Testimonies of Hibakusha

Kodama Michiko
Assistant Secretary General
Nihon Hidankyo – Japan Confederation of A- and H- Bombs Sufferers Organizations Japan

For a World without Wars or Nuclear Weapons

The Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the region on March 11 last year caused the catastrophic damage, which reminded us of the A bomb disaster in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that fell upon us Hibakusha. The radiation damage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, which shook the entire world, has put us into anxiety, distrust and irritation without any perspective for convergence even after a year and half have passed. In the 67th year since the atomic bombing, once again we are facing the terrifying effects of nuclear damage.

The Hibakusha, who have continued to carry on the message “No more Hibakusha,” are filled with pain and anger.

I am a Hibakusha, a victim of the first nuclear war in the history of the world, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. At the time, I was 7 years old, a second grader in primary school.

At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, I was inside the wooden school building. Suddenly I felt a blinding flash. The next moment, the ceiling of the building collapsed and sharp splinters of windowpanes flew all around. They stuck into the walls, desks and floor of the classroom, and also into my skin. I don’t remember how much time passed before I crawled out of the room to the corridor, leaving behind my classmates trapped between the beams. In the school infirmary I had the glass splinters removed from my skin, but there were no medicines, gauze or bandages to treat my injuries.

My father managed to come to the school to find me. On my way home, carried on my father’s back, I witnessed hell on earth. I saw a man with burned and peeled skin dangling from his body. A mother was carrying a baby, which was burned-black and looked like charcoal. She herself was heavily burned all over her body and was trying to flee from the place, almost crawling on the ground. Others lost their sight, their eyeballs popped out, or ran around trying to escape, while holding their protruding intestines in their hands. More and more people tried to cling on to us, saying, “Give me water, water, water…” Unable to give any kind of help to them, we just left them there and hurried home.

Shortly before the atomic bombing, my house was located near ground zero, and I used to go to school about only 350 meters away. But our family was forced to move away from the city center by order of the government, and I changed school too. If we had stayed in our old place, I would not be alive to tell you the story. Later I learned that about 400 pupils in my old school were burned and killed instantly by the bomb, leaving no traces, not even their ashes.

When I arrived home 3.5 kilometers from the blast center, I found the roof of the house blown away by the blast and fragments of glass scattered all around. “Black Rain” fell into the house, and traces of the “Black Rain” on the wall remained for a long time.

Neighbors of our old house near ground zero and our relatives began to arrive, seeking help and shelter. Among them was my favorite cousin, who was like a big sister for me. She had been mobilized to work around the area 500 meters from the blast center when the bomb exploded. Half of her face, her entire back and her right leg were severely burned, sore and raw. In the intense summer heat, her burns quickly festered. Flies swarmed and laid their eggs in her flesh. Soon maggots bred and crawled around over her body. All I could do for my beloved cousin was to pick these maggots out and wipe her oozing body. She often cried, “Ouch…oh it hurts,” but her voice became lower and lower, and on the morning of the third day — probably it was August 9 — she breathed her last in my arms. She was 14 years old. Another cousin, who was in fifth grade of primary school, was suffering from diarrhea, although he had no injuries or burns. About a week later, he bled from his ears and nose, vomited blood clots from his mouth and died suddenly. One after the other, several of my uncles and aunts followed my cousins within a matter of month.

Their deaths were not caused by any illness. They were killed by the atomic bomb used in the war.
Autumn breezes began to blow and I found my hair starting to fall out. My parents did everything possible to save me, using folk medicines and other means. They later died of cancer. I am so grateful to my parents. I believe I have been able to survive to this day thanks to their love.

However, the atomic bomb continued to afflict me in my later life. Whenever I tried to get a job or get married, I suffered from prejudice and discrimination just because I was a Hibakusha. When I became pregnant, I was tremendously worried, wondering if I would give birth to a baby who would be seen as a Hibakusha’s child. Around that period, many Hibakusha could not get married, or gave up hope of getting married. Even after marriage, they often suffered repeated stillbirths and miscarriages, or lost their children prematurely due to illness.

One of my close Hibakusha friends went through 6 stillbirths and miscarriages. Her husband beat her, saying that it was because she was a Hibakusha that they could not have children. She used to say she had a racking pain in her hip, and eventually she died.

The atomic bomb completely deprived us of ordinary daily lives for human beings.

It is most painful for me now to speak about my daughter. She was suddenly taken with cancer. She made a tearful and difficult decision to take a major operation, believing that it would make her healthy again. After the 13-hour operation, in fear of the recurrence or metastasis of cancer, she was going through the treatment and rehabilitation, despite great physical and mental pains. But she died abruptly, only 4 months after she was first diagnosed.

When I got pregnant with her, after much wavering over the possible radiation effect on the baby, I finally decided to give birth to her. So her death has given me deep sorrow and vexation. But now, a year after her death, I am determined to go forward, as I believe she is always with me, encouraging and supporting me.

It is still not proven whether a second generation Hibakusha is more likely to suffer cancer or not. But it is clear that radiation would affect the human genes, which is a cause for big anxiety among second and third generation Hibakusha.

The Hibakusha are, even without any physical problems, doomed to suffer, to be distressed, to moan and get angry at every important junction in their lives. The aftereffects of the atomic bomb continue to bring hardships to the survivors across the board throughout their lives, physically, mentally and in their living conditions.

Such experiences as ours should never be inflicted on any of you, nor on anyone in the world. It is inevitable that nuclear bombs would cause untold damage to human beings if they would ever be used again whether on purpose or by accident.

We now demand of the leaders of the nuclear weapons states that they should see with their own eyes the reality of the damage caused on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They claim that they are for deterrence. However, deterrence means a threat based on the possible actual use of these weapons. We the Hibakusha refuse to accept any threat or use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons. Nuclear weapons are weapons of the devil, which cannot coexist with humanity. The world is still loaded with more than 20,000 nuclear warheads. Each one of them is said to be dozens of times of more destructive than the Hiroshima-type bomb.

That nuclear weapons exist on earth should not be allowed from the humanitarian point of view.
Dear friends, the Hibakusha do not have much time left. Thank you for listening today. Let us work hard together to realize a world without nuclear weapons, with “No more Hibakusha” as the goal. In particular, we have a high expectation for young people.

We hope that the 2015 NPT Review Conference will achieve significant results. On my part, I will also continue to tell about the damage caused by nuclear weapons as long as I live.
No More Hiroshimas. No More Nagasakis. No More War. Thank you.

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Junko Kayashige

Born: March 20, 1939
My Experience of the Atomic Bombing

I entered elementary school in April 1945. Soon after I started going to school, it was decided that students should be sent to the countryside for evacuation from air raids.

In those days, my family consisted of my father, mother, brother (a college student), four older sisters (two middle school students, a sixth grader and a fourth grader), myself (a first grader), and my two younger sisters (3 years old and 11 months old). My parents decided to send my mother and the children not yet in middle school to stay outside of Hiroshima.

My brother was drafted in the spring of 1945. Around that time, joining the army meant that you had to be prepared to die in the war and to never come back home. So we took the family photo before my brother left home, and this has become the only picture of all of my family members together, because two of my sisters were killed by the A-bomb on the 6th of August, 1945.

Around the end of July, the school in the countryside where we had moved closed for the busy farming season. As my mother was worried about our house in Hiroshima, and also needed to visit a sick relative, we temporarily came back home.

It was a clear morning on the 6th of August. The sun was glaring. My father had gone to Okayama on a business trip. He was supposed to be back in Hiroshima before Aug. 6, but he missed the train and remained in Okayama.

My mother took my baby sister Toshiko to visit her sick relative in Itsukaichi Town on the outskirts of the city. When she was getting ready to leave the house, my fourth sister, Michiko, asked my mother to take her along also, but my mother did not allow her to come. My mother would regret that decision forever, saying in tears, “I should have taken Michiko also. I still remember her on the street in front of the house standing to see me off.” My brother had been sent to the army camp in Yamaguchui prefecture. My second sister, Hideko, was at home with my fifth sister, Katsuko. My oldest sister had already died of an illness. Usually Katsuko went every day to work at a factory, because at that time, students began being mobilized to work in munitions factories instead of going to school. But on that day, she was on a monthly holiday, and was hanging the washing on the line on the balcony.

My third sister, Hiroko, was in the Fujimi district of the city with her schoolmates, mobilized to demolish houses to make a huge fire lane that would divide the city into north and south. That was to protect important institutions from possible fire caused by the bombing.

My fourth sister, Michiko, had gone off on her bicycle to get ice for our refrigerator. After my mother left the house, I took my little sister Fumie to visit our uncle, the brother of my father, in the neighborhood. My youngest sister, Toshiko, was at the Kio station with my mother on their way to Itsukaichi.

My sister Fumie and I were at our uncle’s house after the air raid alert was cleared that morning. The house surrounding the courtyard was airy and very comfortable. My aunt was cleaning the study, whose windows faced to the east and the south. She played a children’s record, and we listened to the music. There were two sturdy wooden desks, two chairs, and a bookshelf on the south side of the room.

It was then that I saw a plane flying in the sky, and realized it was a B-29. “It’s a B-29 plane!” I shouted, and climbed onto the window to see the plane better. My cousin followed me to the window, so I moved a little to the west side on the window. As we were looking at the plane together, it dropped the A-bomb, which exploded 600 meters above the ground. The house where we were was 1.3 kilometers from ground zero.

When I came back to my senses, I found myself lying on the dirt ground under the window, inside the house. My cousin was lying there too. My aunt and sister Fumie, who had been in the same room, were blown farther, to the entrance area of the house, and my aunt was about to get up.

The desks, two chairs, a bookshelf, tatami mats and everything else in the room were all blown away and gone. The house was new and escaped collapse, but many old houses in the neighborhood were crushed. The fire had not started at that time. We stepped outside. We saw an old woman crying for help, trapped under a stone wall. We joined her daughter in trying to help her out, but the wall was too heavy for us to lift.

Trying to take us three children with her, my aunt went to the underground shelter to look for a rope to tie them on her back. I waited for her to come back, but became terrified when I saw the house beginning to catch fire, and flames raging out of the windows.

Unable to wait for her any longer, I ran away by myself. My sister shouted to me to stay there, but I couldn’t hear anything because of fear. I stepped on the roofs of collapsed houses toward the riverbank. Seeing other people fleeing in the direction of the mountain, I followed them.

After I crossed a wooden bridge called Nakahirobashi and came near the bamboo bush on the riverbank, the very bridge I had just crossed caught on fire from both ends. Since grown-up people were crossing the river on foot, I tried to follow them, but the river was too deep for me. A kind woman carried me by her side and we crossed the river.

Seeing that she had some cucumbers, I thought of using them to heal the burns on my face and arms. Remembering the cucumber tells me that I already knew that I had been burned.

Walking toward the mountain, I came across two of my relatives – my father’s brother-in-law and the father of my aunt. They were on their way to our house, worried about our family. When I identified myself to them, my uncle carried me on his back to an emergency clinic to sterilize and bandage the injuries on my face and arms, and took me back to his home, which was where my mother had been heading that morning. I was so relieved to be on his back, and did not remember anything before I got to his house. At his house, I was able to reunite with my mother. She was so happy to see me and said, “At least Junko is alive.” My father’s brother-in-law took a large, two-wheeled cart and headed back to Hiroshima to look for the other members of our family. Sometime later, he brought back my aunt and cousin and my sisters on the cart. My immediate elder sister, Katsuko, who was at home then, was badly injured.

When my father arrived in Hiroshima from Okayama, the whole city had been destroyed. He ran around in the ruined city for a few days looking for his family. Hearing from someone that we had gone to Istukaichi, he reunited with us. Later he said that when he was searching for us, suddenly a man rose and asked him, “water, please give me some water….” He was so astonished because he had thought the man was already dead. He later heard that Hiroko, my older sister, was injured and had been brought to a school. When he reached the school, all the classrooms were filled with injured people lying on the floor. My father looked for my sister from room to room, calling her name. After a few days of searching, he was about to give up when he heard a faint voice at his foot, saying “Daddy.”

