The city of Nagasaki’s peace education program strives for the same goals. All fifth-grade students in each of Nagasaki’s more than fifty elementary schools visit the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. The NFPP lends films and a photographic panel exhibit about the bombing to the city’s nearly thirty junior high schools. Shiroyama Elementary School takes its peace education even further: On the ninth of every month since August 1951, Shiroyama’s students, teachers, and administrators have gathered in the school gymnasium for hibakusha presentations and discussions of war- and peace-related research in the context of the atomic bombing and Japan’s wartime atrocities. When the assembly concludes, the student body stands together and bows to the east, in the direction of the atomic bomb hypocenter, to honor those who died and to hold the vision of a world without war or nuclear weapons. The students then file out to place flowers at different monuments and memorials across the school grounds. Ten times a year for the first six years of their school lives, the children at Shiroyama think about, study, and discuss peace.
In light of the increasing age of survivors and their decreasing numbers, the NFPP and other organizations feel a sense of urgency to find ways to support future generations’ access to and understanding of hibakusha stories. They have launched legacy campaigns to create kamishibai and videotape as many kataribe presentations as they can. A large group of “Peace Guides” are being trained in Nagasaki’s atomic bomb history to provide guided tours at the Atomic Bomb Museum, Peace Memorial Hall, and other atomic bomb sites.
Wada’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Yukari, carried on her grandfather’s story when she appeared in a play based on Wada’s experiences of the bombing and its aftermath. “I was eighteen at the time of the bomb, right?” he says. “She was nineteen. She played me as I was back then.” Wada sat in the audience, smartly dressed, bald on top, with thick white hair neatly cut above his ears. Visceral memories flooded his mind. He cried at times, and he felt deep appreciation for the actors, especially his granddaughter. “People who knew nothing about the times sixty-five years ago, or the war, or the atomic bomb, really tried to get what it was like back then.” When the play ended, Wada stood on the stage next to Yukari dressed as him so long ago. Looking at his granddaughter, his face showed a depth of sadness and gratitude he rarely reveals.
At eighty-seven, Wada still takes visitors to the streetcar memorial, proudly explaining its design and his role in collecting the names of the mobilized students who died driving or collecting fares on the morning of the bombing. His guests speak loudly to accommodate his partial hearing loss. Every August, company employees gather here for a memorial service, though the number of survivors who worked there has significantly diminished. On the anniversary of the bombing, Wada comes to this spot in the early morning to pray.
He credits his wife for his good health and his happy life. Hisako beams as she pours him tea.
• • •
“I wanted to die first,” Nagano says. “I wanted to die before my husband did because I didn’t want to arrange for any more funerals. I did not want to see any more death. But in the year 2000, after eleven and a half years of being in the hospital, my husband died.”
At eighty-three, Nagano lives with her eldest daughter and college-age grandson in Ogi-machi, about a mile north of the hypocenter. After being hospitalized for a bleeding intestinal ulcer and seeing her children worry on her behalf, she strives every day to stay healthy. “I live peacefully,” she says. “I get up whenever I want to. I go to speak as a kataribe when I am asked. I go out to eat with my friends. But I have a limited income. I can live well as long as I don’t indulge in luxury.” An avid karaoke singer, Nagano misses Yoshida, her frequent singing partner at social gatherings.
Less frequently now, Nagano takes a taxi to her family’s cemetery just east of the hypocenter. From the top of the hill where the taxi stops, most of the Urakami Valley is spread before her: a metropolis of office buildings, residences, parks, and schools, edged by green mountains, with the Urakami River flowing southward into the bay. Nagano uses the railing to keep her balance and takes her time walking down a narrow paved walkway and turning into a long row of gravesites running horizontally across the hill. Her family’s marble monument is second in the row, engraved on both sides with the names and dates of death of her husband’s family members and her own, in order of their deaths. For Nagano’s family, her older sister who died in infancy is listed first, then Seiji, Kuniko, her father, her older brother, and, last, her mother, Shina—June 5, 1995. Vases of bright yellow, purple, pink, and white zoka (artificial flowers) sit on smaller granite blocks in front of the main memorial. “Since I can’t come often, real flowers would die,” she says. “These stay beautiful.” Stored in urns below are her family’s ashes, though Nagano will never open them again.
