By GWEN MURANAKA
“I’m still alive. If I don’t speak up, who else is going to speak up?” said Junji Sameshima.
The news that Nihon Hidankyo, an atomic bomb survivors group, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize resonated not only Japan but also in Little Tokyo where Nikkei survivors have made nuclear nonproliferation a lifelong mission.
These men and women, now well into their 80s and 90s, have spent their lives sharing the experiences of what happened to them on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945 when they were children. As their numbers dwindle and global conflicts increase the threat of nuclear war, their message is more important than ever.
We Rafu Shimpo reporters and photographers have covered the atomic bombings and their impacts in some ways as a local story, because it is. The Hiroshima Peace Flame continues to burn at Koyasan Buddhist Temple on First Street in Little Tokyo. Every August they hold a memorial at Koyasan, chant prayers and burn incense for those who died that day and in the years after.
Because of early immigration patterns, many of us have roots in Hiroshima, including myself. The Hiroshima Prefectural Association has its offices on First Street in Little Tokyo. My grandmother spent her youth in Itsukaichi, Hiroshima. Many hibakusha reside here in Southern California.
I got to interview Junji a few years ago for Zentoku Foundation and he speaks English with a lilt of Hawaiian pidgin. The words he shares about that day in August are searing.
After the blast, Junji and his friends were able to leave the factory where they worked and walk to one of the bridges going into the city. At the same time, people were crossing the bridge, trying to escape. “Some were burned, their skin hanging, bleeding all over. And we’re trying to enter and they’re trying to come out. We realized it was impossible to go in,” he said.
“One of the reasons I might be still alive is because I didn’t go to the city right away. That night, the whole city, from one end to the other, was burning. At times you could still see flames shooting up to 40, 50 yards high due to thermal columns. Some of my school friends were crying because their parents, their homes, sisters and brothers were in that burning city.”
In the pages of The Rafu, you will read the words of Junji, Kaz Suyeishi, Howard Kakita and Wataru Namba. They are not just names, they are leaders and members of the community, they are survivors, hibakusha, who have shared their stories and in turn inspired others.
And not just words, but with actions, exhibitions and important initiatives, organized by the hibakusha themselves. It was in 1965 that three survivors, Satoru Ernest Arai, Tomoe Okai and Kaname Shimoda, got together and formed a friendship group of survivors of the bombings.
In 1976 Kaz, the late president of the American Society of Hiroshima/Nagasaki A-bomb Survivors and a Torrance resident, met with Japan’s minister of health and petitioned for medical relief for all hibakusha in the U.S. She asked that hibakusha certificates issued by the Japanese government be made available at consulates and that a team of doctors specializing in radiation-related ailments visit to examine hibakusha and their children on an ongoing basis.
Since 1977, a medical team has visited Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Honolulu every other year. Their vital mission continues this weekend at the Osato Medical Clinic in Torrance.
When the doctors came from Hiroshima in 2013, Kaz said the most important thing is that “people love each other.”
Even out of all that pain, the message from the hibakusha was one of love.
The Japanese and Japanese American community is one that has experienced pain — the pain of forced removal and incarceration during World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more recently the rise in anti-Asian violence and hatred.
It seems these days that the increase in hatred has gone hand-in-hand with the elevation of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies. With fewer left to share their stories, the accurate, meticulous conveyance of fact is more important than ever.
The consequences of lies are felt often by the most vulnerable, such as the Haitian migrants in Ohio who have been so heinously accused of eating pets by a certain presidential candidate. Turning groups of people into “the other” makes it easy to dismiss their pain, to think that unleashing terror is acceptable. In the case of nuclear arms, the consequences are catastrophic for the entire planet.
The pain of hibakusha has been recorded in the pages of The Rafu Shimpo. But within that pain, there is hope and inspiration in the remarkable courage and selflessness of those like the hibakusha who serve as an example for all of us to live by.
When Kaz died in 2017 at age 90, once again her words resonated: “No more Hiroshima. No more Nagasaki. No more hibakusha. No more any war.”
The Nobel Peace Prize gives these elderly activists a platform to share their story throughout the world.
If only those in power will listen.
——————–
Gwen Muranaka, senior editor of The Rafu Shimpo, can be contacted at gwen@rafu.com. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.