Nagasaki Hibakusha Delegation Talks about Life-Time Effects of Atomic Bomb
A Nagasaki Hibakusha Delegation talks about life-time effects of an atomic bomb at the Japan Information Center, Consulate General of Japan in Chicago.
A Nagasaki Hibakusha Delegation led by Masao Tomonaga visited Chicago and gave a presentation “Hibakusha: Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Stories and Hopes for the Future” on November 14 at the Japan Information Center, Consulate General of Japan in Chicago. The delegation caravan toured Chicago, Raleigh in North Carolina and Portland in Oregon, and held 20 meetings in two weeks to have conversations with school students and citizens and inform them about the importance of the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The word hibakusha means the people who were exposed to radiation when a nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The delegation, consisting of the first, second, and third generation of hibakusha, aimed to have first-hand dialogues with the people of the United States where many nuclear weapons were stored, and talked about the tragedy and inhumanity of the nuclear weapons and the importance of peace to the U.S. citizens, especially, young generations.
This two-week caravan was made possible by the strong leadership of Dr. Masao Tomonaga, a hibakusha who has studied leukemia and MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) to help relieve hibakusha. He has spoken at many international conferences about the life-long effects of nuclear bombs that were mostly unknown to the world, and about the reality of the aftermath of the use of nuclear weapons.
There are several organizations in Nagasaki to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons, and this time the delegation caravan received for the first time a part of their traveling expenses from the Japanese government.
In the presentation, Tomonaga talked about the prolonged health issues among hibakusha; Shizuko Mitamura told her ongoing tragic story with her drawings; Tokusaburo Nagai narrated his grandfather’s realization of peace after his vigorous life; and Yukino Yamaguchi spoke about her activities as a young activist. Takashi Miyata (83), who read the declaration for the peace at the 2022 commemoration ceremony, and Aki Kawabata, a member of the Nagasaki Prefecture Association Friends of Atomic Bomb Nisei Survivors, were also with the speakers.
Masao Tomonaga
Masao Tomonaga
Masao Tomonaga is Chairman of the Nagasaki Prefecture Association Friends of Atomic Bomb Survivors, President of the Nagasaki Global Citizens Assembly, Japanese Representative of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Director Emeritus of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Hospital, Professor Emeritus of the Nagasaki University, and he has more titles due to his worldwide activities. He is also the author of “The Basic Knowledge of the Radioactive Contamination.”
Tomonaga was two years old when an atomic bomb hit the City of Nagasaki. He was saved from his crashed house by his mother just before a fierce fire hit his home. It was located 2.5 kilometers from the hypocenter.
He is a descendant of the doctors’ family since his great-grandfather, so he became a physician and researcher, especially, in the hematology field to save patients suffering from leukemia and MDS.
At the same time as a Japanese representative of the IPPNW, he devoted himself to giving speeches abroad about the seriously prolonged effects of radiation emitted from nuclear weapons. The IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was founded under the IPPNW, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 due to its hard work to help pass the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in the same year.
Tomonaga spoke on “The Life-long-health Effects of Atomic Bombs,” and showed two mushroom clouds in Nagasaki and Hiroshima followed by several drawings, which were drawn by the atomic-bomb victims on the bombing day. One drawing showed that many burned victims flocked to the riverside to drink water and died there. Another described that a mother struggled to make an opening in a wall of her crashed house to save her child, but her effort was unsuccessful. These drawings are rare to convey the reality of tragic scenes just after the bombing although many hibakusha drew the scenes in their memory later years.
About 90% of the northern part of Nagasaki City was devastated, and Nagasaki Medical School, which was located only 500 meters from the hypocenter, was hard hit by the bomb, and about 900 students and professors were killed almost instantly. Many victims were treated in a damaged elementary school, but enough medical aid was not available, and many civilians died there. Their bodies were burned on the school grounds.
Badly burn-injured victims developed keloid in several hours, got sick, and many of them died. Victims, who were exposed to high levels of radiation, got damage in their internal organs, and the damages made them unable to absorb water in their body, and then their level of white-blood-cell was lowered, and infections followed.
Many hibakusha developed Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS) within 10 days to 14 days after the bombing. The first sign of ARS was hair loss which usually led to death.
An explosion of an atomic bomb effuses nuclear fission materials, and gamma rays and neutrons fall onto metals, soil, and stones on the ground while the nuclear fission materials soar into the sky, form clouds, and the clouds are cooled, and then the materials including neutrons come down as black rain.
Tomonaga said gamma rays and neutrons were very dangerous causing secondary radiation damage to people. After the explosion of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, leukemia patients rapidly increased, and doctors began to recognize the effects of gamma rays and neutrons three to four years after the explosion.
The incidence rate of leukemia is very high within 1.5 kilometers from the hypocenter, the onset of leukemia continued for 15 years, and it is still happening 70 years after the explosion. The incidence rate of children is 10 times higher than adults.
Cancers caused by exposure to radiation are not only leukemia, but also solid cancers such as thyroid, breast, lung, colon, stomach, and multiple cancers. MDS has also increased among elder hibakusha, and the incidence rate is three to four times higher than among ordinary Japanese people.
