In the United States the atomic bombs
signaled military victory. In Japan the remaining
survivors have been left to contemplate
whether the world has learned anything from
their trauma — or whether the world powers
are on a collision course to repeat it.
In the United States
the atomic bombs signaled
military victory. In Japan the
remaining survivors have
been left to contemplate
whether the world has learned
anything from their trauma
— or whether the world
powers are on a collision
course to repeat it.
The Last Survivors Speak.
It’s Time to Listen.
The Last
Survivors
Speak.
It’s Time to
Listen.
The waiting room of the Red Cross hospital in downtown Hiroshima is always crowded. Nearly every available seat is occupied, often by elderly people waiting for their names to be called. Many of these men and women don’t have typical medical histories, however. They are the surviving victims of the American atomic bomb attack 79 years ago.
Not many Americans have Aug. 6 circled on their calendars, but it’s a day that the Japanese can’t forget. Even now, the hospital continues to treat, on average, 180 survivors — known as hibakusha — of the blasts each day.
When the United States dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the entire citizenries of both countries were working feverishly to win World War II. For most Americans, the bomb represented a path to victory after nearly four relentless years of battle and a technological advance that would cement the nation as a geopolitical superpower for generations. Our textbooks talk about the world’s first use of a nuclear weapon.
Many today in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States detonated a bomb just three days later, talk about how those horrible events must be the last uses of nuclear weapons.
A view across the Motoyasu River of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
The bombs killed an estimated 200,000 men, women and children and maimed countless more. In Hiroshima 50,000 of the city’s 76,000 buildings were completely destroyed. In Nagasaki nearly all homes within a mile and a half of the blast were wiped out. In both cities the bombs wrecked hospitals and schools. Urban infrastructure collapsed.
Americans didn’t dwell on the devastation. Here the bombings were hailed as necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end. In the days immediately after the nuclear blasts, the polling firm Gallup found that 85 percent of Americans approved of the decision to drop atomic bombs over Japan. Even decades later the narrative of military might — and American sacrifice — continued to reign.
This article is part of the Opinion series At the Brink,
about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piece here.
This article is part of
the Opinion series At the Brink,
about the threat of nuclear
weapons in an unstable world.
Read the opening piece here.
For the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, the Smithsonian buckled to pressure from veterans and their families and scaled back a planned exhibition that would have offered a more nuanced portrait of the conflict, including questioning the morality of the bomb. The Senate even passed a resolution calling the Smithsonian exhibition “revisionist and offensive” and declared it must “avoid impugning the memory of those who gave their lives for freedom.”
In Japan, however, the hibakusha and their offspring have formed the backbone of atomic memory. Many see their life’s work as informing the wider world about what it’s like to carry the trauma, stigma and survivor’s guilt caused by the bombs, so that nuclear weapons may never be used again. Their urgency to do so has only increased in recent years. With an average age of 85, the hibakusha are dying by the hundreds each month — just as the world is entering a new nuclear age.
Countries like the United States, China and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles. Many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling, and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening. The threat of another blast can’t be relegated to history.
And so, as another anniversary of Aug. 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans — and the globe, really — to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again.
Chieko Kiriake was
on a break from her job
at a tobacco factory
in Hiroshima. Chieko Kiriake was on a break from
her job at a tobacco factory in Hiroshima.
She was 15 years old. She was 15 years old.
Everything was burned. People were walking around with their clothes burned off, their hair singed and standing on end. Their faces were swollen, so much so that you couldn’t tell who was who. Their lips were swollen too, too swollen to speak. Their skin would fall right off and hang off their hands at the fingernails, like an inside-out glove, all black from the mud and ash. It was almost like they had black seaweed hanging from their hands.
But I was thankful that some of my classmates were alive, that they were able to make their way back.
Swarms of flies came and laid eggs in the burns, which would hatch, and the larvae would start squirming inside the skin. They couldn’t stand the pain. They’d cry and plead, ‘Get these maggots out of my skin.’
The maggots would feast on the blood and pus and get so plump and squirm. I didn’t dare use my bare hands, so I brought my chopsticks and picked them out one by one. But they kept hatching inside the skin. I spent hours picking those maggots out of my classmates.”
Hiroe Kawashimo’s
mother was at home
in Hiroshima. Hiroe Kawashimo’s mother was
at home in Hiroshima.
She was born eight
months later. She was born eight months later.
On Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroe Kawashimo wasn’t yet born. She was in utero; her mother was around 1 kilometer from ground zero when she was exposed to the bomb’s radiation in Hiroshima. Ms. Kawashimo was born several months later, weighing 500 grams, according to her mother — apparently so small, she could fit in a rice bowl. She was one of numerous children exposed to the bomb while in utero and diagnosed with microcephaly, a smaller head.
Seiji Takato was at
home with his mother
in Hiroshima. Seiji Takato was at home
with his mother in Hiroshima.
He was 4 years old. He was 4 years old.
I remember the burnt smell. I was 4 years old. And I don’t really remember the immediate symptoms. But some years later, I had boils on my legs, and they didn’t heal for a long time. That made me really hate going to school. Later the lymph nodes in my armpits and legs swelled up, and I had to have them cut open three times.”
Seiichiro Mise was
at home in Nagasaki
playing the organ,
mimicking the sounds
of B-29 bombers. Seiichiro Mise was at home in Nagasaki
playing the organ, mimicking the sounds
of B-29 bombers.
He was 10 years old. He was 10 years old.
I got married in 1964. At the time, people would say that if you married an atomic bomb survivor, any kids you had would be deformed.
