Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor shares story of survival
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Japan marks 70 years since atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima
Survivors share memories of the horrifying attack, decades on
Hiroshima, JapanCNN
—
In the center of Hiroshima, yards from where the world’s first atomic attack bomb exploded 70 years ago, stands a dome-shaped bell tower of modest proportions. It is decorated with the bronze statues of three children.
Their slender arms reach out, spreading wide towards the sky. It looks like a dance of joy. But it leaves me choking back tears.
The bombing of Hiroshima is a dark and difficult chapter in U.S. history. As an American wandering past the bronze pixies dancing so close to what was ground zero, I cannot help but feel profound guilt.
The Children’s Peace Monument is dedicated to a child survivor of the A-bomb. Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the bomb dropped. She survived for almost a decade, until she died from leukemia in 1955.
The United States detonates the world's first atomic bomb at a test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Less than a month later, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devastation led to Japan's unconditional surrender and brought an end to World War II.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
March Of Time/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In 1939, physicists Albert Einstein, left, and Leo Szilard drafted a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to research atomic bombs before the Germans could build one first. By 1942, the United States had approved the top-secret Manhattan Project to build a nuclear reactor and assemble an atomic bomb.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
Marie Hansen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In 1942, U.S. Army Col. Leslie R. Groves, left, was appointed to head the Manhattan Project. On the right is physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
Los Alamos National Laboratory/Getty Images
Los Alamos workers pose on a platform stacked with 100 tons of TNT. It was to be used to gauge radioactive fallout.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Manhattan Project also involved research facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. Billboards, like this one in Oak Ridge, reminded workers of the project's top-secret nature.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
Los Alamos National Laboratory/Getty Images
Workers in New Mexico attach a bomb to a tower two days before its successful test in July 1945.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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Trinity was the code name of the test bomb, which was detonated in the Jornada del Muerto desert.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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Air Force Col. Paul Tibbetts waves from the pilot's seat of the Enola Gay moments before takeoff on August 6, 1945. A short time later, the plane's crew dropped the first atomic bomb in combat, instantly killing 80,000 people in Hiroshima.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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An aerial photograph of Hiroshima shortly after the atomic bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was dropped.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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U.S. President Harry Truman, aboard a U.S. Navy cruiser, reads reports of the Hiroshima bombing. Eight days earlier, Truman had warned Japan that the country would be destroyed if it did not surrender unconditionally.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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A white silhouette on a Hiroshima bridge shows an area that wasn't scorched by the bomb. It was reportedly the outline of a person's shadow -- someone who was shielded from the blast's heat rays by another person.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
Corbis
An elderly victim is covered with flies in a makeshift hospital in Hiroshima.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
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A worker stands next to an atomic bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," hours before it was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.
This photo was taken about six miles from the scene of the Nagasaki explosion. According to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, photographer Hiromichi Matsuda took this photograph 15 minutes after the attack.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
AP
Survivors of the Nagasaki bomb walk through the destruction as fire rages in the background.
Photos: The first use of the atomic bomb
AP
A woman and a child walk in Nagasaki on the day of the bombing. More than 70,000 people there were killed instantly.
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Members of the White House Press Corps rush to telephones after Truman announced Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945.
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An aerial view of Hiroshima three weeks after the atomic bomb.
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Soldiers and sailors on the USS Missouri watch as Japan's formal surrender is signed in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.
Death with devastating force
Sasaki was one of the more than 200,000 people killed by America’s terrifying use of atomic force. It was a ruthless demonstration of power repeated three days later in a second atomic attack on Nagasaki.
Growing up in the U.S., I learned as a teenager to associate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the image of two distant, devastated Japanese cities. The textbooks taught us that by dropping atomic bombs on Japan, the U.S. hastened the end of World War II. In other words, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians ultimately helped save lives.
In the decades since the bomb, the Japanese have turned ground zero in Hiroshima into a leafy park dedicated to world peace and nuclear non-proliferation.
A museum here explains the ferocity of the blast that ripped through this city at 8:15 a.m. It does not sugarcoat.
The exhibit includes graphic photos and life-size dioramas detailing the burns, sores and disease suffered by the bomb’s many civilian victims.