She lights some incense and places it on the altar in a ceramic bowl filled with sand. “This,” she says, “is because we imagine that our family members who have died like the scent.” She steps back, claps her hands twice, bows her head, and stands in silence. When she is finished, she snuffs out the incense, gathers her things, and heads farther down the pathway to a steep stone staircase that leads to the street. “I used to be able to go down the stairs easily, ton-ton-ton-ton,” she says, holding tightly to the iron handrail. At the bottom, she catches her breath, then hails a taxi to return home.
Yoshida Katsuji and Nagano Etsuko singing karaoke at a New Year’s Eve party, 2009. (Courtesy of Nagano Etsuko)
Her friends and the many students who write her letters after hearing her story remind Nagano that it would have been impossible to know of the imminent atomic bombing of her city when she brought Seiji and Kuniko back from Kagoshima. They urge her to release her self-blame and remorse. “But every night,” Nagano says, “when I am in the bathtub alone, those memories just come back to me. It makes me sad and dreary. I wonder why only I survived to live happily in this time of peace. Even now, when I don’t have to worry about anything because my children are grown, I can’t erase my sorrow for what happened to my brother and sister.”
• • •
“My children keep telling me to stop driving to my son’s house, which is ten hours away,” Taniguchi says. His hair is graying now, and deep vertical wrinkles ripple out from the corners of his mouth. “The truth is, since I turned seventy, they are constantly telling me what I shouldn’t do because I am old!” What Taniguchi doesn’t say, however, is that at eighty-five, he is in constant pain and suffers from many health problems. The post-bedsore indentations in his chest are still so deep that his heartbeat is visible. He has lost nearly all vision in one eye, and his memory is waning. After more than twenty-five surgeries, including at least ten skin transplants on his back and left arm, the middle of his back at the spine causes him the most pain—not on the surface, but deep inside. When he stands or walks, his arm—unable to straighten—remains bent, his hand hanging down from his wrist. More than half of his body is covered in scars. “My skin can’t breathe,” he says, “so the fatigue is terrible in the summer months.” Taniguchi remains extremely thin, still eating only small amounts to avoid breaking the tightly stretched skin that covers his back, legs, and arms. The transplanted skin on his back often cracks. His wife, Eiko, applies cream to his back every day.
Fueled by determination, every morning since his retirement twenty-six years ago, Taniguchi has dressed in a suit and tie, combed back his hair, and driven from his home on Mount Inasa to the offices of Nagasaki Hisaikyo—the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council—on the second floor above a small souvenir shop in Peace Park. Tourists roam the seven-square-mile park that features the Peace Statue, the ruins of Urakami Prison destroyed in the bombing, and the Vault for the Unclaimed Remains of Victims containing shelves filled with urns holding the ashes of 8,962 unidentified hibakusha. On either side of tree-lined walkways, monuments from countries all over the world honor those who died. A la
rge fountain at the south end of the park overlooks the Urakami Valley.
Taniguchi Sumiteru, age seventy-five, in 2004, revealing the injuries and scar tissue on his back, arms, and chest. (Photograph by John Van Hasselt/Corbis Images)
At Hisaikyo, Taniguchi supports survivors’ successful applications for government health care benefits. A more comprehensive Hibakusha Relief Law went into effect in 1995, which greatly improved survivors’ access to medical care and support. “However,” Taniguchi says, “the law is very hard to understand, and the procedures for applying for and receiving support from the government are very complicated.” Taniguchi helps survivors and their family members through this process. He also supports their efforts to sue the government for coverage of medical conditions not yet approved, claims that have sometimes resulted in the expansion and refinement of the definitions, boundaries, diseases, and disabilities covered by the hibakusha health care laws. Still, Taniguchi and other activists continue to argue that screening procedures and definitions are too restrictive, allowing the government to deny coverage to many who are still in need.
