Nagasaki

by Susan Southard

  He does not mention that on certain days, his right hand cramps so badly he can’t open his fingers, and the skin still splits open sometimes, especially in winter, causing flesh to bulge out. Yoshida and his guests turn to walk through the final exhibits in the main hall, past Dr. Miyajima’s examination table on which Do-oh was treated on the night of the bombing. Glass cases are filled with melted coins and glass, blistered roof tiles, and a schoolgirl’s melted metal lunch box filled with scorched rice. In the next room, they pass an exhibit about Dr. Nagai, a display of hibakusha paintings and poems, and three small television screens mounted on the wall show videotaped hibakusha testimonies, including those by Yoshida, Wada, and Taniguchi. “Mine is number twenty-one,” Yoshida says without stopping. The museum’s final exhibit hall documents Japan’s war with China, the Pacific War prior to the atomic bombings, and the history of the nuclear age. Yoshida pushes on, ascending the spiral walkway to the museum lobby, seamlessly interrupting his conversation with his guests to bow slightly and say ohayo gozaimasu (good morning) to every person he passes, whether he knows them or not.

  In the museum lobby, every wall is covered with artwork from schoolchildren across Japan and the world—most of them created with colorful origami cranes representing peace. Dozens more similar creations lean against the walls. A large bronzed map of the reconstructed prebomb neighborhoods in the hypocenter area, created with data collected by the Nagasaki restoration project volunteers in the 1970s, provides a visual of what instantaneously disappeared when the bomb exploded.

  Off the main lobby of the museum is a corridor of meeting rooms where photo archivist Fukahori Yoshitoshi and his team of volunteers store a collection of more than three thousand pre– and post–atomic bomb photographs. Having gathered photographs for the Urakami Valley’s reclamation movement in the 1970s, Fukahori came to understand the power of photographs to evoke profound sensory responses to the bombings. In order to support the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and ensure that still images would become and remain a vital part of the historic record, he and five colleagues established a special committee to collect, catalog, and caption photographs of the atomic bombing and its aftermath from hibakusha throughout the city. Over time, they also received significant contributions from Japanese photographers of the Nagasaki atomic bombing and acquired five hundred photographs taken by U.S. Army personnel during the occupation. Many from this collection are on display in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. In 2014, at the age of eighty-five, Fukahori traveled to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and brought back dozens of U.S. military photographs of postbomb Nagasaki that neither he nor anyone else back home had seen before.

  Yoshida says good-bye to his guests and turns to the crowds of uniformed, talkative students lining up for tours and presentations in the museum lobby and on the sidewalks outside. He locates the group of students that is scheduled to hear his story that day, greets the head teacher, then races to the head of the line to hold the museum door open for the class, urging them inside until the last child has entered. “Now,” he says, beaming, “9.5 out of 10 children don’t cry when they see my face.”

  By the mid-2000s, Yoshida was one of only a few Nagasaki kataribe who could be easily identified as hibakusha on sight. His disfigurement gives him a unique voice in addressing bullying and prejudice. “Your face, your eyes, your hair . . . these are your treasures,” he tells children. “Take good care of yourself.”

  Yoshida jokes with his students that he is “as good-looking as Kimutaku,” a teen heartthrob in the 1990s. Now, however, Kimutaku—still a handsome actor in his forties—no longer evokes the humorous comparison Yoshida intends. The NFPP’s Matsuo Ranko suggested that he update the actor he compares himself to, but Yoshida has never done so—except once in Chicago, when he likened his incredible good looks to those of Leonardo DiCaprio. In Nagasaki, however, even if children don’t fully understand the reference, Yoshida’s lighthearted twist on his appearance still gets children to smile. When children ask him for his autograph afterward, he signs it Grandpa Yoshida and adds in parentheses Grandpa Kimutaku.

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  Taniguchi, Nagano, Do-oh, Yoshida, and Wada could have stayed silent. They could have buried their traumatic memories for the rest of their lives. And yet, even as the rest of the world has moved on, they chose to make sure their stories are heard. They have found purpose in communicating, in some small part, the extraordinary perils of nuclear war.