Hiroko looked so different with her injuries. My father laid her on a board and put her on his bicycle, covering her with a white cloth to avoid the scorching sun. Looking at them, some people joined their hands and murmured the Buddhist prayer, believing she was already dead. Hiroko was offended to hear their prayers and said, “I’m not dead yet!”

When she was brought to our relative’s house, she was able to say in a loud voice, “I am home,” which made all of us so glad and relieved. She was carried to the bed quilt in a tatami room, but there was virtually no treatment we were able to give her.

At the moment of the flash, she had been crouching down and trying to adjust her shoestrings. In those days, even during summer, schoolgirls wore black uniforms (to avoid being spotted by enemy airplanes), and the uniforms absorbed the intense heat rays of the bomb and burned her back more heavily.

Soon many maggots gathered on her back injuries. Picking them off her back was about all we could do for her, but there were so many of them, and as we picked one off, others would crawl deeper into her flesh, which caused her great pain. She often cried and said, “stop it now, it hurts so much.”

The smell of her rotten flesh filled the room, and her clothes would become dirty quickly. Cousins of my mother kindly brought some changes of clothes, which my mother would remember for a long time in gratitude.

Military planes still flew over Hiroshima often and scared us all. My sisters, with heavy injuries on their feet and backs, were so scared, as they were not able to move. My mother made a pile of bedding mattresses around them to ease their fear and told them, “Don’t worry. I will not leave you alone.” I clearly remember the day when the war ended on Aug. 15. The adults listening to the broken voice of the emperor on the radio started to cry loudly. But as a small child, I felt relieved, for there would be no more bombs dropped on us.

On the next morning, Aug. 16, my second sister, Hiroko, called my mother from her sickbed while we were having breakfast, saying, “Mom, could you come here for a second?”

My mother told her to wait for a moment. A little later, she went to see Hiroko. Hearing the voice of my mother crying “Hiroko! Hiroko!” we rushed to her bedside, but Hiroko was already dead. Despite the joy she gave us when she came back home, she died, without being able to receive any treatment worthy of the name. Her burns were due to the intense heat from the rays of the bomb, which were absorbed in her black uniform. And she stayed in the radioactive environment for a long time. So I believe that the cause of her death was not only the burns but also the effect of the radiation. Let me tell you a little more about myself. I was saved by my uncle, who carried me to his house in Itsukaichi, but the burns on my entire face, right arm and neck took a very long time to heal. My mother was worried that I might lose sight in my right eye, which kept oozing pus.

On the day of the bombing, I was wearing a simple white dress, which I believe protected my body. I was on the window to see the plane in the sky, and the bomb’s heat rays burned my face, neck and my right hand and arm, which held the window frame.

These injuries, and a big cut on my sister’s thigh, did not heal easily. The sore parts kept oozing liquid, and new skin would not develop.

Hearing that it was good medicine, my father brought a semi-transparent ointment in a small container. He handed it to me and said, “use this little by little, as it is a very expensive medicine.” That ointment worked miraculously well on me. My mother and sisters always took great care to apply the medicine to my face. But the keloid on my hand and neck remained a long time. I always covered that part of my body with clothes and hated to wear short sleeves or swimsuits.

A doctor once told me that if you expose the wound to the air, the reconstruction of that part would be accelerated. That may explain the speedy recovery of the burns on my face. Covering my neck and hand could have delayed their recovery.

The house of my mother’s parents was close to the blast center. My mother collected the ashes found in the kitchen, and the ashes of a body clutching the handle of a chest of drawers, assuming that they were the remains of her parents.

My father’s younger brother was in my father’s company office, meeting a guest. Though we hoped he had escaped, his body was later found there on a chair. Flames might have engulfed him while he was unable to move. The guest he was meeting on that day visited us later to describe the situation.

My fourth sister, Michiko, who had gone to get ice, is still missing. My parents looked everywhere and found that she had visited the ice shop, but her whereabouts are unknown after that. Every year they searched for her name on the annually revised list of the A-bomb deceased, but could not find her.

Thanks to the passage of time, the burned skin on my hand and neck has almost recovered, with that part of the skin getting thinner and the scar of the burns indistinct. It is hard for me to revisit and recount my experience, but nuclear weapons are still threatening our lives, and they can be used at any time. The human race has the highest intelligence on this planet, using letters and languages. Humans are supposed to be able to feel love and sorrow and the pain of others. But they still wage wars, and even depleted uranium weapons (though they may not be called nuclear arms) are used widely.

How foolish humans can become! But I want to believe in humanity’s wisdom.

Many of us Hibakusha do not want to tell our stories of unhealed pain in our minds and bodies. But we must tell the world what has happened and what we have gone through. Hibakusha are aged now, and there are fewer and fewer of us who can tell you stories of our experiences.

We Hibakusha strongly hope for a world where no one ever should experience the pains that we have experienced. The only way to achieve this is to abolish nuclear weapons. If we cooperate with the people all over the world, it is possible to make a peaceful world without nuclear weapons.

Finally, I would like to pray for the souls of the people who were killed by atomic bombs and in wars throughout the world. Thank you.

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Kulimkhan Rakhimova Assesses Health Conditions in Kazakstan 

I will speak today on behalf of all the nuclear test victims in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. I must try to convey to you a sense of the enormous pain that those people – alive and dead – have suffered.

The first nuclear bomb test was conducted on the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan at 7 am on August 29, 1949. According to the data available to medical workers, from 1949 to 1965, a total of 266 nuclear tests were carried out on the Semipalatinsk site, out of which 138 were on land and 128 in the air. Especially intense testing was Kulimkhan Rakhimova distributes drawings by Children Hibakusha of Kazakhstan following her talk. Photo: Lin Yi Hsing conducted there in 1961-1962. During those two years there were 94 explosions. During 1949- 1965 at least 500 thousand people in Semipalatinsk were exposed to a combination of external and internal radiation.

World science has never encountered anything comparable to the Semipalatinsk region. The first nuclear test there became a real catastrophe for 300 thousand people. During the first hours after the local radioactive fallout, radiation in the village of Dolon country was at 200 rem per hour. The impact on the thyroid gland equaled 130 rem, the impact on the alimentary digestive system equaled 90 rad, and on the bone tissue 90-100 rem.

No adequate protective measures were taken. The people did not have the devices for measuring the radiation level. A hydrogen bomb was exploded on the site on August 12, 1953.

According to a study carried out by the Semipalatinsk Radiological Clinic, mortality from various kinds of cancer was relatively low among the Semipalatinsk population prior to 1949. Specifically, it was at 50% or less of that found in the Russian cities of Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk. Until 1954 this figure did not change, but from 1954 to 1957 the mortality rate increased 2.5 fold.

Congenital diseases and stunted childhood development came to take up a larger part of the statistical distribution of the mortality, rising from 2.3% to 7.3%. The rates of neurological and psychiatric disorders also grew rapidly, as well as those of mental and physical retardation among children. The number of still births in the Semipalatinsk region rose from 6.1 per 1000 of the population in 1960 to 12.2 in 1988. We have studied the histories of three families from the village of Karaul in the Abai district and from Semipalatinsk. Their ancestors in the 7th, 6th, 5th, and 4th generations were all physically healthy and lived long lives without any apparent serious maladies. The tragedies of these families began in 1949 and continue to this day.

Our study has revealed, for example, that Enlyk Teleubekova’s endocrinological system has been affected in a very extreme way. She was born in 1978 and is now 20 years old, but she looks like a four-year-old child. The diagnosis is an extreme form of hypotireosis, and mental and physical retardation.

Prior to 1949, Enlyk’s ancestors were characterized by considerable physical strength, and retained a good deal of energy until old age. Many of them lived very long lives, although a few may have died earlier because of epidemics of infectious diseases.

During the nuclear tests on the Semipalatinsk site the Teleubekov family and their relatives lived in an area most heavily contaminated by radiation. They were exposed to radiation and consumed meat, milk, and water contaminated by strontium 90 and cesium 137. This is what we believe to have caused the death of Enlyk’s relatives.

I also want to introduce you to Berik Syzdykov and the tragedy of his life. He is another victim of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. He is 19 years old, is short, blind from birth, and his whole face is swollen with tumors. Reuters made his story public.

His family moved from China to the village of Znamenka in 1962. In 1963 there was a powerful nuclear test on the Semipalatinsk site. Berik’s father happened to be grazing sheep near-by. In spite of his tragedy, Berik is a very communicative person, good at conversation, and has many friends in Italy. Thanks to the concern and selfless efforts of the anti-nuclear movement in Kazakstan and a famous Kazakh writer, Berik is now being treated by Italian doctors. I could give multiple examples of such victims, but I believe it to be my duty to introduce one more person – Ardak Zhumataev. He is 33 years old. At birth his weight was normal, 4.7 kg. At age 18, he was drafted into the army.

On being demobilized he married and fathered three children. At the time, his height was 180 cm., but for the last six years he has been bed-ridden, and his height is now 128 cm. His bones are showing through his skin. His spine is deformed. His skin is peeling all over his body.

Exposure to low doses of radiation has an impact on the human psyche as well as the body. Studies of suicidal behavior in the various districts of the Semipalatinsk region populated predominantly by Kazakh populations, show that low doses of internal and external radiation caused by subterranean nuclear tests, have occurred near the Abaiskii and Shubartauskii districts, which are located closest to the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons test site.

If a single organ of the human body fails and ceases to function, the whole body dies.

If one part of the Earth is seriously wounded, the whole planet may perish. This is why we must strive to preserve our planet as a whole.

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Satoru Konishi

Professor emeritus
Assistant Secretary General, Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) – 2003
[edited by Joseph Gerson}

I am an A-Bomb survivor of Hiroshima.

I wonder how I can make you understand the horror of atomic bombs. I myself witnessed and experienced it but I suffered an enormous shock the next day and now retain only a few fragments of my memory. Most if it has been lost.

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, on the morning of August 6, 1945, I was in the city, 4.5 km or 2.8 miles away from the ground zero, the center of the blast. I was 16 years old. I was in a military shipyard at the southern tip of the city. We were mobilized as substitutes of workers. But we had no more materials to build ships. Therefore we were in a shack without a floor and ceiling, a so-called “classroom”, to learn by ourselves.

The sky was very clear. As we sat at our desks, a flash of lightening ran in front of our eyes, so bright as if a large number of flashbulbs set off at once. I felt strong heat on my head. We all hid ourselves under the desks. A little later, a huge blast came with a roaring sound, and window panes fell all over the desks and were smashed into pieces.

After the blast passed, we crawled out. I found a few meters away one of my schoolmates standing absentmindedly. On his cheek hung down a drop of blood. About 500 meters in front of us, we saw a big pillar of white cloud rising fiercely into the sky; it looked like a huge dragon or a tornado-monster.

Here my memory fades. I don’t know how I came home. On my way home – and this is only fragmentary memory on my way home – I met a student talking of his experiences in the city. His face was so dark and swollen as a big round watermelon, but I cannot remember what he talked of.

What I remember most vividly on that day is the scene of the city of Hiroshima in conflagration, which I saw in the evening from the porch of my house located 6km or 3 and a half miles to the west of the city center. The flames looked like tongues of a huge monster licking up in the air. Under the flames, tens of thousands of mothers and children must have been crying for help.

On the next day morning, Aug. 7, I went to the city with two of my schoolmates. When I stood at the west end of the city, oh, the city was totally disappeared. “Shall it be true?” “Nothing!” “No city? No houses?” “Why?” I could not realize the fact that no marks of the city were left to see. It was as if I were in a dream. I went after my friends, but I cannot remember where I walked or what I saw.

All of a sudden, I heard a voice saying, “Give me water!” I looked and saw it, it was a face like a lump of tofu, so white swollen and soft, with its eyes, nose and mouth getting out of shape. It looked totally different from a human face. I cannot remember what I did and saw after that. One thing is sure, that I went away without giving him some water.

