The last generation of nuclear bomb survivors are working to ensure their message lives on after them. | AFP
“What we hibakusha are saying is we can’t repeat ,” 88-year-old Terumi Tanaka, who survived the Nagasaki bombing, told AFP ahead of the anniversaries.Tanaka was 13 when the bomb hit his hometown. The attack on Nagasaki killed 74,000 people and came three days after a first bomb devastated the city of Hiroshima, killing 140,000.
But he recognizes that the community of those who lived through the attacks is shrinking, and their message will have to be passed on by others in the decades to come.“We set up a group called No More Hibakusha Project, which works on preserving records as archives, including what we’ve written… so that can use them in their campaigns.”Tanaka worries at times that interest is fading, acknowledging that speeches by hibakusha often attract no more than a handful of people.
His father was at work when the bomb hit, just a few hundred meters from the epicenter. Hamasumi’s mother and siblings tried to reach his office the day after but were forced back by the “heat and smell of burned flesh.” Born in February 1946, Hamasumi escaped the physical effects experienced by many children exposed to radiation in the womb.“To me, the nuclear umbrella only means the mushroom cloud,” Hamasumi said.
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