  Although scientists have significantly refined their ability to accurately estimate radiation doses for individual hibakusha, they still don’t fully understand the long-term medical effects of high-dose, whole-body radiation exposure. Successive revisions of the 1965 radiation dosimetry system include computer simulations and other new technologies to more closely measure survivors’ gamma and neutron doses, allowing researchers to provide estimates of both an individual’s overall radiation exposure and specific dose estimates for fifteen internal organs. Survivors’ blood and tooth enamel (from teeth extracted for personal medical purposes) are now used to document radiation levels at a molecular level. Although challenges persist due to unknown survivor locations and shielding factors at the time of the bombings, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation has calculated dose estimates for over 90 percent of the one hundred thousand survivors in its study cohort. Using hibakusha autopsy specimens repatriated to Japan, a 2009 study at Nagasaki University’s Atomic Bomb Disease Institute indicates that cells from hibakusha who died in 1945 are still radioactive; this suggests that not only were victims externally exposed to the bomb’s radiation, but that the radioactive materials they ingested—such as dust or water—also irradiated their cells from the inside.

  DNA mutations in living cells can take many years to result in detectable diseases, so researchers have not stopped investigating rates of hibakusha hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions possibly related to radiation exposure. In the meantime, outcomes of long-term studies indicate excess rates of and deaths from certain conditions in survivors even today, including chronic hepatitis and noncancerous heart, thyroid, respiratory, and digestive diseases. Above-normal incidences of leukemia and other cancers persist, including lung, breast, thyroid, stomach, colon, ovarian, thyroid, and liver. Double cancers—the emergence of a second cancer not linked to the spread of an earlier cancer—also occur at higher rates. Dr. Akahoshi Masazumi, cardiologist and director of the Department of Clinical Studies at the RERF in Nagasaki, explained that cancer risk for the youngest hibakusha—who were the most vulnerable to the effects of radiation exposure—will peak around 2015, when they have reached the age of seventy.

  While genetic effects and increased cancer rates for children of hibakusha have not been observed to date, numerous Japanese institutions are continuing their studies using DNA and other emerging technologies. The reason for this, explains Dr. Tomonaga Masao, director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital, is that studies in the United States and Japan have shown concrete experimental evidence that the second generation of mice born to parents exposed to radiation experience higher rates of cellular malformation and higher incidences of cancer than the control groups. “We must be very careful about this,” Dr. Tomonaga says, “because most survivors’ children are passing the age of fifty and are moving into their cancer-prone age.” In 2011, a new national study began on twenty thousand children of hibakusha, comparing them with the same number of children of non-hibakusha for incidence rates of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases. The RERF and other scientists are also concerned about potential recessive genetic mutations in future generations.

  To continue their studies on the impact of radiation exposure on the immune system, medical conditions, and mortality, the RERF, the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute at Nagasaki University, and other research institutions continue to use immense cohorts of living hibakusha and the medical records of deceased survivors. The outcomes of their researc
h have supported scientific-based responses to nuclear accidents such as the 1986 nuclear power plant meltdown in Chernobyl, Ukraine, and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan following the massive earthquake and tsunami there, two events that traumatized many hibakusha. The Fukushima meltdown ignited a shift in Japan’s antinuclear movement to include the gradual phasing out of nuclear power. Ironically, outcomes from hibakusha medical studies are also used to inform international standards for maximum tolerable radiation exposure.

  The enormous number and size of studies conducted since 1945, and the need for their continuation, are further reminders of how little American scientists developing the bomb knew about the effects of momentary, high-dose radiation exposure on the human body.

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  After thirteen years in a coma with Sugako at his side, Dr. Akizuki died in 2005 at the age of eighty-nine. His biographer, Yamashita Akiko, recalled that in his coffin, Dr. Akizuki “was surrounded with white chrysanthemums and light pink roses and smiling peacefully, as if taking a nap.” He was buried in a small neighborhood cemetery across the street from his hospital.