Several decades later, one of my two friends who had been with me answered my question: We walked on that day all around the ruined city of Hiroshima that day. There were corpses lying here and there; bodies floating up and down on the rivers; scattering bones and debris . . .

I must have seen all these cruel sights, but I cannot remember any of them. The only thing I remembered was that face like tofu. Often I tried in vain to get back the lost memory.

Then decades have gone, and last year in August, 2002, I met a man who was at the moment of the blast very close to me in the same shipyard, a distance that was probably less than 50 meters from our “classroom”. Through his witness I confirmed for the first time what I saw on the day and the day after.

I may quote from the witness of Mr. Ryuma Miyanaga (then age 15, worker of drafting, Mitsubishi Industry).

“Flash . . . I was engulfed in an intense ray of light and felt an incredible heat. In an instant, everything around me became red, as if I had been thrust inside a fiery blaze. In the same instant, I was knocked over by a blast of hot air containing a tremendous amount of pressure. When I came to, I was sprawled on the floor and the drawing easel I had just moments before been working on was on top of me. With a rush of noise the ceiling opened up and the roof totally collapsed in, sagging down near the window. Previously solid pillars.

From outside, I could hear thousands of employees yelling and screaming. Workers covered in blood gathered in the open grounds near the side of the building. Among this horrendous scene was a steady stream of people pouring through the front gate who looked like they came from some horrible other world. They were people fleeing from the city center. An unending line of people came walking through, eyeballs protruding out of their sockets, hair clinging to their head, their skin burnt and dripping, still smoldering, with blisters beginning to form. Unable to distinguish between men and women, they no longer looked human. The cries and moans of “I’m so hot! It hurts! Water, water!” began to fade away and people started dying like flies in front of me. I was so stunned by this scene that I didn’t even notice my own injuries.

“On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am, I was exposed to the atomic bomb dropped by America. I was fifteen years old at the time and I was inside the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Hiroshima Shipyard for kilometers away from the hypocenter.

“When day broke the following morning, the shipyard had become an even more hellish field of corpses. I entered the city to help in the rescue efforts of survivors about 1 kilometer to 1.5 kilometers away from the hypocenter. Fires were breaking out all over the city. Thousands of people had jumped into the river to find relief from their burns, and the river had become choked with floating corpses. All the bridges and roads were covered with burnt, blackened bodies.

There was no place to walk without stepping on arms, legs, heads or bodies stuck to the surface of the road. Bodies hung from the railing like rags hung out to dry.

“All that was left of a train stopped in its tracks was its frame. All of the people inside had been collapsed houses remained intact while their legs had been completely burned away. I couldn’t rescue them. I felt like I was losing my mind amid this unspeakably horrifying scene. Dead bodies and those people barely alive were left outside in the intense heat and began to rot. The stench from the city’s crematoriums drifted as far away as the shipyard four kilometers from town, making it difficult to breath.”

Unconsciously, I have tried to escape from the experiences of the atomic bombing. But in reality, I was firmly caught by the atomic bomb. Seven years after the bombing, I fell to an unknown disease. I felt my body very heavy without doing anything and even a little move made me exhausted. I was prone easily to catch cold and I got scratches on my skin even by simply hitting against something a little, edges or furniture or so. Bleeding from slight scratches did not stop all day long.

My backbone was unable to sustain the weight of my head. I couldn’t read any books, I was not able to catch and keep the senses of books which I had “read.” Actually I only saw. I felt, I was in the grip of Death. I tried every way to regain my health, moxa cauteries and taking herbs and vitamin tablets. My physical condition got slowly, very slowly better.

Now I have become much healthier, but still I cannot work half so much as other people of the same age.

Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 instantly turned two cities into hell. Numerous people were crushed or burned to death in conflagration. Most of those who were killed without rescue were children, elderly people and women.

The hellish sight of Hiroshima is well described in “The Day Hiroshima Disappeared” by Dr. Shuntaro Hida (cf. Hiroshimas Shadow, ed. By Kai Bird & Lawrence Lifschultz, The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1009 p. 415f.)

Not only the dead but those who barely survived were sometimes treated as a lumps of meat or things, human dignity being deprived. Rotten bodies were mounted up here and there, which were later put on trucks with a fire hook. Then after a while, they were dumped in holes to be burned, and their ashes were buried without funeral there just as they were.

The Atomic bomb put people in an extreme situation and made them unable to act as humans. It gave a serious shock to people’s psyches and caused ceaseless physical and mental sufferings from the moment of explosion to the end of their lives. Every day I hear the call from the tofu faced, sitting on my neck: “What have you done in the half a century, what have you done for peace?” Urged by the call. I have been working for 26 years in the center of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) organization, although as a German scholar, I would like to put more energy for my study of German literature, but I could scarcely do it.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the worst crime against humanity. Nuclear arms are not only WMD but also weapons of annihilation. They cannot compare with other weapons. They are by nature inhuman.

Nuclear arms are the very height of violence and cruelty. We condemn the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however we have never demanded “retaliation.” But from the beginning we have been asking the U.S. government to make an apology and to sow its sincerity through an act: to realize its “unequivocal undertaking” to abolish its nuclear arsenals. Our answer to the atomic bombing, the greatest war terrorism, was and is “Never More Hibakusha, elimination of nuclear arms.”

We condemn all sorts of terrorism. We condemn any wars and violence, especially the war against the innocent people of Iraq under the fake pretext of getting rid of WMD. We condemn the Bush administration as well as Koizumi’s, which is now going the same way as the US, violating the Japanese constitution. We demand restoration of peace and justice, human rights and humanism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and all over the world.

Friends, let us work together, to make the world free from nuclear arms, free from war, free from violence, threat, every shortage and fear!

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Seiroku Kondo
Sodegaura-city Chiba, JAPAN

In 1945, I was in the 9th grade. I lived in a town called Motofune-town. When I went to school on August 9th, my teachers ordered us to go home, saying that “it’s going to be dangerous today.” So a friend and I returned to my home together. Because it was almost noon I was getting hungry. So, I set my lunch box down next to me and began to play a game of Japanese chess with my friend.

Then I heard the roar of aircraft engines. And suddenly, I found myself enveloped in a blinding flash of light. Frightened, I leapt up and began to run. No sooner had I heard an incredibly loud noise, than I was thrown violently across the room.

When I woke up I found myself lying in the kitchen. I had lost consciousness for a short time. Piles of pots, pans and debris covered me. My hands and legs were blackened with soot and bloodied from flying glass.

As I had only been wearing a short-sleeved shirt, I had injuries all over my body. It hurt so much I could barely move. I called my friend, but heard no answer. No matter how loud I yelled, all I could hear was terrible noise outside.

Fire had started and flames began to approach me. Telling myself, “Calm down. Calm down,” I gathered my courage and began to find a way out. One by one, I removed the fallen pots and pans. And, little by little I pushed away the debris. When I had freed myself, I dashed outside.

People were already milling about outside; some of them covered in blood, others blackened with burns and asking for water. Huge clouds, as if from a live volcano, billowed up from the direction of Nagasaki station. They were coming right towards me. The intense heat was almost unbearable. The area surrounding Nagasaki station had turned into a sea of fire, and it was spreading rapidly. Frightened, I ran like mad.

As I ran, the basement of a nearby prefectural government building burst into flame. A soldier collared me, pointed a gun in my face and screamed, “extinguish that fire! I’ll kill you if you run!” I hurried to get water with a bucket, and started trying to extinguish the fire. But the fire kept increasing in size, and had become impossible to put out. I waited for an opening and dashed away when I got the chance.

As I approached the area called Idejima, I was approached by a person whose hair was scorched and entire body completely burned. The person begged, “Please give me water.” It was only when I heard her voice that I realized it was a woman. But there was no water anywhere. There was nothing that I could do.

I happened to make it to the air-raid shelter of my high school. A classmate of mine, his body completely burned, had made it there as well. He collapsed, moaning, “Give me water, water.” As the night wore on, he became very quiet and silently passed away.

As dawn broke and I looked around I saw seven or eight bodies surrounding me. Everybody helped to carry the bodies from the air-raid shelter. We lined them up on the ground. Teachers and classmates knelt in front and crossed themselves, saying a prayer in a simple funeral ceremony.

Several days later, I visited my friend’s house. It had been burned, but it was still standing and he was fine. Together, we left to search for lost family members. We approached the epicenter to look for them, but the ground was still very hot, and searching was difficult. The few houses still standing in the city had their roofs blown to bits or melted by the heat of the explosion; it was a terrible sight.

My friend and I heard the news of the war ending on the radio. But it hardly registered. Perhaps this was because the horrible things I witnessed were far more shocking than the thought of Japan losing the war.

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Shoji Sawada

Shoji Sawada: a theoretical particle physicist and an emeritus professor of Nagoya University, and a representative director of Japan Council against A&H Bombs (Gensuikyo).

My Experience of the Atomic Bombing

When the atomic bomb was dropped I was 13 years old. I was sick on that day, then at the moment of the bombing I was sleeping at home, about 1,400m from ground zero. Therefore I did not see the flash of the heat ray nor feel the shock wave of the blast. Everything happened instantaneously.

When I came to my senses, I found that I was trapped under my crushed house. I struggled and wiggled, and at last I was able to crawl out of the piles of broken wood and plaster. When I stood upon my crushed house, the world I found was like night—the morning sunshine blocked by dark brown air that changed to yellow and then white, and finally became clear. At that moment, I was shocked to find that all the city of Hiroshima was flattened as far as I could see. I could not grasp what had happened.

Immediately, I heard my mother call my name. Her voice seemed to come from far away, though I knew there was not much distance between her and me, that her voice came from just under my feet. So I inferred that the broken roof and piles of crushed plaster prevented her voice from reaching me directly.
My mother said that she was unable to move, that her legs were caught between big beams or pillars. I tried with all my might to pull away these beams or pillars. But it was far beyond my ability. I called out in vain to adults for help, but those wounded could do nothing more than find a safe place for themselves. During rescue work of my mother I asked her “Is this a big earthquake?” She said, “No, a huge bomb exploded very close to our house.”

I did not notice the fires at first, but it was spreading gradually. At the instant of the atomic bomb explosion, everything to burn caught fires but was smoldering for a while. When I told my mother of the approaching fires, she told me, “ You should survive, you should become a good person by studying well.” Though she could not see the fire, which was growing stronger, she said, “That’s enough, never mind your mother. Get away from here!” I hesitated in leaving my mother. But when a large fire storm arose, my mother said, “Get away right now.” It seemed faint, but it was strong, and so I could decide to leave without her. As I escaped, I said,

“Forgive me, mother!”

That was the last conversation I had with my mother.

There was no road, and amid the flames and smoke I could see only piles of houses, and badly burned people escaping. Their burned skins were hanging down from their chins or nails which were not burned. At last I could reach the riverside, and swam across the river, and sat on the dry riverbed watching the burning town from the other side. The smoke and flames became a cloud over my head. When I thought of my mother beneath the flames, my heart was broken, and I thought, “Was there not something I could have done to save her?” Even now, the same feeling comes over me whenever I think of my mother.

In my conception, I have double responsibility for all human being to abolish nuclear weapons and this will be response to my mother’s last words. One is as a survivor who had experienced the disaster of that day. Now about 280,000 survivors of atomic bombing in Japan, Korea and in other countries are still struggling against physical, living and mental difficulties which grow harder with age. In the world, including USA, the former Soviet Union, and other nuclear weapon states, more than several millions victims of radiation caused from the whole processes from uranium mining to weapon production, such as down wind habitants of nuclear test. For survivors of the atomic bombing, it is obvious that using nuclear weapons is the most inexcusable crime in human history. It should never be used against anyone, for any purpose and any reason, and upon anywhere.

