The fungus cloud was visible from the hills of neighboring prefectures. Those who were out of the immediate explosive radio may not have shown any external injuries immediately – but they usually became ill and died in the days, weeks, months and years following.
And those outside the city were exposed to radiation as they tried to enter to help the wounded.
Radiation also touched children who were in the womb at the time. Common radio related diseases were loss of hair, bleeding gums, energy loss (“will no longer want” in Japanese), and pain, as well as life -threatening high fever.
About 650,000 people were recognized by the Japanese government as hit by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While most have now passed away, digits Held by the Ministry of Health, Work and Welfare of March 31, 2025, it shows that there are about 99.130 still alive, whose average age is now 86.
On radio broadcast after the bombings, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan and summoned the Japanese people tocarry the unbearable,“With regard to the” most cruel weapons “used by the Allied forces without directly identifying the nuclear attack. Due to evil about the defeat, shame of Japan’s imperial past and role in war, plus censorship and ignorance of the reality of nuclear weapons, the idea of the world and the dead and the dead and the dead.
Generations affected
Yamanaka passed about seven years to recover her strength enough to lead a relatively normal life, so she hardly graduated from high school. She was later diagnosed with various blood, heart, eye and thyroid diseases as well as low immunity – symptoms that can relate to radio exposure.
Her daughters also suffered. In 1977, when her eldest daughter was 19 years old, she had three operations for skin cancer. In 1978, when her second daughter was 14, she developed leukemia. In 1987, her third daughter suffered from a unilateral oofrectomy (a surgical procedure to remove an egg).
I interviewed the daughters, granddaughter of Yamanaka, and several other survivors again, starting with experiences before the bombing and continuing to the present.
While these interviews generally started on the official site of the Hiroshima Pac Memorial Museum, I also conducted walking interviews and went to places of special importance for their personal memories. I shared car trips, coffees and meals with them and their helpers, because I wanted to see their lives in context, as part of a community.
Their trauma and suffering are treated socially. For the relatively few survivors who tell their stories in public are with the help of a strong Local networks. While I was initially told that I would not find survivors who wanted to share their stories, gradually more came with a snow -billed effect.
Returning to an interview Yamanaka in August 2013, we traveled by car to her former EBA home, pausing at the place where she came after her trip across the river. There, Yamanaka spoke with a fellow survivor who passed his bike. His name was Maruto-san. They attended the same temple elementary school.