According to Dr. Sumihisa Honda’s study on the Psychological Damage Study for Survivors after a Half-century (1995) by WHO General Health Questionnaire, the closer the survivors are to the hypocenter, the higher the incidence rate of depression and PTSD they get.
At the end of his speech, he stated the hibakusha’s witness and wish as follows:
We Hibakusha witnessed
1. The radiation emitted by the atomic bombs induced leukemia and cancer during survivors' whole life.
Also "Psychological effect" is long-lasting and profound.
2. Without warning nuclear attacks over entire citizens irrespective of military personnel nor civilians.
3. Anti-humanitarian aspect of the nuclear bombs is clear.
We hibakusha wish
1. A Nuclear Weapon-free world before the 100th Anniversary of the Bombing (2045)
2. Nagasaki should remain "the Second and the Last Atomic Bomb-destroyed City" in Human History.
3. Young generations of the U.S.A. and Japan including Hibakusha should cooperate to promote world anti-nuclear movement among global citizens.
Tomonaga said, “President Obama visited Hiroshima Peace Park in 2016, and said ‘We need an ethical revolution to eradicate nuclear weapons from the entire world,’ but still there are more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. Please go forth for the nuclear-free world.”
Tokusaburo Nagai
Tokusaburo Nagai
Tokusaburo Nagai is Director of the Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum and Board member of the NPO Nagasaki Nyogo no Kai. He spoke of his grandfather Takashi Nagai, who was exposed to the radiation when he was 37 years old and provided relief efforts to the atomic bomb victims despite being seriously injured
Takashi Nagai was born in 1908 and graduated from the Nagasaki Medical School in 1932. Just before his graduation, he developed hearing loss due to severe otitis media and gave up on becoming an internist as a radiologist.
He was drafted as a military doctor and participated in the Manchurian Incident in 1933 and the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and returned to the Nagasaki Medical School as Associate Professor.
During WWII, an epidemic of tuberculosis was widely spreading in Japan, and Nagai had to see more than 100 patients every day. Due to excessive X-ray exposure, he developed chronic myelogenous leukemia in 1945 and was told three years to live.
Even his life was limited, he was positively working at the medical school, and on August 9, an atomic bomb was dropped only 500 meters away from the school. He was working in his school room and brown into the air with the furniture. When he fell to the floor, the furniture fell onto him. He got serious injuries such as a severed right temporal artery, but together with fellow doctors, nurses, and students, who survived, he worked hard to rescue the victims immediately after the bombing.
He continued his work, but his disease gradually worsened and he became bedridden by the end of the following year, 1946. He, however, didn’t lose his positive attitude toward his life and said his hands, eyes, and head still worked. He wrote about his thoughts and completed 17 books by the day of his departure. He was 43 years old.
Some of his thoughts were:
“Who turned the beautiful City of Nagasaki into a Heap of Ashes? We did. We started the foolish war ourselves.”
“Nobody can win or lose in a war. There is only destruction. Humans were not born to fight! Peace! Peace forever!”
“Let us forgive each other because no one is perfect. Let us love each other, because we are lonely. Whether it be a fight, a struggle, or a war, all that remains afterward is regret.”
“Difficult discussions about world peace are occurring repeatedly, but real peace is not brought about by complicated meetings or ideas, but by the simple power of love.”
Nagai donated most profit from his book to the reconstruction of Nagasaki City, Urakami Cathedral, and more. He also donated more than 1,000 cherry blossom saplings to help make Urakami, a hill of flowers again and set up a library "Our Bookcase" to give hope and courage to the children who had been heartbroken during the war.
While waiting for his approaching death, Nagai thought about the realization of peace every day, and the answer he came up with was, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."
Tokusaburo, Nagai’s grandson, said, “I believe that we can realize a peaceful world by accepting, forgiving, and supporting each other.”
Shizuko Mitamura
Shizuko Mitamura
Shizuko Mitamura, Vice Chair of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Notebook Friend’s Association, is the first generation of hibakusha and has been working on storytelling with her drawings. After the bombing, she developed multiple cancers, lost her daughter, lost her third sister and her daughter, and her second sister’s daughter. She said, “If we didn’t have that war, we didn’t get that atomic bomb, and my daughter didn’t have to die. I have a mission to talk about prolonged fear of the atomic bomb to the people in the world.”
Mitamura’s home was four kilometers away from the hypocenter, and her family consisted of her parents, three elder sisters, elder brother and younger brother, and herself. On the morning of August 9, 1945, a warning siren rang, so Mitamura evacuated with her sisters to a shelter. After the warning was lifted, they went home and had an early lunch at engawa, an open wooden room. Due to food shortage, lunch was usually a substitute for rice such as potatoes or pumpkin, but it was rice on that day, so Mitamura was delighted.
The drawing describes Shizuko Mitamura (L) and her second and third sister on the bombing day, August 9, 1945.
Suddenly three-year-old Mitamura saw a bright light and felt a blast. She also saw white ash like something on the bowl of rice, but she continued to eat.