The other my responsibility is as a scientist or as a physicist. A hydrogen bomb test done at Bikini atoll in 1954, gave me a great shock, because at that time I was a undergraduate student learning physics. I thought that nuclear physics was badly used eventually to construct weapon which could destroy the whole human society as well as lives on the earth. Then I began to act to abolish nuclear weapons as a student of physics and later as a physicist. Now I am studying the after effects of Atomic bombing to the human body in relation with a collective lawsuit and found that the studies concerning to the effects of atomic radiation supported by the U.S.A. government completely ignores the effects of the residual radiation which were caused by the fallout and induced radioactive matters. This residual exposure came from internal exposure and it is found that these effects cause the major obstacles among survivors at present. This ignorance of the residual radiation effects is closely related to the U.S. government research and development of new ‘usable nuclear weapon’ such as ‘earth penetrating nuclear weapon’ whose use will emerge ‘another hell in this world’ than Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to a huge amount of radiation.
I appeal that it is the time to abolish nuclear weapon for the future human being.

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Shuntaro Hida

Medical Doctor and A-bomb Sufferer of Hiroshima
Director, Hibakusha Counseling Center
Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers’ Organizations

In 1945, I was working as an army surgeon at the Hiroshima Army Hospital. Early in the morning on August 6 I left home to see a patient in Hesaka Village located 6 km from Hiroshima City. Thus I happened to escape from the death by the A-bombing. For more than 50 years since I was engaged in the emergency medical treatment of the victims (Hibakusha) almost immediately after the explosion, I have worked to treat A-bomb sufferers. Based on my experience, I want to report on the deaths of those killed by nuclear weapons, hoping that it will help promote the movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

(1) The A-bomb radiation kills humans in two ways: 1) High-level radiation released by explosion pierces the human body from the outside and destroys many organs simultaneously, causing death to victims, and 2) radiation from radioactive substances taken in the human body turns oxygen molecules in bodily fluid into activated oxygen, which in turn damages chromosomes in cells, resulting in diseases and subsequent death.

(2) Deaths caused by acute radiation disorders and sub-acute disorders: (Acute disorder means the state of pan-histphthisis, in which multiple organs are damaged simultaneously. Sub-acute disorder means delayed effects caused by the internal exposure to residual radioactivity.) Within a few days of the bombing, many people died after exhibiting such violent symptoms as high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding from mucous membranes, vomiting blood, bloody stool, and gangrene of palatal membranes. This continued for months. Dr. Juan Amano’s theory explains why some symptoms appeared later than others—why some Hibakusha dies immediately, while others did not suffer these symptoms for months: Neutrons released as radiation from the A-bomb turned the phosphorus in bones and the brain into radioactive phosphorus, which irradiated and damaged the body cells from within. (Research report of the Science Council of Japan “Report 1-4 of A-bomb Disorders) It was not until 1973 when Canadian doctor Abram Petkau announced that low-level radiation was more destructive to cell membranes than high-level radiation that the scientific analysis on the disorders caused by internal exposure to residual radioactivity became possible.

(3) Deaths from chronic symptoms (ranging from A-bomb Bura-bura disease to leukemia, cancer, multiple tumors of bone marrow). In 1946, many Hibakusha began to suffer A-bomb Bura-bura disease. Patients became lethargic, easily fatigued, and impatient, even as they seemed clinically normal. They easily caught colds and, once they did, they took a long time to recover. This condition made it difficult for them to continue working and degraded their already poor living condition. There were many cases in which patients caught a slight cold and then, quite suddenly developed a fatal case of tuberculosis. The doctors had to be very careful in treating the A-bomb Bura-bura disease. In 1946, Leukemia began attacking the Hibakusha. The number of those who developed the disease gradually increased and reached its peak in 1953-54. A little later, other forms of cancer ravaged the Hibakusha. Surveys show that the rate of cancer death of the Hibakusha is higher than that of non-Hibakusha. (According to a survey in Saitama prefecture in 1987, 5 of the deaths of Hibakusha (58%) were caused by cancer.) Surviving Hibakusha fear cancer the most. Myeloma (multiple tumors of the bone marrow) does not occur frequently in the general population. But among the Hibakusha, myeloma is not uncommon. Due to its frequency among Hibakusha, it is listed as one of the radiation-induced diseases in the Hibakusha Aid Law. The disease is much feared by the Hibakusha, as it is quickly fatal.

(4) Deaths caused by the lowering of immunity function and healing ability:

The Hibakusha as well as non-Hibakusha contract adult and other chronic diseases as they get older. However, even with proper treatment and health care in their daily lives, the Hibakusha have more cases of unstable conditions and complications than the general public. Their conditions tend to suddenly deteriorate, leading to unexpected death in many cases.

(5) Notion of nuclear deterrence is wrong:
The nuclear deterrence doctrine, which regards the possession of nuclear arms as useful means to deter nuclear war, suggests that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is safe and harmless. Maintaining those nuclear weapons, without ever using them, still requires that they frequently updated and that new weapons be developed. In every stage of nuclear development process, from mining and refining of uranium, production of warheads, their stockpile and transportation to the disposal of nuclear waste, Hibakusha are created by residual radioactivity. Nuclear deterrence theory can boast a new generation of Hibakusha who suffer with radiation induced diseases and who will not appear in official records.
We must not overlook the fact that the practice of deterrence has been lulling international and national opinion on the abolition of nuclear weapons into a false sense of security.

(6) Nuclear arms trigger a new war:
The wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, waged after World War II, all began with the conviction that the war could be won in the long run through the threat of nuclear weapons. If there had not been nuclear weapons, the decision to start the Gulf War could not have been made so easily. Nuclear arms do not prevent war. On the contrary, they increase the temptation to start a war.

(7) Conclusion:
The elimination of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee for the survival of humankind.

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Sumio Shigezumi
International Meeting 2004 World Conference against A & H Bombs
Head of the plaintiffs of Hiroshima Hibakusha lawsuit

Hello, my name is Sumio Shigezumi, head of the plaintiffs of Hiroshima Hibakusha lawsuit. Together with 45 plaintiffs, I’m determined to achieve a victory in court.

I was born in Tokaichi Town, just 600 meters away from the blast center. There was a street of 100 shops in the town. According to a survey conducted of 200 town people, anyone who at home was killed in an explosion, which caused 60 missing families in the town.

Defense Agency Director Shigeru Ishiba recently made an astonishing remark. It came to light in the minutes of a House of Representatives Special Committee meeting held on April 22 to discuss legislation that would define the nation’s response to foreign military attack. His remark aroused a flood of criticism and protest from many organizations, including the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bombs Sufferers Organizations (Japan Hidankyo). Manabu Masuda, head of the Citizen’s Department of the Hiroshima City government, strongly criticized Ishiba’s statement saying, “The DA chief may not understand the tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the situation that many Hibakusha and still suffering from in the aftermath of the A-bombs.”

According to the minutes, Ishiba said, “Many people survived and avoided losing their lives even near the blast center either in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.” I soon looked into the History of the Hiroshima A bomb Damage compiled by Hiroshima City. It reports that all residents of 19 districts close to the epicenter, including Saiku Town and Otemachi Town’s first-sixth blocks, were killed instantly. The subsequent survey shows that only ten people survived but died after apparently suffering from A-bomb diseases such as cancer.

Children in the student mobilization were at different places. Thus, they avoided directly suffering the explosion, but they were exposed to radiation when they returned to their towns near the blast center. The children couldn’t distinguish their family’s bodies or even couldn’t find them. There are many graves around here without any ashes.

Knowing that Japan’s DA chief made such a terrible remark, I feel gloomy about the future. I fear that my country will be at risk if we fail to stop Ishiba from repeating the statement. His statement has caused controversy and has been criticized in many rallies in Hiroshima.

The A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima’s downtown area and its unarmed citizens at once.

Unlike conventional war damage, 80 percent of people who were within one kilometer from ground zero at that time died of A-bomb diseases. My father was burned to death under the rubble of our house. My mother, however, escaped unharmed but died on August 14. She wouldn’t have died leaving her 17-year-old son behind, if the attack had been by a conventional weapon. At that time, I was filled with deep sorrow. I wanted my parents back.

I had an operation for stomach cancer two years ago. Everyday, I worry about the possibility that the tumor will spread and recur in other parts of my body.

In Hiroshima, 45 Hibakusha filed a lawsuit on June 12, 2003, calling for official recognition that we are Hibakusha with A-bomb diseases. Unfortunately two have already died. Since the first trial hearing on August 20 last year, eight hearings have so far taken place.

The defendant, the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry, keeps refusing to disclose complete information consistent with the U.S. policy of concealing the impacts of the A-bombs. The government seems to be waiting for use to die since our average age is 72. Two of us have already died, and six other plaintiffs have been repeatedly hospitalized. I’m trying my best to ensure that our case is concluded in less than a year.

Thank you.

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Tadahiko Murata

My experiences as a survivor of the Atomic Bomb

I was born in the city of Hiroshima in February, 1940. I was the youngest of six children and received a lot of attention from the rest of the family. I had a very happy childhood. On that day of August 6th in 1945, my father, Hisashi Murata, was serving in Chiba prefecture as a colonel in the army. My mother, Toyo, had travel to city of Kumamoto for some reasons. The oldest brother, Hirohiko, had been killed in an air fight just a year before in September, 1944. My eldest sister, Sachiko, was helping house work at home to prepare to marry. My sister, Takako, was in the fourth grade at a girls school and, on that day, she was taking a part in the student mobilization. My sister, Sadako, was in the first grade at the girls school and that morning she was working on the demolition of buildings and houses as part of the student mobilization program. The sister Setsuko, who was the closest to me in age and in the third grade at a public elementary school, was at school that morning. I was on the street playing
a “war game” on the street in front of our house.

August 6th, 1945 was a beautiful day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was very hot. Wearing a straw hat and wooden shoes, I was playing a war game with some other neighbor kids. We had been playing under the dazzling sun, and everything suddenly became dark at a moment. When the atomic bomb is called “Pikadon” because of its first bright flash and the later big roaring sound but I do not remember either the flash or the sound. Only thing I remember is that I was crying in the darkness.

What made this darkness? I was blown by the blast from the street where I was playing and I found myself in another house in neighborhood. That house was approximately three meters away from the street. The house was filled with ashes and dust and those things made my sight completely dark. As I was crying with shock, one of survivors who was escaping to Hijiyama came into the house and hold my hand and took me outside of the house.

I ran to my house which was located ten meters away from there. My house was a two-story house and it must have had the huge impact of the blast of the bomb. It collapsed completely and my sister, Sachiko, who screaming for a help under the rubble; “Help! Help!” I called her name too and tried to help by removing these rubbles.

But there was no way for a 5-year old kid to move a huge pillar or everything. Only thing I could do was just being distracted.

I am not sure how many hours pasted since then but the youngest sister Setsuko came home from school. She had a terrible burn on her left side of body, from her face to her foot her skin was showing red flesh and her skin was peeled off from her shoulder to her arm and it was hanging from her fingers. Her hair was all standing up and she did not even look like a human being.

Setsuko and I tried to help Sachiko out of the rubble calling her name “Big sister! Big sister!” but two little kids were helpless. We asked people running by for a help but they were also desperate to escape.

While we were trying, the flames reached to us. A neighbor woman came help us and hold our hand to ran away with us. She saved my life. However, my memory, that I had to leave my sister screaming under the flame “Help, little brother!” “Help, Setsuko!” does not fade away. Rather, it even grew day by day. I have a feeling that I could not help leaving because I was too little but at the same time, I blame myself about leaving my sister. This struggle of emotions makes me even more miserable.