Two years later, I got a call from the hospital saying my baby had been born. But on my way, my heart was troubled. I’m an atomic bomb victim. I experienced that black rain. So I felt anguished. Usually new parents simply ask the doctor, ‘Is it a boy or girl?’ I didn’t even ask that. Instead, I asked, ‘Does my baby have 10 fingers and 10 toes?’
The doctor looked unsettled. But then he smiled and said it was a healthy boy. I was relieved.”
Kunihiko Sakuma was
at home with his mother
in Hiroshima. Kunihiko Sakuma was at
home with his mother in Hiroshima.
He was 9 months old. He was 9 months old.
There are people today who still find it difficult to talk about what they experienced. It could be their advanced age, or they don’t feel up to it physically. Often they just don’t feel well, even though they don’t know why.
So I’d ask them, ‘By the way, where were you during the bombing?’ People died or got sick not just right after the bombing. The reality is, their symptoms are emerging even today, 79 years later.
I thought all this was in the past. But as I started talking to survivors, I realized their suffering was still ongoing.
The atomic bomb is such an inhumane weapon, and the effects of radiation stay with survivors for a very long time. That’s why they need our continued support.”
Minoru Hataguchi’s
mother was at home.
His father was at
work next to Hiroshima
Station and never
came home. Minoru Hataguchi’s mother was at home.
His father was at work next to Hiroshima
Station and never came home.
He was born seven
months later. He was born seven months later.
For the first time, at 21, I was officially recognized as an atomic bomb survivor.
But I hated that. Why should I be labeled a survivor, when I was born the year after the bomb, 20 kilometers away from the epicenter?
I hated even looking at the Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Health Handbook, and I quickly put it away in my desk drawer. I didn’t want the discrimination, and I didn’t want the pity. Until I was in my 50s, I didn’t tell anyone that I was a survivor.”
Now a doctor, Masao
Tomonaga was asleep
on the second floor
of his home in
Nagasaki at the time
of the bombing. Now a doctor, Masao Tomonaga was
asleep on the second floor of his home in
Nagasaki at the time of the bombing.
He was 2 years old. He was 2 years old.
At the time of bombing, a woman was 17, and she suffered a severe thigh bone fracture. So she was unable to walk. She spent her whole life in a wheelchair, and when she turned 76, she quickly developed severe anemia, and she became very weak.
We examined her blood and found that acute leukemia was quickly growing inside her body. Then she said to me, ‘I have long believed the atomic bomb was living, surviving inside.’ Maybe she had a feeling that the atomic bomb had entered her body. She didn’t use ‘radiation’ — a special term, ‘radiation.’ But she said, ‘The atomic bomb entered me and survived until now.’”
Shigeaki Mori was
crossing a bridge
on his way to school
in Hiroshima. His
wife, Kayoko, is also
a survivor. Shigeaki Mori was crossing a bridge
on his way to school in Hiroshima. His
wife, Kayoko, is also a survivor.
He was 8 years old;
she was 3 years old. He was 8 years old; she was 3 years old.
People still don’t get it. The atomic bomb isn’t a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again. But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that.”
Keiko Ogura was
standing on a
road near her home
in Hiroshima. Keiko Ogura was standing on
a road near her home in Hiroshima.
She was 8 years old. She was 8 years old.
As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story. ‘For we shall not repeat the evil’ — this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it’s difficult to imagine.
Now what survivors worry about is to die and meet our family in heaven. I heard many survivors say, ‘What shall I do? On this planet there are still many many nuclear weapons, and then I’ll meet my daughter I couldn’t save. I’ll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons?’
There is no answer I can tell them.”
A small pink booklet fits squarely in Shigeaki Mori’s breast pocket — a cherished possession that over the years has become more closely tied to his self-identity. The Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Health Handbook grants him access to free medical checkups and treatment, which at age 87 is critical. Flip open the first page to see his distance from the bomb when it detonated that bright August morning and flip another page to begin tracing years of his health history, written in neat rows of Japanese script.
Barack Obama was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, in 2016 — in sharp contrast to the regular visits of American leaders to Europe to commemorate major battles there. Mr. Mori was one of two survivors who spoke briefly with Mr. Obama after his remarks, leading to an emotional embrace between the two men.
On his living room wall, Mr. Mori proudly displays a photograph of that moment, alongside dozens of other mementos — including a photo with the pope — from his work over decades to remind the world of what happened in Hiroshima. Many Japanese hoped Mr. Obama’s visit would bring an official apology for the bombings; it did not. The president, however, did not shy away from recognizing the destruction of that day.
The camphor trees at Sanno Shrine in Nagasaki survived the bombing and continue to grow.
“We stand here, in the middle of this city, and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry,” Mr. Obama said. “Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering, but we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.”
He recognized that voices like Mr. Mori’s are fleeting. “Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness,” Mr. Obama said. “But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.”
The Smithsonian is in the midst of planning an exhibition on World War II, with a spotlight on the two bombed cities. It’s time for the next generation to bear witness and demand change.
Listen to Chieko Kiriake and Keiko Ogura tell their stories in an audio essay from Times Opinion.
Kathleen Kingsbury is the Opinion editor of The New York Times, overseeing the editorial board and the Opinion section. W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington, D.C. Spencer Cohen is an editorial assistant in Opinion. Ms. Kingsbury, Mr. Hennigan and Mr. Cohen spent a week in Japan reporting for Opinion’s series At the Brink, where they interviewed survivors, academics and other nuclear experts.
Kentaro Takahashi is a photographer based in Kyoto. Video by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times.
Interviews have been edited and condensed.
Source footage by Science Photo Library and Forrest Brown, via Getty Images.
This Times Opinion series is funded through philanthropic support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Outrider Foundation and the Prospect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control.