  Do-oh died on March 14, 2007, just as the buds on her beloved drooping cherry trees behind her house were ready to burst. Having surpassed by two years her goal to live until seventy-five, she had, by her own measure, defeated the atomic bomb. “What I mean is—I mean, they dropped the bombs thinking everyone will die, right? But not everyone was killed. I think it takes great emotional strength and force of will to triumph over nuclear weapons.”

  A year earlier, Do-oh had been diagnosed with colon cancer—a second cancer unrelated to her earlier breast cancer—too far gone for any treatment. After her diagnosis, her younger sister, Okada Ikuyo, drove her to her last class reunion, where Do-oh, in a wheelchair, posed with her childhood friends for a class photo. Her skin was pale and thin, her eyes red around the edges, and her hair completely white—a reflection of how weak she was; had she been able, she would have colored it. In early 2007, tests revealed that the cancer had spread to her lungs and brain. Okada cared for her sister day and night in the hospital. Do-oh was both deeply grateful and constantly cranky to Okada and her care providers, leaving Okada scrambling to restore relationships with the hospital staff. Do-oh had given up smoking after her first cancer diagnosis—but she still loved beer and was delighted when her friends and family sneaked small bottles into the hospital.

  Her death came quickly, at home, where she had wanted to be in the end. Later, Okada found one of Do-oh’s last works of art in a drawer in Do-oh’s family altar. It was a shikishi—an elegant square of card stock used for hand-brushed poetry and short writings. On it, Do-oh had watercolored a small purple iris with long green leaves shooting into the center of the board. From the top right corner downward, in clear, graceful strokes, she had brushed the words: Thank you for a good life.

  Seventy-eight-year-old Yoshida died on April 1, 2010, only four months after a sudden illness. His family never told him that his diagnosis was terminal lung cancer, which quickly spread to his spine, nervous system, and bones. They guessed, though, that having cared for his wife with cancer before her death, Yoshida probably knew.

  Near the end of his life, Yoshida lay in his hospital bed, always attended by one or more of his siblings, sons, daughter-in-law, or grandchildren. A bouquet of flowers sat on a small bedside table, IV equipment was positioned at the foot of his bed, and one of his caps hung on the bed’s railing. As Yoshida drifted in and out of consciousness, at times his eyes remained slightly open—distant and mostly without recognition of his surroundings. His breathing was labored, and he could no longer talk. When someone spoke to him, his family could sometimes see energy surge through his body into his throat; his mouth would open wider and Yoshida would release a groaning sound—a clear intention to communicate, it seemed—though no understandable sounds emerged.

  “It’s going to be so lonely without him,” his younger brother said prior to his death—and countless people felt the same way. Yoshida had overcome his disfigurement and won people over even when they were shocked or repulsed by his face. His legacy, for nearly everyone who ever met him or heard him speak, was determined joy.

  Hibakusha are remembered in both typical and unique ways. In the Japanese Buddhist tradition, the deceased is represented on the family’s butsudan (altar), a deep-set wooden cabinet with doors that serves as a place of prayer and remembrance and is passed on from one generation to the next. Inside, families place a bodhisattva statue or other symbolic icon, as well as candles, incense, an altar bell, and offerings for their deceased relatives such as special possessions or foods that she or he had loved in life. Here it is believed that the deceased are available for regular, direct communication, and close family members typically speak to them in the same way as when they were alive. For example, some people begin and end their day with greetings to their deceased family members. Others share their day’s activities or pray to their relatives for help with personal struggles and decisions. Okada’s large, multitiered butsudan, made primarily of black-and-red Japanese lacquer ware, has an elegant bronze Buddhist statue at the back surrounded by gilded Buddhist adornments. In the front, Okada has placed a framed photograph of Do-oh and—to pay homage to one of her sister’s favorite indulgences—freshly brewed coffee in a china cup and saucer. Okada speaks with Do-oh regularly, joking, teasing, complaining, and showing her gifts that friends have brought for the altar to honor Do-oh’s life.