Setsuko and l spent one night at the army and went to the Mr. Yokoyama’s in Yasumura. Two soldiers accompanied us pulling a cart. They made a bed of straw in on the cart. Setuko laid down on it with her burnt left side of body up. I was sitting in the back and watching still-burning Hiroshima. People who had been terribly burned were sitting about or lying down amidst the rubble as they had no more energy to stand up. They were staring vacantly into space. They were crying out weakly, “Water! Water!” Uncountable numbers of people were dead. I saw a dead horse with its four legs sticking into the air and its belly and guts spilling out. An army truck was throwing out bags containing hardtack and crystalized sugar when it passed our cart by. I picked one of them and ate the inside. Sadako who was several years older than Setsuko, was working on the demolition of houses just 600 meters from the hypocenter. We believe she was killed instantly by the bomb. We never found any of her belongings or bones. The records at her school simply said ”All dead.” When Takako got back from Kure and saw our burnt out, she hurried to Mr. Yokoyama’s. My mother heard the radio news saying that “a new type of bomb” was dropped on Hiroshima, and hurried to Hiroshima too. But on the way at Kure City, a Grumman launched from an aircraft carrier attacked her train and one of the bullets hit my mother’s chest. She died on August 8th. By father hurried back to Hiroshima to see if the family was safe.
Setsuko and l received some treatment at the Yokoyama’s, but since there was no medicine available, all they could do was to apply mercurochrome. The only burn l got was a 5 cm by 10 cm on my right lap. Considering the distance of just 1.8km away from the hypocenter, I think it was a miracle that I got off with that burn.

Setsuko’ s burned flesh starting crawling with maggots and when Takako tried to pick them out, Setsuko cried because of the horrible pain. When we had to remove the gauze or bandages, she screamed in pain. Our hair fell out and both of us had bloody stools. Our bodies swelled up. Many times we were close to death. Setsuko died on September 10th. Before she died, she repeatedly said “I wanna eat a boiled egg.” It is sad to lose brothers and sisters but for Setsuko, I think she had been better die because it would really hard for women to live through life being self-conscious about her burnt skin and keloid.

I started elementary school in 1946. I was a weak child and very quiet. Since, my bright and pleasant family had been destroyed. No mother, no sisters. Our home was a dismal place.

When l was in the third grade, several men came from the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission). They used to interrupt our class and force kids, who had survived the bomb to go with them in a jeep. They stripped us naked and took pictures of us. They took our blood and performed many experiments on us. The most outrageous thing was that they would not to give us any treatment even though they found some of us seriously ill. They gave us no medicine. They gave us no shots. Only thing they did was experiments using Hibakusha. They kept doing that year after year. It is said that the data is in the strict custody of NASA in the United States.

My father died in June 1971. On that very day, a representative of the ABCC came over and said “we’d like to do an anatomy.” It had been 26 years since the bomb. Hibakusha has five times as high risk of cancer as normal. My two children seem healthy, but who knows what effects might appear in the second and third generations of Hibakusha. The Hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the first people in the world who survived the atomic bomb, so we continue to be used as experimental
animals. No one knows what will happen to us.

In August 1945, especially after Russia’s declaration to enter the war, it was clear Japan would be defeated soon. If U.S. did not use the atomic bomb, it would not have any chance to drop the bomb on a populated area. They could not tell exactly what kind of effects Atomic bomb had by testing it in the desert. For some reason, Hiroshima had never experienced air raids. The United States decided to drop the atomic bomb as an experiment on Japan, a nation with no more gasoline, no more guns and which was going to survive U.S.-Soviet Cold War with only bamboo spears to defend themselves. The U.S. wanted to maintain their superiority. To win in the nuclear competition, they sacrificed the city of Hiroshima.

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Anthony Guarisco

American WWII and Korean war veteran – Operation Crossroads

Greetings: My name is Anthony Guarisco; I’m the director of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans (AAV). On behalf of our AAV members, we thank you for the opportunity to speak here today, and we extend our gratitude to the many people who have worked to make this conference a reality.

Our Alliance consists mainly of US military veterans who, while serving in the military, were ordered to take part in the US military’s experimental nuclear weapons explosions. The US military tells us that from 1945-63 three hundred thousand American troops were directly involved in the US nuclear explosion program. That would include 40,000 troops who were ordered into Hiroshima and Nagasaki to do clean up work in the aftermath of the unnecessary atomic attacks on the innocent men, women and children of those two cities.

It was 1945 when the US military exploded two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our alliance and many other veterans in America believe that the people of those two cities became the first Nuclear Weapons Experimental Animals for the US military. Those of us who were in the Pacific at that time were told and understood that when the Island of Okinawa fell to the Americans (and it did, June 1945) the war would be over. But that is another story for another time.

Although the American atomic veterans did not experience the nuclear weapons holocaust as did our brother and sister Hibakusha of Japan, many of our vets were within very close range of nuclear explosions. The military insisted on moving us closer and closer to the epicenter of the explosions. By August 1946 the decision had been made to use US troops at this first naval nuclear explosions code named “Operation Crossroads.” After the second bomb, code name Baker (an underwater explosion), the operation was completely out of control and was quickly and frantically closed down.

Many years later, in 1983, one of our AAV members, a researcher, uncovered the one-time secret and top secret documents, now declassified, that explained why the operation was stopped before the third and last experimental explosion.

In every respect the atomic vets were the sacrificial lambs, laid on the altar of the atomic age for the development of the larger and deadlier nuclear weapons that now hold each of us hostage. We never thought the military would put us in harm’s way, but we were wrong about that. We can never forget the clear but unbelievable demonstration of what World War III would look like. Not many people other than the Japanese Hibakusha or other atomic veterans can understand what it would be like to be two miles away from a 24 kiloton explosion.

We have seen the fire-storm and felt the incredible heat and wind. We remember the continuous and unbelievably high intensity of the loud thundering of 100 thunderstorms at one time. We cringe at the thought of the relentless percussion that engulfed and tightened around our bodies as if it would crush us to death. Indelibly burned in our memory is the sacrilegious devastation that nuclear weapons leave in their wake.

One of the top secret documents dated in the same time frame – August 1946 – revealed a statement made by a high ranking officer in a secret meeting convened on a flag ship in the Bikini lagoon after the second explosion (Baker). The statement: “We must take every precaution to assure that no successful claim can be filed by a Crossroads participant against the Radiological Monitoring Section of Operation Crossroads”. Translation: “It’s called barring the debt and covering your ass.”

The decision to use 42,000 troops for the Crossroads operation was a slow and painful death sentence for tens of thousands of atomic veterans. From the 1960s through the 1980s our veterans were dying all around us. Cancer and conventional illness were in epidemic proportions. We again tried in early 1983 to have the Congress move on the proper epidemiology to ascertain what was happening to our veterans and our offspring. The response was: it was not needed and was financially prohibitive.

When we attempted to obtain help from the Veterans Administration hospitals we were turned away, “locked out” so to speak. At one point, in 1984, the Veterans Administration Hospital (VA) in San Francisco was found guilty in a court of law for shredding and burning official documents from vets.
Our documents were sent to the VA as instructed in an attempt to bolster our claim for health service through the VA system. In 1984, out of desperation and knowledge that the US government would never do the proper epidemiological studies for the atomic veterans, we opted to conduct our own survey from our office in Washington, DC.

From that survey we discovered what the government already knew. Over 53% of the atomic veterans were suffering chromosome aberrations passed on to their children in the form of birth defects. Our vets were dying at the average age of 47. The practice of exposing vets to nuclear explosions continued for 17 more years, and for 17 more years the bombs became more powerful and plentiful, as tens of thousands of the atomic vets became radiation victims and our numbers became smaller.

The military did not want the American public to know about the disaster they created in 1946, and the conspiracy of silence was passed down through the Pentagon until President Kennedy stopped the slaughter in 1963 (with the limited test ban treaty) and the billions of dollars stopped flowing from that great golden cash register in the sky to the corrupt nuclear weapons military industrial complex.

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Choi Il Chul

President of the Korea Atomic Bomb Casualty Association.

My name is Choi Il Chul. I am the president of the Korea Atomic Bomb Casualty Association. Since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 54 years ago, more than half a century has passed.

In the present world, nuclear weapons, whose destructive power is incomparable with the three atomic bombs completed in 1945, have been stockpiled. Their destructive power is said to be equivalent to 1 million times that of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki type bombs.

Compared to the estimated damage from a nuclear war that can be caused by the present level of nuclear weapons, the A-bomb damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might be seen as very small. But what was that very small damage of the two cities actually like? I believe we have to face up to the real damage caused and to take a lesson from them to prevent another  tragedy by deeply considering the consequences of a future nuclear war.

On August 6, 1945, I was a twelve-year-old 6th grader of a primary school. At that moment, I was at home, located 1.3 km from the epicenter. Fortunately, as I was inside the house and, I did not suffer the effects of strong heat rays. Though my house instantly collapsed by the blast, I was saved under the space of a piece of leaning furniture and did not suffer severe injuries.

When the black rain fell, I was inside a building in the suburbs where I took shelter, and I seemed to have escaped the effect of radioactivity contained in the rain. In my family, my older sister’s husband was missing. My immediate older brother was caught by the bomb very close to the blast center and was found in an aid station. Three days after he was taken to the place of refuge, he died. My parents did not experience the A-bombing since they were already evacuated from the city. But they entered the city just after the bombing and looked for their families for several days. Because of that, both of them died soon after they came back to Korea.

According to a survey conducted by the Police Bureau of the then Ministry of Interior of Japan at the end of 1945, it was estimated that the number of Koreans victimized by the atomic bomb were 70,000 in Hiroshima and 30,000 in Nagasaki. Of a total of 100,000, 50,000 were killed by the bomb, and of the 50,000 survivors, 7,000 have remained in Japan, and about 43,000 returned to South Korea or North Korea.

Within five years after they returned, among 9,900 people with heavy injuries, 6,930 (70%) died. Also, 5,300 of the 16,500 with lighter injuries (32%), and 5,600 among 16,000 with no apparent injuries (35%) died. Sixty percent of the victims who returned to the homeland have died of diseases and in the Korean War. Now it is estimated that there are about 10,000 survivors in South Korea.

Now the registrants of our association total about 2,300. Every year, around 40 to 50 members die due to their old age, but it is offset by around the same number of survivors who newly register, obtaining the Hibakusha certificate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So our membership has not changed in the last four to five years.

We, the Hibakusha in South Korea, have been suffering from triple hardships.

First is the 36 years of colonial rule by the Japanese imperialists. Under the harsh oppression by the colonial rule, many people could not help leaving their homeland and going into exile. During the Second World War, the Korean people were forced to pledge their loyalty to the Japanese emperor and were brought to Japan for forced labor. As a result, those who lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki or who were brought there for forced labor fell victim to the A bombing.

Second, after the end of the war, the prevailing historical perception in South Korea has been that the A-bombings brought liberation and independence to the homeland. Due to the difficulty of receiving sympathy from the public, the A-bomb survivors have been left abandoned in the society, which expresses no interest in our plight.

Third, in 1957, the Atomic Bomb Medical Treatment Law was enacted in Japan, which made it possible for the sufferers to receive treatment. But this law was not applied to the Korean victims, and we have been left without any care and attention.

The worst error of Japan in the post-war days is that Japan has not made honest apology or given effective compensation to the victims for its aggression and atrocities in South Korea and other Asian countries.

The damage we, the A-bomb victims in Korea, have suffered is the damage Japan inflicted on us during its colonial rule and the war of aggression. Japan bears a responsibility to make an apology and to repair the damage it caused. The State of Japan as a whole must take this post war responsibility. Whatever form of state compensation, therefore, it should be provided to us. The Hibakusha Aid Law enacted in Japan in 1994 does not have any provisions to distinguish the sufferers by nationality or residential conditions. So this law must be applied to the survivors living abroad.

To achieve this, in solidarity with citizens’ groups in Japan, we are developing the citizens’ movement and carrying on a court struggle for war compensation from Japan and the application of the Aid Law to A-bomb survivors living in South Korea.

As I told you before, the atomic bombs used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a yield of 20kt (TNT), which was very small compared with that of currently stockpiled nuclear arms. Even these small bombs burned all living things to death, destroyed everything, and instantly reduced the two cities to ashes with heat rays of several thousand degrees Celsius, enormous blast waves, and lethal radiation.

