I have the sense that many stories concerning the A-bomb seem to start a month or two prior to the bombing, then end two or three months afterwards.

Thank you for having me here today.

By the way, do you know which prefecture, besides Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has the largest number of survivors living in it?

Is it Tokyo?

No, it isn’t.It’s actually Fukuoka.
As you can see from the graph of Present Population of Survivors by Prefecture, as of March, 2020, there are approximately 5,500 survivors in Fukuoka, 4,600 in Tokyo, and 3,500 in Kanagawa.

People who experienced burns on their arm and leg joints may find that their joints become immovable. When people’s Achilles tendon is burned, their ankles are fixed by keloid, which makes it hard to walk.
If people have burns around their mouth, they have difficulty eating.
Even if healthy skin is transplanted, those parts do not heal quickly.Why do you think that is?

Is it because the genes are damaged, and the skin cannot heal over?

That’s right.
Radiation goes through the body and causes genetic abnormality.
Because of this,even if the skin is transplanted, keloids form again.
Six to twelve months after the A-bombing, tissues begin to swell, become rubbery and cause burning pain.
Even 20 years later, keloid symptoms remain. The red parts gradually fade, but they may turn red according to their conditions.
The keloid has a stinging sensation, and sometimes it is hard to sleep at night.
Such symptoms only begin to diminish about 40 years after the A-bombing.

There is physical damage by initial radiation and residual radiation.
Specifically,leukemia, cancer, radiation cataracts, vascular disorders, thyroid disorders and microcephaly are developed due to the abnormality of genes and cells.
The younger the A-bomb exposure age is and the higher the radiation dose is, the higher incidence of leukemia and cancer is.
For these past 20 years, the cases of multiple cancers, developing two or more cancers one by one, have increased.
There are some survivors who developed one cancer after another after the age of 70.
Those, who were exposed to the A-bombing at the age of four to ten, tend to be shorter in height than average.What do you think is the reason?

Is it because their genes were damaged?

Yes. Cells of young people divide more actively.
During a normal growth period, the epiphysial line, the end part of their bones, grows and people become taller. However, if this part is exposed to radiation, cells die, and cell division doesn’t occur.
As a result, usual growth that should happen doesn’t occur in the year when they were exposed to the A-bomb, and their growth is 2 or 3cm shorter than average with no cell division.

To their families.
Survivors often received attentive care from their families for more than a month after the A-bombing.
Many of them say, “I can't cause any more trouble to my family because they took such good care of me at the time of the bombing.”

The life of A-bomb survivors can be compared to airplanes. It is like they first took off in a jet plane, but that plane crashed because of the A-bomb.
The survivors then switched to a propeller plane, but they have to continue their life flying at a low altitude.
Students used to come to the A-bomb nursing home where I worked to listen to the residents’ testimonies for peace studies.
After sharing their A-bomb experiences, some residents had flashbacks to past events and could not sleep at night,so I made sure not to ask those residents to talk about their A-bomb or war experiences.
I don’t want to pressure survivors who have had already had painful experiences to talk about them.It is better to wait until they are ready to speak on their own accord.

Many young people attend the course.
A variety of people including married couples and people from the media, such as TV and newspapers attend the course.
When I find the names of journalists who have graduated from the course in the newspapers, I think, “Oh, they’re working hard,” and it makes me happy.

I would want people to learn in their own way about what the A-bombs did and gain an accurate understanding of exactly what happened.
Then to accept it as their own issue and tell someone else about it.
I think passing on the legacy of A-bomb survivors will be difficult unless we accept this as our own issue and pass it on to others.

What about creating your own family history?
Make a timeline of what your immediate family and relatives were doing around 1945 and what events took place in which year, even if it is by every 10 years.
By comparing your family timeline with the testimonies of the survivors, their stories will begin to make a link.
Placing the survivors in the context of your family history may provide an opportunity to think of them as your own personal matter, rather than as someone else's.