the remote island where my father was originally from. Both of my parents were teachers, however my mother left her job for the sake of me and my older brother and moved with us to the island. August 5 was my father's 42nd birthday, and so my mother had travelled to Hiroshima to have a small celebration with him. My father never returned after leaving for work the next morning, August 6..."
Koji Ueda
“There are three Hibakusha in my family, namely my mother, my sister and me. My mother who was 26 years old at that time rescued the injured victims and escaped from the bombed city carrying my 2 year-old sister on her back. All of us strolled around where we had once lived near the center for few days after the bombing. My mother often told me that the scene at that time was not the scene of something on earth. The swollen faces could not be recognized due to the burns with 20-100cm burned skin dangling down from the top of the fingers..."
Junko Watanabe
Watanabe-san is Chair of the Association of Hibakusha-Brasil Pele Paz (Association of Hibakusha-Brazil for Peace). In 2008 both she and Mr. Morita traveled by Peace Boat to talk about their experiences in many countries. In Vietnam, For example, Mr. Morita and Ms. Watanabe interacted with the second and third generation of victims of Agent Orange. You can read a brief article about Mr. Morita and Ms. Watanabe: The Day the Sun Fell....
Reiko Yamada
By the spring of 1945, the school children of Hiroshima city had been ordered to evacuate from the city for safety. Many children had moved to live with their relatives in the countryside. Those who did not have such relatives were taken by their techers to schools or temples in rural areas and lived together there. I was supposed to move to one such temple on August 9 with other pupils who were still remaining in the city....
Takahisa Yamamoto
“When I was 16 months old, I was exposed to the nuclear bomb. Luckily, I was not in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. I arrived two days later when my mother entered into the inferno Hiroshima, carrying me on her back. My mother determined to find my father who stayed in Hiroshima city on that day. It was a desperate wandering for a mother and her child to find the one we loved from the piles of corpses. Later, we could reunite with my father who miraculously survived the bomb. Although he suffered from acute radiation syndrome, he did not come down with any serious disease....
Yasuaki Yamashita
“When the A-Bomb fell on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, I was 6 years old and living there with my family in a typical Japanese-style wooden frame house with sliding interior partitions (shoji) and exterior glass windows. Normally on a hot summer day I would go to the mountain with friends of my age to catch dragon flies and cicadas. However, on this day I was playing at home. Nearby my mother was preparing the mid-day meal. Suddenly, at precisely 11:02, we were blinded by an intense light like 1,000 simultaneous flashes of lightening"....