In the evening, Mitamura saw many people walking on the road. Their clothes were burned out, and blood was coming out from their bodies. It was a fearful view. She didn’t know what happened and learned about it a long time after the bombing.
Several days after the bombing, she got diarrhea and a fever, but nobody knew it was atomic-bomb disease. Her doctor gave her medicine, but it took her two to three months to get well.
She was in delicate health when she was in elementary school, so she became a nurse. Then she married, had her first daughter, and then her first son was born. She recalled it was happy days.
Her second sister developed colon cancer but was saved by surgery. Then her third sister died of cancer at the age of 39. Mitamura also developed colon cancer and was saved by surgery. But the patients in the same hospital room died one by one.
She didn’t know she was exposed to radiation until she got cancer. Because of discrimination and prejudice, her mother didn’t talk about the bombing for a long time. 20 years after her colon cancer, she developed breast cancer, but again she was saved by surgery. After 10 years from her breast cancer, her daughter was diagnosed with pelvic cancer and died in June 2010, at the age of 39.
On the bombing day, three daughters were eating lunch together, and all three developed cancer in later days. Although Mitamura survived, her daughter died. The second sister’s daughter died, and the third sister and her daughter died. All four of them died of cancer in their 30s.
Mitamura said, “I swore to my daughter that I would continue to talk to people about the cruelty and stupidity of wars, the preciousness of peace, and the terror of radiation emitted by an atomic bomb until my death comes to me. Especially, I need to convey my experiences to young people.”
Yukino Yamaguchi
Yukino Yamaguchi
Yukino Yamaguchi is the third generation of hibakusha and a young activist. Her grandparents were hibakusha, and her grandfather was exposed to radiation at the 1.8-kilometer point from the hypocenter when he was six years old. Both her grandparents had each story, but never talked about it in the public or with their family. “But I talk about the stories, never hide them,” she said.
Currently, Yamaguchi is attending the International Christian University and is a member of KNOW NUKES TOKYO and The Nagasaki Hibakusha Notebook Friendship Association. In June 2022, she participated in the First Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a civilian observer and coordinated a workshop where hibakusha and young participants from about 50 countries had dialogues, and participated in some forums and international meetings hosted by the ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons).
In her high school period, she joined the Peace Study Club at Kwassui High School in 2016 and was selected as a Youth Peace Ambassador from 2017 to 2018. During that time, she was actively involved in the 10,000 High School Students Signatures Campaign.
She has been active in the KNOW NUKES TOKYO which has worked on having meetings with elected officials in Tokyo, so Yamaguchi also trying to reach out to assembly members in Nagasaki to rouse discussions on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the place of atomic bombing.
The mission of KNOW NUKES TOKYO is as follows:
1. No Nukes to make nuclear-free world.
2. Know Nukes to understand what happened in the past.
3. Know New by creating opportunities to have conversations with young generations about the abolition of nuclear weapons
Q&A Session
At the Q&A session, five questions were brought to the session.
1. Why Nagasaki is less known to the general public?
Answer: According to Tomonaga, as the second victim, Nagasaki had less impact. There would be a different personality between the City of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. When the U.S. implemented a hydrogen bomb test in the Marshall Islands in 1954, 23 Japanese crew on the Fifth Fukuryu-maru were exposed to radiation. Hiroshima citizens were aggressively protesting widely to the world; on the other hand, Nagasaki was much calmer, and the citizens were praying for peace.
However, Tomonaga said Nagasaki is well known as the victim of an atomic bomb among people in the world.
2. What activities can countries in the world do for the abolition of nuclear weapons?
Answer: According to Tomonaga, 122 countries agreed to pass the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017, and more than 50 countries ratified it by 2021, so that the ban treaty came into effect in the same year. As of January 10th, 2023, 93 countries ratified it. That number indicates that so many countries are against having nuclear weapons.
3. How Japanese government has supported activity groups that have been working for the abolition of nuclear weapons?
Answer: According to Tomonaga, Japan didn’t participate in the voting of the TPNW because Japan took the U.S. stance as an ally. On the other hand, Japan supported his delegation to promote nuclear abolition. The Japanese government cannot sign the TPNW now, but when the non-nuclear age arrives, Japan will sign a treaty. The U.S. would consider it.
4. Why are hibakusha discriminated by other people in Japan?
Answer: According to Tomonaga, discrimination and prejudice against hibakusha were often seen in Nagasaki during the 10 years after the bombing. Probably it happened when a young man or young woman married with hibakusha. Most parents rejected hibakusha because they concerned about the future health conditions of hibakusha. It mostly disappeared as time went by.
According to Yamaguchi, discrimination and prejudice against hibakusha would happen because of ignorant people. She said she never faced such kind of discrimination in her life. She also said when she went abroad, she introduced herself as the third generation of hibakusha because it was her identification; on the other hand, she never mentioned it in Japan because people tend to feel stigma or bias about hibakusha.
Shimpo wants to add the facts that discrimination and prejudice happened against residents in Fukushima when the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It happened again during the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years.
5. How can Japanese Americans help the issue?
Answer: Yamaguchi said, “Don’t invest in the companies related to making nuclear weapons, and please support our organization.”