The destructive power of the current H-bombs is in the megaton class. Once a war starts, all individuals or states will completely lose their rational senses. It is, therefore, hard to foresee when a next nuclear war would break out.

If a nuclear war breaks out in the future, I am sure it would lead the whole human race to annihilation, and the earth would see its last day. As long as nuclear weapons exist on earth, world peace will not be ensured.

In concluding my presentation, I would like to wish you good health and success in your work and to pray for the abolition of nuclear weapons and world peace. Thank you very much.

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Claudia Peterson
St. George Utah Downwinder

It is with a grateful and humble heart that I stand before you today. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this conference for peace and justice.

I come to you from Southern Utah, downwind from the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. government has tested over 1000 Nuclear devices.

I grew up believing I lived a charmed existence. The U.S. government took great steps to assure us that everything was safe and no harm would come to us. When life is good it’s hard to believe that awful things could possibly happen. But they do, something the people living downwind from the test site found out soon after the testing began. We watched loved ones suffer and die at an alarming rate, while the U.S. government continued to deny any wrong doing.

My husband’s father was a uranium miner and died at a young age of lung cancer as a result of working in improperly vented mines. We now know from declassified documents that the U.S. government made a conscious decision not to tell the miners of the illness that would occur from exposure to radon gas, because it needed the uranium to build the bombs.

My father died six months after a brain tumor the size of a lemon was removed. At this time our family doctor suggested that the tumor was the result of the fallout that rained over out homes from the nuclear testing.

As hard as my father’s death was, it was nothing compared to the heartache that would follow. At the age of three, our youngest daughter Bethany was diagnosed with a deadly form of cancer neuroblastoma. We watched this wonderfully lively inquisitive child fight so many struggles to live. After three years of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery she lost her fight. We held Bethany while she died, knowing the horror that we could do nothing but pray that her suffering would end.

Just one month before Bethany died, Cathy my only sister passed away at the age of 36 from skin cancer. She left behind six small children and a husband. The pain of watching loved ones die is so profound that I too wished for death to end the sadness within me. The nuclear age not only physically killed thousands, but also caused a great many of us the loss of our innocence.

Some of us may not be physically strong any longer, but the legacy of the losses we have endured bring to us great strength and understanding of why peace is so important.

I have never had the horror of looking through refugee camps for my children like the mothers and fathers of Kosovo. I have never had to look through the blackened and charred streets for the bodies of my children as the mothers and fathers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. government did the same kind of thing to it’s own citizens in a secret and sterile way, through lies, coverups, and deceit.

How as a global community do we watch friends, neighbors, and loved ones suffer and die. How do we justify the horror of what we see on the T.V. every day? Those who choose to ignore and turn away from others’ suffering become no better than those inflicting such heartache.

We all have an opportunity to change the policy of our governments by no longer being silent. Silence gives those in positions of power more opportunities to create evil. So for whatever reason you are here today it is important that you all know, we can change the future, we are all victims of the nuclear age. Let us all decide to survive.

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Hideko Matsuya

Hideko Matsuya is a Nagasaki A-bomb Survivor and the Plaintiff of Nagasaki A-Bomb Matsuya Lawsuit

Seeking Official Recognition as a Nagasaki Hibakusha

On August 9th, 54 years ago, I suffered the A-bomb explosion while standing on the open porch of my house located 2.45 kilometers from the blast center in Nagasaki City. I was three and half years old then. I was affected by enormous blast, heat rays and radiation. I was hit in the head by a roof tile blown off by the blast. The open wound in the head continued to discharge pus that smelled like rotten fish. It took about two and a half years before the wound finally closed. It was not until I was at age 6 that I started to practice to walk, wearing straw sandals.

Because I could not walk well, I had to delay my entrance to a primary school for one year. There are many slopes in Nagasaki. I had to go up as many as 107 steps to reach my school. On fine days, my sister led me by the hand. On rainy days, my mother carried me on her back to go to school. I often felt pained and sad when children jeered at me about my crippled body saying “Why do I have to be so bullied only because of the A-bombing?”

In class, I sometimes had headaches and convulsive fits. Only after I became a sixth grader, I managed to go to school by myself. Convulsions continued to happen even when I was a junior high school student.

Worrying about my future, my mother advised me to study abacus. It was very hard for me to master it. My right hand is useless in abacus. I failed in a licensing examination many times. My mother encouraged me every time I failed. When I was in the second year of senior high school, I finally passed the Grade 2 exam on abacus. Using this qualification, after I graduated from high school, I got a job as a treasurer in the Nagasaki Council of A-bomb Sufferers.

I cannot raise my right arm any higher than my shoulder. My fingers are too deformed to pick up a handkerchief or paper. As I always use my left arm, the size of it is about two times bigger than that of my right arm. When I pare an apple, I cut it into four pieces first. Putting it on the right hand and holding it against my belly, I pare it by using my left hand. It is dangerous if I miss my aim.
When I cut my fingernails of my left hand, I have my right hand hold a razor and move my left hand. I sometimes injure my fingers.

I have to put up with inconvenience and danger in doing daily labor, such as tying the strings, opening a bottle or hanging the washed clothes for drying.

My right leg is also deformed. The heel does not reach the ground. As the big toe and the foretoe rise, only the remaining three toes touch the ground. As I have to support myself only with the three toes and the sole of my foot, the skin of these parts were hardened and caused piercing pain to me. The deformation of my leg has become worse as time goes by. My shoes are order-made, the right one of which has a thicker sole. Recently it is getting harder for me to walk, so I use a wheelchair when I go out to appeal for support for my trial. This time I brought a wheelchair here from Japan.

When I was young, some people offered a marriage plan and at one time I had someone that I loved. But I gave up such hope, being afraid that my married life might not go well because I was a Hibakusha and disabled.

In my dreams, I often walk smart on red high heel shoes. But every time, I wake up to face harsh reality and misery. I hate the atomic bomb that has inflicted so much pain on my heart and body and spoiled my life. I can never condone my government and the Ministry of Health and Welfare
that categorically denied the causation between my health condition and the effects of radiation, even without looking at my body.

I need to get the recognition as an A-bomb disease patient in order to receive adequate treatment without feeling insecure about my living.

Due to the porencephalia caused by the head injury and effects of radiation I sustained at the time of the A-bombing, I have been suffering for 54 years from the paralysis on the right side of my body. I applied to the Ministry of Health for my condition to be recognized as an A-bomb induced disease. The Ministry, however, rejected my application and I gave it up, swallowing an insult.

Ten years after that, my mother made the second application for me, worrying about my life after she died and hoping that I would be recognized as A-bomb disease patient while she was alive. I attached a photo of myself in a slip to show my real figure. But without changing its attitude, the ministry again turned down my application.

I could not be patient with the cold treatment the ministry had given to me twice. Initially I thought that suing the state would be an absurd idea. But encouraged by my mother’s words, “Hideko, you are not the only one who is suffering”, I made up my mind to do so and filed a lawsuit against the Health Minister in September 1988.

In the first trial at the Nagasaki District Court and the second at the Fukuoka High Court, victorious judgments were handed down. Both courts ruled that my claim should be totally accepted and my condition recognized as having A-bomb diseases. However, refusing to accept the ruling, the State appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the damage of the atomic bombs must be endured as the damage caused during the wartime.

It was the good-will support of the Japanese people that led me to the victorious judgments achieved twice from the Nagasaki District Court and the Fukuoka High Court. I have experienced various things during the 11-year court battle. My mother, who was always encouraging me, died without hearing of the victorious judgment from the district court. I have gone through many difficulties and hard times with repeated hospitalization and operation.

Since I was a child, I had been so shy because of my handicap, that I was able to speak only with my close friends. But through the court struggle, I have met many peace-loving people not only in Japan but in other countries of the world like you all here today, which has given me a great joy to live. For me, now is the prime time of my life.

I feel mortified that I have to continue this struggle in the Supreme Court. We feel angry at the government that refuses to understand my pain and hardship over the last 54 years. Turning my anger into the energy for further advancement of the struggle, I will strive to obtain the third victory from the Supreme Court. I will continue to struggle until the judges will accept the wishes of not only me but all the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who have not had real peace of mind since that day of August 1945.

Friends, I hope you will understand the damage caused by nuclear weapons, which persists as long as we live.

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Iwao Niki
Miyazaki-city, JAPAN

Today, I would first like to relate to you my own personal experience of the atomic bomb, and then briefly tell you of my views as a Hiroshima survivor.

The day was August 6th, 1945. I was in a school auditorium about two kilometers west of the epicenter. At 8:15 that morning, a vast, terrible, blinding flash filled the sky and saturated the interior of the auditorium. This was followed by a thunderous roar that seemed to rise from the earth to spread through my body. At the same moment, I was overwhelmed by an unearthly din – — the air became charged with violence and the building came shattering down over me.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself hidden under a guess. The left half of my body was covered with blood. The person directly next to me had been directly hit by radiation through a window, and his exposed elbow seemed to have suffered a slight burn. This injury, which seemed at the time to have no more than mild significance, was in fact to have terrible consequences for him later: symptoms of fever, bleeding gums, bloody stool, and a loss of hair continued for a week, after which he died. This was how I first learned of the horrors of radiation.

Out on the streets trudged lines of people who had been outside at the time of the explosion and had been hit directly by the radiation. They were naked, or half-naked, their clothing having been burnt away. Their faces and the skin over their entire bodies had been burnt by the radiation, and they were dreadful to see. Their hair had been burnt off and their burnt eyelids were so swollen they could barely open their eyes. They seemed to be moving in search of any amount of shade or water, only to fall, half-dead, along the road. Seeking any water that might still be left among the tanks kept in homes for dousing fires, these people pushed forward, vying with one another for one, final mouthful, only to fall upon one another in a heap where they would await their deaths. Across the entire city of Hiroshima, all that met the eye was horror in the extreme – Hiroshima had indeed become the City of Death.

I was overwhelmed from witnessing the actual destructive power, the actual killing power, of this weapon, which was on a wholly different scale from any bomb I had ever seen or heard of before. I only later learned that this was an ‘atomic bomb’ and felt that the world would surely face extinction should such things continue to appear.

Fifty-four years have passed since then, and how many people today either have forgotten the terror of the bomb, or simply do not know of it? And what has resulted from all the many advances in nuclear weapons technology?
? installations to fire missiles thousands of kilometers
? guidance systems which boast pinpoint accuracy
? the possibility of production and possession of nuclear weapons by virtually any nation on earth
? and nuclear proliferation advanced to the degree that roughly twenty thousand warheads are now poised for delivery across the globe at any time.

It is horrifying to contemplate. And it is all of us – humanity as a whole – who are responsible for things having come to this state. It is all the inhabitants of our earth who must decide whether this situation should be allowed to continue. And, if not, what we must do about it. All of us, the people of the earth, must accept. As humans, our responsibility to use our intelligence to the fullest to arrive at the best choice for us – what other hope do we have?

Thus we make our appeal to the world for the immediate abolition of nuclear weapons.

This appeal emerges from the vital wisdom that we of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have gained through our countless sufferings, as victims of the world’s first atomic bombs. In telling the world what actually happened in these places, we feel a profound duty and responsibility to make this appeal, especially to the citizens of those nations which possess nuclear weapons and of those nations who attempt to gain their possessions.

LET US ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS NOW! NEVER AGAIN THE ATOMIC BOMB!

Please let me conclude by introducing you to a Japanese song. The English translation is by the British poet, Ewan MacColl.

Never Again the A-Bomb
In the place where our city was destroyed
Where we buried the ashes of the ones that we loved
There the green grass grows and the white waving weeds
Deadly harvest of two atom bombs
Then brothers and sisters you must watch and take care
That the third atom bomb never comes.
All that people have created with their hands
And their minds for the glory of the world in which we live
Now it can be smashed in a moment destroyed
Deadly harvest of two atom bombs
People of the world watch and take care
That the Third Atom Bomb never comes.

