PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

(AUDIO) pittsburgh: hiroshima survivor Yuko Nakamura speaks at SEI
by vincent / blast furnace radio Wednesday, Aug. 08, 2007 at 1:35 AM
vincenteirene@gmail.com

audio location http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=24180

She remembers a huge, dark cloud, then black rain
Hiroshima native recounts bombing at anniversary vigil

Wednesday, August 08, 2007
By Sara McCune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Yuko Nakamura was only 13 when the atomic bomb fell on her hometown of Hiroshima.


Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette photos


Hiroshima survivor Yuko Nakamura, left, and her translator, Atsuko Franz, pause while Mrs. Nakamura describes the horrific scene after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. She was 13 and living in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped in August 1945.
Click photo for larger image.





Bal Pinguel of Philadelphia, of the Peace Building and Demilitarization Program for the American Friends Service Committee, listens as Mrs. Nakamura speaks outside CMU's Software Engineering Institute.
Click photo for larger image.
She shared her experiences with a small crowd outside Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute in Oakland yesterday afternoon in a vigil recognizing the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which occurred 62 years ago Monday.

The vigil began around 12:30 with the Raging Grannies, a group of grandmothers who sing protest songs, decked out in black shirts that read "We Will Not Be Silent." They protested nuclear weapons to the tune of "When the Saints Come Marching In."

Large white cardboard peace cranes stood on wooden sticks nearby and two women held up a large sign reading "No More Hiroshima" in black letters.

Then it was Mrs. Nakamura's turn.

With the aid of a translator, she spoke about how she worked in a factory as many students did in those days to aid the war effort. Mrs. Nakamura made aircraft parts, in a building she described as a steel shack, with other students from her all-girl high school.

The students were given a day of rest once a week and on that fateful day in 1945 they went to the beach.

Mrs. Nakamura said the air raid alarms were frequent, but Hiroshima had never been bombed before, so no one really took this one seriously. The children and the adults watching them hurried back to the steel building and took cover. After the alarm stopped, a friend of hers went outside to see what happened. There was a flash, and the aftershock of the atomic bomb, dropped roughly five miles away, knocked her backwards and brought down the building. Glass from broken windows sprayed over the people hiding, taking out a chunk of her friend's arm.

Mrs. Nakamura managed to crawl out of the rubble, most of which was on fire. She remembered hearing the prayers of a trapped woman who had been telling her son to run away as she and others who managed to get out ran for the underground dugout nearby.

She said the sky was clear, except for one large black cloud. An hour later, black rain started falling. She said she didn't know what it was, and her friends feared the Americans had poured gasoline on them and were going to burn them alive.

She then began to describe what she saw in the rubble -- "Eyes popping out, skin peeling off people's arms, people trying to escape," she said. The girls a grade below her had been closer to the hypocenter. All 220 died -- it took some all day.

She was lucky enough not to suffer many of the symptoms the other Hibakusha, victims of the radiation, were experiencing. She felt quite weak until she was in her 40s. Her two children are healthy.

She decided to talk about her experiences in Hiroshima about 20 years ago after watching an anime about her high school during the bombing. The program showed pictures of those who died from the high school, and one in particular gave her shivers -- a friend of hers, one of the 220 girls a grade below her.

"I wanted to be their voice," she explained. "I speak on behalf of the children. Adults create the mess, and the children have to suffer."

Now 75, this is the first year she has spoken in America on the anniversary of Hiroshima. She is secretary general of the Kanagawa Atomic Bomb Sufferers Association. She is also a national council member of Nihon Hidankyo, a support organization for Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

The American Friends Service Committee and the Demilitarize Pittsburgh program, part of the Thomas Merton Center, sponsored yesterday's vigil at the Software Engineering Institute, which was chosen because it develops software for the military. Officials from the institute could not be reached for comment.

While the vigil primarily focused on Hiroshima, it was also meant to protest the development of all nuclear weapons, said Scilla Wahrhaftig, head of the AFSC's state office.

Benjamin Saalbach-Walsh said he attended the vigil because he wanted to learn more about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"[Nuclear weapons] aren't as in your face as other [issues], but it needs to be addressed," said the Washington, Pa., resident.

"We owe [the Japanese] a terrible kind of thank you," said Jon Robison of Oakland. "Now we know what [nuclear weapons will do] because of their sacrifice, and I think it's kept us from wiping out the human species."

Mrs. Nakamura mentioned a memorial in Hiroshima that reads "No More Mistakes."

"Pearl Harbor was wrong, Hiroshima was wrong, but I think people are starting to forget," she said.

The anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing is tomorrow

notowar.com

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