It is here that I meet 87-year old Chisako Takeoka, a tiny woman who moves with surprising vigor while leaning heavily on a cane.
Rivers choked with bodies
Takeoka was 17-years old and had just completed a night shift making torpedoes at a military factory when the bomb exploded more than two miles away. The shockwave knocked her senseless, blowing the girl into a field of sweet potatoes.
In the days weeks and weeks after the blast, Takeoka saw the river running through Hiroshima choked with burned corpses. She says a doctor removed her mother’s eye, which had been dangling after being blown out of its socket by the explosion, without any anesthetic due to supply shortages.
Two years after the bomb, Takeoka’s first-born son died 18 days after birth, a victim of what was described to her as “A-bomb syndrome.”
“Are you angry at the U.S.?” I ask.
“Of course I was angry at that time,” the elderly woman answers. “But I think it’s true the atomic bomb shortened the war. And I wish Japan had surrendered earlier.”
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
Courtesy JNTO
Genbaku Dome —
Hiroshima's Atomic Bomb Genbaku Dome became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. When the United States dropped the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, it exploded just above the building.
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
Courtesy JNTO
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum —
Visits by foreign tourists to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum hit a record high of 338,891 in 2015.
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images
Reliving the tragedy —
Visitors come to bear witness to preserved burnt wreckage, painful survivor testimonies and human shadows left permanently visible after the atomic bomb explosion's incandescent destruction.
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images
Remembering the war —
Each August, remembrance events are held in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park.
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
Courtesy JNTO
A-Bomb Dome —
Designed in 1915 by a Czech architect, Hiroshima's Atomic Bomb Genbaku Dome served as the city's Industrial Promotion Hall in 1945. The bomb didn't destroy it completely because the immediate blast and heat buffered the air at ground zero.
Photos: Hiroshima Peace Museum
Junko Kimura/Getty Images
Mushroom clouds —
Numerous photographs of the mushroom cloud created when the atomic bomb was dropped are on display in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
The atomic age
Without question, Japan was nuked into submission, putting an end to Japan’s military expansionism, which included the invasion and occupation of neighboring China years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The mushroom clouds ushered in a new world order – an atomic age dominated by the U.S., a nuclear superpower.
Occupied by American conquerors, Japan eventually transitioned into an era of pacifism, democracy, and economic prosperity. Many Japanese appear ashamed of their militaristic past.
Still, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain uncomfortable subjects for many Americans.
It wasn’t until 2010, 65 years after the bomb, that a U.S. ambassador for the first time attended the annual ceremony commemorating the bombing in Hiroshima.
Difficult questions
Perhaps the charred children’s school uniforms on display in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial don’t fit the image many Americans have of “the Great War.”
Several young U.S. visitors leave the museum this week, clearly grappling with very difficult questions.
“All of these innocent civilians died. When you look at it from a moral standpoint, was this really necessary? Did we have to do this?” asks Scott Baker, a 16-year old Boy Scout from Cupertino, California.
“When I saw all the images, I kind of got a little sick,” added Ryan Tagawa, a 14-year old Boy Scout also from Cupertino, who also happens to be of Japanese descent.
The scouts from Troop 303 are part of a much larger delegation of scouts from around the world making a pilgrimage to the Hiroshima Peace Park.
“It was kind of awkward to walk through the museum as an American along with some Japanese scouts,” says 17-year old Nathaniel Wipfler.
“But I feel it’s necessary… to see what happened,” he adds. “And see that this can be repeated if we make the wrong mistakes.”
Lessons from Hiroshima
Japanese and Americans of post-war generations can look at the lessons of the A-bomb with a certain luxury denied our predecessors. None of us had to fight and die in the Pacific.
The lesson of Hiroshima stands perhaps more relevant than ever today.
My country is embroiled in a debate over the nuclear program in Iran. A nuclear-armed North Korea threatens its neighbors by launching missiles. Russia invades and annexes a piece of Ukraine. Nihilistic jihadi warriors revel in the public slaughter of civilians.
In his peace declaration on Thursday, the mayor of Hiroshima said, “today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.”
But amid these potential threats to global stability, it is worth keeping one historical fact in mind. The U.S. is the only country in the world to have ever used nuclear weapons in an act of war.
