Survivors

Survivors of Hiroshima are a dying population. People who were 20 years old at the time of the bomb would now be 96. The survivors still alive were mostly children then, and they too are dying out. Does this suggest that the message of hibakusha, the original survivors, has come to an end? I do not think so. Consider the message that Hiroshima survivors have brought to the world. A history professor I interviewed during my 1962 study of hibakusha — “explosion-affected people” — described how, soon after the bomb, he looked down at the city from a high suburb: “Hiroshima had disappeared. … I was shocked by the sight. … Hiroshima didn’t exist — that was mainly what I saw — Hiroshima just didn’t exist.”