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Masako Wada

A hibakusha, or survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945, is the assistant secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations.

I was one year and ten months old when Nagasaki was devastated by the atomic bomb. I was inside my house, located 1.8 miles away from the blast center. Thanks to the mountains surrounding the central part of Nagasaki City, which somewhat shielded my house from the direct impact of the bomb, I did not suffer any burns or injuries and have survived to this day. As I was only a baby then, I do not personally remember anything about that time, nor can I tell you firsthand of the indescribable tragedies that our senior hibakusha—as survivors of the bombings are known—witnessed and experienced on that day and in the aftermath. But I certainly was there, together with my grandfather and mother, who told me about those horrors over and over again.

It was a very hot day August 9, 1945. My mother, Shizuko Nagae, was preparing lunch out of the meager ingredients she had gathered. An air-raid warning that sounded in the morning had been lifted. I was playing alone in front of the house. She said to me, “Come in. It’s too hot outside,” so I went inside. It was a usual prelunch time in a quiet residential area.

Suddenly, she heard a tremendous sound. She did not immediately understand what happened. When she was able to focus, she found that a one-foot pile of dust and debris had accumulated inside the house, which was south of the blast center in Nagasaki’s Urakami district. The pile was composed of shattered windowpanes, sliding doors, and clay house walls. The lush green mountains surrounding the city had turned brown.

After a while, my mother saw a startling sight. People escaping the fire from Urakami, seeking water and medical help, streamed over Mount Kompira to the urban area where our house was located. From a distance, the people staggering down the mountain looked like a line of ants, but in fact, they were rows of burned and injured, chocolate-colored human beings. They wore little or no clothing, and their hair was bloodied and matted like horns.

In the space next to our house—a vacant lot created by prematurely demolishing houses to prevent the spread of fire during air raids—cremations took place day after day. The smell made it impossible for her to eat anything. The corpses of the victims were brought in, one after another, on box-shaped garbage carts. Survivors who collected bodies from the roadside grabbed the limbs and threw them into the garbage carts. It seemed so casual. Burned limbs were sticking out of the carts like dolls. People initially talked about how many or how few new bodies they encountered each day, but eventually they stopped feeling anything at all about what they witnessed. The bodies were burned like garbage. What is human dignity? Should human beings be treated like that? My mother used to tell me that every August after the war, memories of those ghastly images and the smell that accompanied them would come back to her.

August 15, the day the war ended, my mother was sent to a temporary relief station. She helped to medically treat people who had been taken in for burns and other injuries. The sight of wounded people lying body to body on the auditorium floor was beyond description. My mother was assigned to follow the doctor from patient to patient, carrying antiseptic solution, but some wounds were so severe that she passed out on the spot. Once she came to her senses, she was relegated to cleanup work. She had to use a broom to sweep away the maggots that were swarming all over the survivors’ festering wounds. The maggots were as big as her thumb. She had never seen maggots that big and in such large numbers and hoped she would never see them in the future.

Japanese people were not the only victims; there also were Koreans, Chinese, and Allied forces prisoners of war. These were people, regardless of nationality or race, who happened to be in Nagasaki on that fateful day, away from their homes. At the time of the bombing, the U.S. military also dropped a radio sensor machine by parachute to report on the conditions of the dropped bombs. “Didn’t the machine attached to the parachute tell the U.S. military anything other than about the atomic bomb?” my mother asked. “Didn’t it tell them about the lives of the people under that mushroom cloud, about their families, and above all, about the preciousness of life?”

U.S. Brig. Gen. Thomas Farrell, the deputy commanding general of the Manhattan Project, arrived in Japan shortly after the atomic bombing and told a press conference, effectively, that all those who were doomed to die had died, and there was no one suffering from radiation. As a result, all the temporary relief stations were closed.

In Japan, a defeated nation, reporting on the damage caused by the atomic bombing was severely restricted by the United States. Many people died without knowing why they were dying. By the end of December 1945, the number of dead within concentric circles from the hypocenter of the blast was estimated at 140,000 in Hiroshima and 90,000 in Nagasaki. Sixty-five percent of the victims were children, women, and the elderly; only 4 percent of them died while being cared for by someone. Many of the dead were burned like garbage without being identified by name or hometown. Those who were cremated by their families, and thus had been identified, may have been the fortunate ones.

Survivors were never informed of the causes of their wounds and suffering. They were tormented by survivors’ guilt, illness, and poverty, and had to give up many of their dreams. They also were subjected to discrimination and prejudice because of the lack of understanding in society. For nine years following the atomic bombings, survivors were abandoned by the Japanese government and the United States, with no medical care or assistance extended to them.

After the United States tested a hydrogen bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1954, “ashes of death” spread across a vast area and a Japanese fishing crew was exposed to the radioactive fallout. Their radioactive catch was called “A-bomb tuna.” Now aware of the dangers and horrors of radiation, Japanese citizens started a signature campaign calling for a total ban on nuclear weapons. The movement spread like wildfire across Japan, gathering more than 30 million signatures and leading to the first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. Hibakusha, who had been forced to live in silence and in hiding until then, came out in the open and let their voices be heard. Consequently, in 1956, 11 years after the atomic bombing, hibakusha founded Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations.

“Message to the World,” the founding declaration of Nihon Hidankyo, stated: “We have reassured our will to save humanity from its crisis through the lessons learned from our experiences, while at the same time saving ourselves.” The hibakusha’s physical and emotional wounds were not yet healed and they were still feeling as if putting these wounds into words would take them back to that traumatic moment in 1945 when the world was upended. But their pledge—that they do not want anyone else to go through the same cruel experience that they did—is very touching and inspiring.

Since its establishment 69 years ago, Nihon Hidankyo has been calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which have brought about only inhumane consequences and still cause aftereffects, leaving scars on our lives, bodies, and minds. Furthermore, these weapons continue to cause anxiety in our children and grandchildren. Nuclear weapons impose indiscriminate, extensive damage by means of blasts, heat rays, and radioactivity, and their aftereffects persist for decades. If used again, they would inflict the same suffering experienced by the hibakusha on many other people around the world.

My mother died 14 years ago at age 89. She was in and out of hospital 28 times due to numerous illnesses, including stomach cancer and liver cancer. Before she died, I once recorded in writing what she witnessed, but she seemed quite dissatisfied with what she read. “It was nothing like that,” she said, letting her words trail off. She might have felt that no words or expressions could describe the hellish scenes and experiences she had witnessed.

Other senior hibakusha must feel as she did. I am always hesitant to share my mother’s experience with other people, as I know I can never fully describe what really happened. But now that so many years have passed and the average age of the survivors has reached 86, we younger hibakusha must carry on their work and speak out forcefully on their behalf.

With the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017, a heavy and rusty door has begun to open, and we are finally seeing a ray of light illuminating a path to achieve our goal.

Hibakusha have testified on their experiences across the world despite the painful memories of those two days in 1945. We note the term “public conscience” in the TPNW preamble. Public conscience is essential for securing benefits for the public, the human race, and Mother Earth. Power is not justice. Nuclear weapons are an injustice that must be abolished by the humans who are responsible for having invented them. We must continue to urge the nuclear-armed states and their allies, including Japan, to sign and ratify the TPNW to save humanity from its crisis.

Because of the atomic bombings, we attach special significance to strongly urging the Japanese government to sign and ratify this treaty, which it still refuses to do. Japan has forsaken nuclear weapons, but the nuclear weapons arsenals of the United States, Russia, and other nuclear-armed states are said to be many times more powerful than the ones used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In today’s unstable world, the risk of nuclear weapons use is the highest since the end of the Cold War. What will happen to Earth, the climate, and the human race if we engage in nuclear exchanges? It is more urgent than ever to think seriously about nuclear weapons and the global crisis. As citizens, we must strengthen our demands to the governments. All states must sign and ratify the TPNW. They should know that nuclear weapons, humanity, and Earth cannot coexist.

Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize based on certain criteria, namely that the laureate shall have done the most or the best work for “fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” That is exactly what Nihon Hidankyo has been doing since its founding.

As Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Jorgen Frydnes, who was born long after the war, stated at last year’s awards ceremony: “Nihon Hidankyo and the Hibakusha … have never wavered in their efforts to erect a worldwide moral and legal bulwark against the use of nuclear weapons. Their role in establishing the taboo is unique. Their personal stories humanize history, lifting the veil of forgetfulness and drawing us out of our daily routines. They bridge the gap between ‘those who were there’ and we others untouched by the violence of the past. They are living reminders of what is at stake.”

The committee evaluated the work of each hibakusha who, by sharing experiences and witness accounts, conveyed to people the inhuman consequences of nuclear weapons. The committee further emphasized the significance of this mission at a time of geopolitical tension, when the threshold for nuclear weapons use has been lowered.

Last August 5 at a meeting in Hiroshima, Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN high representative for disarmament affairs, told us that even in the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty preparatory committee meetings, statements that presuppose the eventual use of nuclear weapons, which had never been made before, are now openly heard. The threshold for the use of nuclear weapons indeed has been lowered.

I do not believe in security through the nuclear umbrella. With such a broken umbrella, I do not believe that the lives, property, and livelihoods of the people of Japan can be protected. When we met with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba January 8, 2025, he mentioned the construction of a nuclear shelter. But for whom? Does he really think that will save us?

Frydnes emphasized that younger generations are carrying forward the experiences and the message of the hibakusha. But it is necessary that civil society as a whole, not only younger generations, should raise their voices on behalf of the hibakusha.

As of March 2024, the number of surviving hibakusha was 106,000. Every year, about 6,000 to 10,000 hibakusha pass away. The day when there will be no more hibakusha is not far off. But before that happens, I fear that a new generation of hibakusha may be born. Some say that World War III could soon begin.

I believe that the Nobel Committee decided to award the prize to Nihon Hidankyo, recognizing that the existence of the hibakusha and their words, not nuclear weapons, have been a deterrent to nuclear war. I am happy that the term “Nihon Hidankyo” has become known in Japan and abroad. Receiving the award was not our goal, but it has provided a new boost for our mission.

The hibakusha are the ones who know the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. We will continue to convey that reality. Please listen to us, please empathize with us. Find out what you can do and take action together with us. Nuclear weapons cannot coexist with human beings. They were created by humans; let us assume the responsibility to abolish them with the wisdom of public conscience.

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TETIARAHI Gabriel
HITI TAU, Polynesia

The Recognition by France of its Political Responsibility for the Consequences of Nuclear Tests Conducted from 1966 to 1996 at Moruroa and Fangataufa in the Pacific is a Need for Justice and Peace for Their Civilian and Military Victims

1. French Arrogance

July 1995. We all have in memory the blatant arrogance of France seen on all TV screens around the world, when President Chirac imposed on the people of Polynesia another 10 atomic bombs blasts. This decision to resume nuclear testing was felt by 90 to 95% of the population as an abuse to its dignity. It had offended all social and ethnic groups of the population of Polynesian Territory, deeply hurt in their entrails.

Upon the announcement of the decision on June 1995, all the political and religious actors demonstrated peacefully in the streets of the capital, Papeete. Antinuclear activists had engaged actions of all kinds, respecting the principle of non-violence. Mass demonstrations, information campaigns on the consequences of nuclear testing on the health and environment, meeting with the President of the Republic of Paris, construction of the peace village, formation of a peace flotilla, recourse to the European Court of Justice and the UN Committee on Human Rights in New York, supports from the peoples of the Pacific and the international community did not receive any echo other than disregard and indifference. There was no space for social dialogue even though the decision to resume nuclear testing endangered the future of a whole people, or rather the destiny of ratification process of international treaties on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Worse, 8 bombs exploded at Moruroa and Fangataufa from September 1997 to January 1998. The French Head of State made France, the Nation of human rights, a rogue state. At the same time, over 200 bombs violated the land of the Maohi people through 30 years of their experimentation. And the Polynesian people were never consulted on this. The right to express one’s opinion over such a violence by a referendum was never recognized to them. Nuclear tests were imposed on them by the successive Presidents of French Republic: De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscrad d’Estaing, Mitterrand and Chirac. Deaf to the call in Polynesia, the Pacific and the world, these political leaders bear a heavy responsibility for the consequences of nuclear tests on the island populations, on their health and environment.

