nuclear-news

Dwindling group of Hiroshima survivors bear witness to the nuclear horror

Hiroshima survivors offer peace and hope for nuclear disarmament April 13, 2014 SMH, Daniel Flitton The two young brothers looked into the bright blue sky and waved happily at the shiny plane flying far above.

Their sister, Emiko Okada, eight years old at the time, remembers an intense flash of light and her mother suddenly rushing into the yard to the children, bleeding from where shards of glass had lodged in her head.

Next came the fire – and people running, hair standing on end, white bones exposed, skin and flesh burning. People were vomiting, not just blood but black ooze from their nose and mouth.

Mito Kosei, in his mother’s womb at the time of the atomic attack, guides tourists around the memorial peace park in Hiroshima.

This was the day the A-bomb fell on Hiroshima.

Ms Okada is one of a dwindling group of survivors from that morning in 1945, determined never to let the terrible human cost of nuclear war be forgotten, even after they are gone.

”Frightening is not the world I can use, it was something much worse,” she said via a translator, still upset by the memory.

Emiko Okada who as an eight-year-old survived the atomic attack on Hiroshima.

Stories from the survivors, known in Japan as hibakusha, were told to foreign ministers of a 12-nation group, including Australia, gathered in Hiroshima at the weekend to kickstart global talks on nuclear disarmament.

Survivors’ stories are being preserved in an online archive by the Tokyo Metropolitan University………http://www.smh.com.au/world/hiroshima-survivors-offer-peace-and-hope-for-nuclear-disarmament-20140412-36k3t.html

April 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, weapons and war