  Another Buddhist tradition involves the deceased receiving a kaimyo—a posthumous name—by the monk in their family temple, conferred seven days after death to symbolize the transformation from the physical to the spiritual world. The kaimyo is usually inscribed on a small wooden name plate and given to the family for placement within the family altar. Yoshida’s posthumous name is An-non-in-shaku-Katsuji, which means “Katsuji, who had an earnest wish that all the world would remain peaceful forever.”

  Families who wish may also register their deceased hibakusha loved ones at the architecturally stunning Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, which opened in 2003 to provide a place of beauty where hibakusha families, Nagasaki citizens, and visitors to the city can pay their respects to those who have died. In the mostly underground structure, narrow hallways with vaulted ceilings lead visitors into an anteroom lined with backlit photographs of hibakusha, young and old, who are remembered there. As their images slowly fade, others appear in their place. The largest room in the Peace Memorial Hall is Remembrance Hall, an expansive quiet space with cedar-paneled walls lined with benches on three sides. In the center of the enormous room, two rows of rectangular glass pillars, illuminated with soft light from within, form a walkway in the direction of the hypocenter. At the end of the walkway stands a thirty-foot tower, called the registry shelf. As of August 9, 2014, it holds more than 165 books with the hand-inscribed names of 165,409 deceased hibakusha, including a Chinese civilian and a British prisoner of war who died on the day of the bombing. The lighted pillars rise through the ceiling and emerge aboveground into a voluminous, circular, shallow basin of clear water, representing the water that atomic bomb victims craved. At night, seventy thousand tiny lights on the floor of the basin are illuminated beneath the water to honor those who died in the first months after the bombing.

  Do-oh and Yoshida also live on through their stories. Do-oh’s childhood classmate Matsuzoe Hiroshi and a group of Do-oh’s friends collected her essays and poems and published them posthumously in a single volume, Ikasarete ikite [Allowed to Live, I Live], named after the title of Do-oh’s most well-known essay. After Do-oh’s death, Matsuzoe also created eighteen more paintings of Do-oh’s life based on her writings. Copies of these paintings have become Do-oh’s kamishibai—colorful illustrations of the key moments of her life that are presented to audiences while someone (first Matsuzoe and now others) tells her story—passing on her experiences and perspectives to those
who can no longer hear her in person.

  Yoshida’s life is reflected in a kamishibai created by students at Nagasaki’s Sakurababa Municipal Junior High School before his death. Inspired by Yoshida’s presentations at their school, the students first painted fifty original works representing Yoshida’s atomic bomb experiences, simpler and more childlike than Matsuzoe’s paintings of Do-oh’s life. Before his hospitalization, Yoshida selected sixteen of these paintings to become the kamishibai of his life story. The students combined their paintings and Yoshida’s own words to present his story for students at nearby elementary schools. The Nagasaki Board of Education also printed and distributed five hundred copies of Yoshida’s kamishibai and presentation scripts to schools throughout the city. With Yoshida’s blessing, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum presents his kamishibai to interested groups.

  Yoshida had planned to make his first trip to the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2010, but due to his illness, he could not go. In his place, Hayashida Mitsuhiro, an eighteen-year-old high school student, antinuclear activist, and grandson of a hibakusha, presented Yoshida’s kamishibai at several New York City schools where Yoshida had been invited to speak. To prepare for his New York trip, Hayashida watched videotapes of Yoshida’s presentations, practiced Yoshida’s tone, pacing, and expression, and rehearsed the English translation of his script. Yoshida died shortly before the young man’s departure for New York. Yoshida’s kamishibai provoked emotional responses from his American audiences. Hayashida closed every presentation with Yoshida’s signature words, imploring students to remember: The basis of peace is for people to understand the pain of others.

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  Taniguchi, Nagano, Do-oh, Yoshida, and Wada beat the odds of immediate death and life-threatening radiation-related diseases and lived to tell their stories. Despite years of denial, discrimination, hiding, and a sense of internal contamination, their drive and their willingness to reveal themselves allow us to understand what it took to survive after surviving. They insisted on being a part of deciding whose story is told, on becoming vocal rememberers of experiences they could not let be forgotten. They wanted to make sure the world sees the absurdity of perceiving nuclear weapons as peacekeepers in the context of the massive and lifelong trauma they cause.