Hidankyo, meanwhile, has started reaching out to the children and grandchildren of hibakusha. Hiroshima and Kunitachi, a small city in western Tokyo with a small population of A-bomb survivors, have tried to preserve the hibakusha legacy by setting up “storyteller” courses open to people who have no direct experience of the attacks and no A-bomb survivors among their relatives. Hiroko Hatakeyama, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, looks at a family photograph taken before the attack. That’s why we have to continue our campaign for as long as we are physically able.” “If the hibakusha continue to speak out against nuclear weapons, then other people will follow suit. “In 10 years, I’d be surprised if there are many of us left,” says Hiroshi Shimizu, a Hidankyo official who was three years old when the Hiroshima bomb exploded a mile (1.6km) from his home. While the A-bomb survivors’ testimony is now a matter of historical record, the hibakusha are trying to ensure that their experiences don’t die with them, at a time when the world is facing nuclear threats from North Korea and Russia.Įarlier this year one of the most active branches of Hidankyo announced it would disband after its members, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s, conceded they were too old to continue their activities. He takes drugs for several illnesses, including two cancer diagnoses, which he says are connected to his exposure to radiation. Since then Tsuboi has been hospitalised 11 times, including three occasions when doctors told him he was about to die. “I had no idea that the war had ended,” he said. By the time he came to, a defeated Japan was under the control of the US-led allied occupation. He was taken to a hospital, where he remained unconscious for over a month. The smell of burning flesh was overpowering.” I looked down and saw a man clutching a hole in his stomach, trying to stop his organs from spilling out. “There were charred bodies everywhere, including in the river.
People looked like ghosts, bleeding and trying to walk before collapsing. I saw a schoolgirl with her eye hanging out of its socket. “There were people crying out for help, calling after members of their family. There was so much smoke in the air that you could barely see 100 metres ahead, but what I did see convinced me that I had entered a living hell on earth. I had no idea it was a nuclear bomb and that I’d been exposed to radiation. I assumed I had been close to a very large conventional bomb. “My back was incredibly painful, but I had no idea what had just happened. Tsuboi indicates on a map where he was when the city was attacked on the morning of 6 August 1945. “My arms were badly burned and there seemed to be something dripping from my fingertips,” said Tsuboi, who is co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, a nationwide organisation of atomic and hydrogen bomb sufferers. He regained consciousness to find he had been burned over most of his body, his shirtsleeves and trouser legs ripped off by the force of the blast. Tsuboi remembers hearing a loud bang, then being blown into the air and landing 10 metres away. While each has a unique recollection of the morning of 6 August and its aftermath, near disbelief at the scale of destruction is a theme that runs through hibakusha testimony. The average age of the 183,000 registered survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks rose just above 80 for the first time last month. “People like me are losing the strength to talk about their experiences and continue the campaign against nuclear weapons,” says Tsuboi, a retired school principal who has travelled the world to warn of the horrors of nuclear warfare. Photograph: AlamyĪs Japan prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear attack in history, Tsuboi and tens of thousands of other hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) are again confronting their own mortality.