Living with Hiroshima

Sixty years after the A-bombing, speaking out from Hiroshima

At the end of 2004, my friend, Michiko Hamai, who I had talked with about Hiroshima, launched HIROSHIMA SPEAKS OUT to convey messages from Hiroshima to the world. Responding to her call, about 20 people gathered, most of whom were experts at English. I also joined the group as an A-bomb survivor, thinking that I might be helpful.

Visitors from home and abroad to Hiroshima want information on Hiroshima but often feel inconvenience from heavy printed materials. Michiko suggested that it would be useful in the Information Age technology and the materials would be put on disks.

In less than one year after forming the group, through troublesome processes including collecting information and getting permission of use of copyrighted materials, we put up our website in both Japanese and English. We posted “Floating Lantern,” written memoirs issued in 1971 by the construction committee of the Monument of the A-bombed Teachers and Students of National Elementary Schools. The monument is located in the green zone in the south side of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Next, we started to make CD-Rs, which we had long cherished. Although we were full of passion to speak out what happened in Hiroshima, we had no money. When we asked a friend, a professional designer, how much it would cost to design a disk and a jacket, we were surprised to hear the price.

As I had just replaced my old personal computer, I devoted myself to reading a manual, learning how to design a disk. Whenever I came up with a new design, I made trial disks, which traveled back and forth between Hiroshima and my house in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture.

On January 25, 2005, Michiko Hamai appeared in the Chugoku Newspaper smiling with the CD-R of “Floating Lantern” in her hand. Immediately, we sent as many CD-Rs as possible to foreign peace activists, universities and education institutions whose addresses we knew. We gave one to visitors to Hiroshima. We got their responses through emails. It was delightful to get a wave of requests from Japanese educators, who said that they would like to use this CD-R as an educational material.

When I visited Sweden to tell my A-bomb experience, I took some with me. I also gave them out to a lot people when I went to America as a member of the Hiroshima World Peace Mission.

At that time, we were already preparing for “Written Monument,” a collection of the stories of A-bomb victims in “Mutsumien,” an A-bomb Nursing Home in Hiroshima. We were puzzled by the names of places and people written in Chinese characters which were difficult to read.　When I made phone calls to the local municipal offices and explained our purpose, they responded courteously. In early autumn of 2005, we brought out “Written Monument.”

In 2005, I met Judge C.G. Weeramantry, former vice-president of the International Court of Justice, during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He gave me a booklet, “Why the Nuclear Danger Grows from Day to Day” and allowed us to translate and post it on our website.　　By the end of the year, we completed the job.　　

Our next project is proceeding on a record of the people who engaged in the rescue operation at Hesaka, a village which was located some distance away from the hypocenter.

I met a young man, who we just call Koo, 27, at my church. He is an expert of information technology and his wife-to-be is a physicist. He helped us to update our website. He is a welcome member for us. His future wife accompanied him when he came to learn about Hiroshima. He helped us to update our website. Even though I live far away from Hiroshima, I feel closer to Hiroshima.　

Donating HSO's CDs (by Chugoku Shinbun)