“It’s strange that I am still alive,” he says, almost in disbelief. In fact, all of the people Taniguchi worked with in 1955 to create Nagasaki Hisaikyo have died. “I am the only one left.” As he ages, typical greetings from friends like “Please take care of yourself” bring him no consolation, and he falls silent when people wish him a long life. “That would mean many more years of pain,” he says. “Either way, I’ll have pain until I die.”
From the windows of the Nagasaki Hisaikyo meeting room across the hall from his office, Taniguchi looks north toward Sumiyoshi-machi, the once-rural area where the bomb blasted him off his bike and melted the skin off his back and arms. “If you were to measure life with a ruler and an entire life were 30 centimeters long, 29.9 centimeters of my life were destroyed that day. That last millimeter . . . I found the strength to live within that one millimeter because I realized I had survived because of the support I received from so many people. So my life is not just for myself; I now have to live for other people. Even though it’s excruciating, I feel that I have a responsibility to live my life to the very end.”
Taniguchi stands up from the table to head to the balcony for a cigarette break. As he passes the young American girl videotaping the interview, he pauses for a moment and almost smiles.
“Erase the bad parts,” he says, “okay?”
Nagasaki’s first hypocenter marker, in Japanese and English, October 1945, designating the spot on the ground above which the atomic bomb detonated. (Photograph by Hayashi Shigeo/Courtesy of Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I extend my deepest and most sincere gratitude to Do-oh Mineko, Nagano Etsuko, Taniguchi Sumiteru, Wada Koichi, and Yoshida Katsuji, the five hibakusha featured in Nagasaki, for their generosity of time, candor, and goodwill in telling me their atomic bomb experiences and key moments in their lives over the past seventy years. I also received openhearted assistance from their family members, who provided additional information about these survivors’ lives and offered me access to their personal writings and photographs: Okada Ikuyo (Do-oh’s sister); Wada Hisako (Wada’s wife); and Yoshida Naoji, Yoshida Tomoji, Yoshida Kenji, and Kanayama Kuniko (Yoshida’s elder son, younger son, younger brother, and cousin, respectively).
My profound thanks to other Nagasaki hibakusha who offered me their time and insight into their personal experiences and perspectives: Akizuki Sugako (Dr. Akizuki’s wife), Fukahori Yoshitoshi, Hamasaki Hitoshi, Hirose Masahito, Matsuzoe Hiroshi, Miyazaki Midori, Shimohira Sakue, Uchida Tsukasa, and one woman who asked that her name be withheld. I greatly appreciate Mitani Kazumi for introducing me to two hibakusha who had never told their stories outside of their personal circles of friends and family, and Nakamichi Keiko at St. Francis Hospital for arranging an inspiring meeting with Akizuki Sugako. Thank you to Sakato Toshihiro for guiding me through the campus of Shiroyama Elementary School, and to Sister Fusayo Tsutsumi at the Hill of Grace Nagasaki A-Bomb Home.
The written testimonies of hundreds of other Nagasaki hibakusha allowed me to expand my understanding of postnuclear survival. I deeply appreciate the commitment of editors, compilers, and English translators of these testimonies. Organizations that have spent decades gathering these testimonies and in many cases having them translated include the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, the Nagasaki Testimonial Society, the Nagasaki International Culture Hall, the Nagasaki Association for Hibakushas’ Medical Care, the Nagasaki Broadcasting Company, the Asahi Shimbun, and Nihon Hidankyo. Brian Burke-Gaffney and Geoff Neill provided superb translations of many of these testimonies. Brian Burke-Gaffney also gave me an insider’s look into fascinating aspects of Nagasaki’s history as we walked through the city.
In Nagasaki, I received many years of invaluable support from Matsuo Ranko, assistant section chief at the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, who introduced me to Do-oh, Wada, Nagano, and Yoshida; helped coordinate my interview schedule during my trips to Nagasaki; and connected me with numerous atomic bomb specialists. I am privileged to also call her my friend. The directors and entire staff at the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, especially Taira Mitsuyoshi and Mizushita Ayumi, also offered assistance in numerous areas of research and coordination.
