The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, seven decades ago, is very much in the news today. The bomb, the first of the only two nuclear devices ever used in war, brought death, devastation and immense suffering to the estimated 350,000 inhabitants of densely populated coastal city. In an instant, some 60,000 to 80,000 met their deaths; the toll was to rise significantly in the months to follow and by the year’s end, the numbers increased to 140,000. Many who survived, lived with the after effects of radiation, and as of August of last year, a total of 292,325 deaths from its population has been attributed to the bomb.
One who has lived to tell of the horror of the bomb, Mr Miyake Nobuo, now 86, was in Singapore in April of this year as part of the Peace Boat Hibakusha Project. Lending his voice to the chorus of voices of the hibakusha or atomic bomb survivors in support of the Peace Boat’s campaign for a nuclear free world, Mr Miyake described the moment the bomb fell. He was 16 and riding in a streetcar just 1.8 kilometres from the hypocentre. Describing the flash of the blast as “like many camera flashes going off”, his instinctive reaction to jump off the streetcar proved to be the right one as all who remained on the streetcar perished.
Mr Miyake Nobuo, who was 16 when the bomb fell 1.8 km from where he was in Hiroshima standing in front of a projection of the scene of devastation around the city 70 years ago.
Since 2008, the project has seen a total of 150 hibakusha sail on the Peace Boat on the Global Voyages for a Nuclear Free World. The testimonies of the survivors, the project hopes, will help in raising awareness to audiences worldwide of the horrors of nuclear weapons. As the time approaches when we will no longer hear the first-hand accounts of the survivors – the average age of the hibakusha is now over 80 and with this year’s voyage potentially the last, the testimonies and preserving them become all the more important. An organisation that is continuing with the effort to get the words of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki out is the Mayors for Peace, who have initiated the “I was her age” project. The project, delivers the accounts of the then child-survivors to parents of children now in the same age group, to bring home the threat to the world of the future that such weapons pose.
More on the hibakusha from a previous Peace Boat visit can be found in this post, The Peace Boat docks at the POD. A video produced by the “I was her age” project can also be found below.
Filed under: Events, People, Singapore