2. The tongues of the victims have been untied and are accusing the French military

Until 1996, the military had always turned into derision much too few employees of civilian companies working at Moruroa when they spoke without revealing their identities. Since 1996, the situation has changed. The former participants to nuclear tests have broken the law of silence and disclosed what they had kept in their hearts to the investigation teams of Polynesian organizations, Hit Tau and the Evangelic Church. Surrounded by university people and independent civilian research centers, the investigators had no difficulty for elaborating a database with over 2000 names. More than 1000 former test site workers had been visited at their homes or on their new workplaces. 737 of them were interviewed at length and responded a 38-page questionnaire with 132 questions related to their recruitment, working and living conditions, their professional activities and the health system that had provided them medical care.

“Moruroa and us”, a publication issued in October 1997, reconstitutes the memory of Moruroa, Fangataufa and Hao and restitutes to the nuclear test victims their right to speak.
Thus, the revelation by a former civilian worker who recounts: “I had worked on the test site several times. Since then, I noticed spots all over my body, especially on the hips and the leg. My skin is chapped and looks like a crust. In 1984, my first son was born. At his birth, I noticed that he had the same skin texture as mine. At the birth of my second son, I noticed the same problem. My fourth boy showed the same infirmity. It is horrible to see.”

Thus, a former employee of one of the meteorological stations which belonged to the army in Hereheretu in the Tuamotu told how that island has been evacuated in 1968/69 due to the atmospheric tests conducted under balloon at some hundreds kilometers from there. The personnel were made up of two teams of 5 employees. They left the island after a year and half, but when they returned there in 1973, they learned that their old coworkers had all died, probably of leukemia. In 1995, they decided to make known their experiences and were deprived shortly after of their job of air-controller at Tahiti Faaa airport.

10% of the former workers were not yet of age. The research established that out of 12 to 15 thousand Polynesians who took part in the nuclear tests, 10% were under 18 years old, and 6% under 16 years old when they were recruited. Children who were 13 years old, sometimes 10 years or 12 years old were recruited by subcontracting civilian companies.

Nearly 49% of the workers had spent their working hours within contaminated areas. 41% worked in these zones when the tests were still made in atmosphere. 54% of the employees who worked within probably contaminated areas think that they happened to be forced to execute tasks against their own will.

Former Moruroa workers considered that their stay there was assorted with contradictions. Thus, the demarcation zones between contaminated and non-contaminated areas could be suddenly changed overnight or during a single day. Many of them received orders to execute tasks in contaminated areas with precautions they deemed insufficient or where many others were prohibited from entering. When these workers questioned their superiors on the nature or the extent of the risks, they were ordered to return to Tahiti.

Many rules were judged by them to be contradictory or tended to change over time. It is the case of the prohibition to catch fish in the lagoon or to drink coconut water. The ban to eat fresh fish was lifted at certain periods but not everywhere. Fishing was allowed in living areas but not in workplaces. These contradictory rules nurtured rumors that the sea was also contaminated.

The prohibition of consuming coconut water during atmospheric tests made the people believe that the soil and the flora were contaminated.

But it was rather against the official health system and the cynical allegations of the military that the precautions measures at Moruroa were unique in the world that the former Moruroa workers make a genuine requisitely.

41% of these workers declare that they worked in areas susceptible of being contaminated. 30% of them did not wear any protection clothes.

Before having been recruited, 94% of the Moruroa workers had undergone medical controls. At the end of employment contact and when they left Moruroa, only 48% of them were examined by a doctor. Among them 75% had never been communicated of the results if the medical control. One of ever two workers did not have a medical visit when they left Moruroa. This is to say that the medical follow-up of both civilian and military personnel, whether they were Polynesians or metropolitan, whether they belong to the army or the Commissariat of Atomic Energy, was not made in the best conditions.

91.3% did not trust the official health system which they accuse of deficiency and lack of transparency.

26% of the workers consider that they were not in good health when they left Moruroa and 21% believe having been contaminated by radioactivity.

These testimonies of the former civilian workers of military bases illustrate in what extent they were directly exposed to contamination, how much the ground and the underground of crime scenes, Moruroa and Fangataufa were destroyed by the violent explosions. These workers were deceived. The questions pose on,
-the identities of former workers who were children between 10 and 16 years old;
-the bodies of Moruroa workers buried in lead coffins because they were contaminated; -the employees deceased on the sited and whose bodies were taken to France;
-the reason why the families of the deceased workers were not allowed to see the remaining of their fathers, their husbands or brothers; remain unanswered.

3. The reports of the IAEA ordered by President Chirac are not reassuring

After 30 years of experimentation, France asked the IAEA in Vienna to expertize the radiological situation of the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa in order to know whether there are risks for the population and to make recommendations on the nature, the extent and duration of surveillance activities, of corrective measured that could be necessary. The mandate of the study excluded however the retrospective evaluation of doses in the past, especially during the period of atmospheric tests.

In June 1998, the IAEA made public its conclusions. “It is not necessary to continue the surveillance of environment in Moruroa and Fangataufa for radiological protection purposes. And no corrective measures are necessary for radiological protection purposes, now and in future.”

These hurried conclusions have not convinced many scientists and the Polynesian people. The IAEA revealed that the two atolls the fact that radiation had been accumulated in the underground of radioactive waste storage sites. There are 149 places where radioactive waste is stored in the underground saturated with water. On the basis of the IAEA expertise, the total activity of accumulated waste in the underground reaches 13, 729 tetrabecquerels in Moruroa and 3,842 tetrabecquerels in Fangataufa. These figures are 371 times and 94 times bigger the basic nuclear facilities ranking threshold values for the category of largest facilities: nuclear power plants, reprocessing plants and major storage centers for radioactive.

It is improper that the IAEA does not recommend either surveillance or counter-measures and its conclusions are contrary to both French law and fundamental principles of radioprotection, On the other hand, the IAEA reveals an extended but very variable contamination of the accessible environment in the atolls. In the north of Moruroa, the levels of plutonium 239 and americium 241, the very superficial distribution of pollutants and the presence of hot particles, require at least, at the default of a rigorous decontamination, the implementation of counter measures guaranteeing the signalization of risks and access control.

This discovery of plutonium by the IAEA has exposed the lies of the army and its reassuring press releases during the past 30 years that “France has always given the greatest care to its air experiments which represented only 3% of the world experimentation so that they were conducted with the greatest security measures, particularly for the health of the personnel.”

No one, the Polynesians in any case, believes in these lies of the military. The IAEA assures that the radioactivity heritage they leave includes also radioactive waste in the lagoons and the ocean, a contaminated environment as well as hazardous areas.

And if the IAEA did not recommend specific surveillance of the test sites, it is because it was mistaken. It is the responsibility of the French State to ensure the surveillance, to follow the evolution of radioactive wastes and engage reflection on the way of conserving at a very long term the record of radioactive contents of the atolls in association with independent civilian research teams.

4. The INSERM report on the cancer incidence is of equal importance

The INSERM (National Institute on Health and Medical Research), its unit U521 in 1990 detached Florent VALTHAIRE and Beatrice LE VU, epidemiologists for a study on the effects of atmospherics tests on cancers in Polynesia. It took 4 years to draw the first conclusions. The study was financed by the DIRCEN, the army.

The major results of this study is the very high rate of cancer and thyroid in Polynesia which is twice bigger among the Maoris in New Zealand, in particular among women for whom the rate doubled between 1985-1989 and 1990-1995. Worse, the Polynesia would keep the world record.

The report was also established that the cases of thyroid cancer among Polynesians around Moruroa who were 15 years old or over during the period of atmospherics tests were excessively numerous. In the Tuamotu, the archipel of two nuclear test sites, the thyroid cancer incidence accounts for 60% of the cancer cases against 18% in the rest of Polynesia.

The authors of the report recommend to extend the investigations. On one hand, because their study was only on diagnosed cases and it is therefore possible that Polynesians died of a cancer without being diagnosed. In other words, as the cancer register exists only since 1984, if people died of leukemia, thyroid cancer or malignant tumors before that, none will know it.

On the other hand, their preliminary study did not rely upon detailed surveys on the evidence cases with individual interview of the subjects or their family members. The army and the CEA (Center of Atomic Experimentation) invoke the report to attest the innocuity of the nuclear tests. And ever since, while the authors of the report have recommended it for transparency, the military have never informed the people concerned themselves and epidemiologists the does measured on dosimeters on the test site workers nor have they made public all the environmental measures implemented by their laboratories SMRPMS and SMRB during the period of atmospheric tests as well as the estimated does and models utilized.

It is to say that all is not clear. Why did the INSERM only have access to a list of 17 cases of people with cancers of whom 2 are yet to be identified, but the 3 researchers have never had on site access to any medical charts? 17 cases out of 12, 000, number of Polynesians estimated to have worked on the nuclear test sites.

In the same register, the Polynesian people with consideration for truth and transparency still await that complementary studies will be made on cancer incidence of population at risk, namely the former test site workers and the civilian population around Moruroa (atolls of Turei and the Gambiew Islands), as well as on the thyroid cancer incidence among Polynesian women (one of the highest in the world), and on the people who were children during the period of atmospheric tests.

5. The demand for truth and transparency of the Polynesians against the intransigence of the military and the French government

Since the last nuclear test in 1996, the CEA have always hidden behind the lead wall of military secrecy to not provide the teams of independent civilian researchers with archive documents.

Since the disclosure of a number of secret reports on the period of atmospheric tests, in particular the report of Doctor Millon on the evaluation of damage in Fangataufa after the first test on July 2, 1996, the military authorities, under the direct protection of the governments of France and its heads of state, have lied to the Polynesians and the peoples of the Pacific on the risks they run.

In September 1998, before the judges of the trial of 58 people who took part in the riot at the incendiated Tahiti Faaa airport in September 1995, the witnesses demanded the disclosure of military archives to establish truth.

The legitimate concerns of the Polynesians around the Polynesia Evangelic Church, the NGOs, political personalities of Polynesia, born out of the controversies over the publications of Moruroa of the IAEA and the INSERM are today relayed by several religious organizations, the World Council of Churches at its last assembly in Haare, by the French parliamentarians who did not hesitate to participate to a symposium on the nuclear testing within French National Assembly, held in Paris in February 1999 and independent and civilian scientific organizations, the CRIIRAD in particular.

There are many arguments on which depend the rights of the Polynesian people to more transparency, to more respect for their dignity and a more promising future for future generations. There are also in the side of the successive governments of French Republic an obligation of memory towards the radiation victims. Not so long ago, President Chirac has inclined himself before the atrocities committed against the Jews and presented the excuses of France to the Jewish community. The Polynesians people await a gest for avoiding a French evil: colonialism, racism and nuclear terrorism. These nuclear test victims have the right to national excuses of universal importance. It is the price that needs to be paid for reconciliation between the 2 peoples.

They must rather inspire themselves for the example of Clinton administration which, upon its entering in office, lifted the military secrecy on the nuclear tests and experimentations. The truth is indeed not to be glory of those who have worked for the American bomb. However, it is being brought to light and to the entire honor of a democratic government.

May France follow that example and go beyond the collective inconscient that one should not set forward too far a past which one is ashamed of. Instead, in the face of the demand for truth and light on nuclear tests made by the Polynesians, France is trying to turn the page without recognizing at all its political responsibility for the consequences of its nuclear tests on the health and environment of the Polynesians.

It is somehow the denial of the right of existence of the Polynesians and the right to survival of the victims of French nuclear tests.