My most sincere thanks to Fukahori Yoshitoshi, chairperson of the Committee for Research of Photographs and Materials of the Atomic Bombing, for giving me access to his large archive of photographs and for his immense support in acquiring photograph permissions from aging hibakusha and other sources beyond my reach. His volunteer staff also provided valuable help, especially Shirabe Hitomi. At the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, Takagi Rumiko offered tireless research support in the early years of this project, followed by Shiraishi Hitomi. Special thanks to photo archivist Okuno Shotaro for his valuable assistance in identifying and obtaining permissions for many of the photographs from the museum. Thank you, too, to Ito Sei at the Asahi Shimbun for his help in locating copies of 1945 editions of the newspaper and present-day feature articles on hibakusha.
Numerous atomic bomb physicians and specialists offered me their time and expertise, including Dr. Tomonaga Masao, director; Dr. Hideki Mori, vice president; and social worker Nakashima Seiji at the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital. Dr. Kinoshita Hirohisa, in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the Nagasaki University Hospital of Medicine and Dentistry, and Koshimoto Rika, clinical psychologist at Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, provided updated psychological research on hibakusha experiences. Dr. Akahoshi Masazumi, director of the Department of Clinical Studies at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Nagasaki, provided both historical and current perspectives on RERF’s research. Thank you to Fukushima Masako, master file section, Epidemiology Department at RERF, for her assistance.
In the United States, I offer my deep gratitude to my agent, Richard Balkin, and my editor at Viking, Melanie Tortoroli, for their vision and dedication in ushering Nagasaki to publication. I would also like to thank Wendy Wolf, vice president and associate publisher at Viking, and my first editor there, Kevin Doughten, for their faith in the project from the start. Huge appreciation to production editor Bruce Giffords and copy editor Lavina Lee for their remarkable work through numerous drafts, and to the entire team at Viking. Thank you.
For grants that supported the book, I am grateful to the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Bill Desmond Writing Award, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc., and the National Philanthropic Trust. Thank you to the Norman Mailer Center for providing me a month of writing time in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the company of wonderful writers of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Heartfelt appreciation to Joan Kahn and to the following indiv
iduals who offered financial support for the completion of the book when I had run out of funds: Alison Arnold, Deborah Bauer, Andrea Beckham, Ken Blackburn, Mary Brown, Anne Canright, Wayne and Carol Daily, Bonnie Eckard, Debbie Elman, Amber E. Espar, Eloise Klein Healy, Homeopathy Care LLC, Saskia Jorda, Anne Kellor, James Lattin, Michele Lawson, Janet Linder, Christopher Mogil, Judy and Dan Peitzmeyer-Rollings, Ralph and Darcy Phillips, Marilyn Pursley, Khadijah Queen, Donna Ruby, Dick and Shirley Southard, Ry Southard, David Spielvogel, Judy Starr, Wendy White, Kim Scott Ziegler, and two anonymous donors.
A special thanks to historian John W. Dower for his time, historical insights, and encouragement; Rachelle Linner for our conversations about many aspects of our writing projects on the lives of hibakusha; Paul Morris and Christopher Burawa for their early encouragement; and Dr. James Yamazaki for his kindness and engaging stories of Nagasaki in the late 1940s.
I have been fortunate to assemble a superb team to support my translation and research needs for Nagasaki. Immense thanks to the seven translators who spent thousands of hours helping me translate interviews, essays, articles, medical records, scientific studies, and correspondence. Led by the incomparable Mariko Sugawara Bragg, they are Yasuko Clark, Eiko Foster, Eriko Fujiyoshi, Sayako Fujii Head, Toshie Jones, and Akiko Wakao. Excellent administrative support was provided by Eva Black, Charlene Brown, Jeanne Callahan, Lorraine Ciavola, Shela Hidalgo, and Darcy Esch Phillips. Thank you to attorney Yuriko Kondo for her legal translations. For their reading and feedback on my book proposal and early drafts, I thank my former MFA mentor Valerie Boyd, Rebecca Godfrey, and fellow writers Anne Canright, Anne Liu Kellor, Khadijah Queen, and Christin Taylor. Many thanks, too, to Eva Black and Ken Blackburn for their careful reading and feedback on final drafts.
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