Victims recall Hiroshima horror

[1]

For Nakamura Hiroshi, life has never been the same again after that fateful day of August 6, 1945.

It was on this day that atomic bombs were dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hirosh-ima, his native place.

He was just 13 then, working for Japan National Railways as a mobilised student.

He was exposed to the radiation in the dormitory which was 1.8 km from the epicenter. It did not take long for the devastating results to manifest.

About a month after the bomb was dropped, his gums started bleeding and hair started falling. He was later hospitalised several times due to leucopenia.

Nakamura, now 80 years old, was in the city as part of a special peace delegation, ‘Peace Boat Hibaku-sha project’, a Japan based NGO that has been working since 1983 to promote peace and sustainability through the medium of peace voyages on board a large passenger ship.

The delegation was given a rousing welcome at TDM hall at a function jointly organised by the NSS Karayogam and BEAME, a cultural group.

While recollecting those moments, Nakamura’s voice broke many times. At times his eyes welled up and the tears rolled down his cheeks as horrendous memories came flooding in.

“Just moments before the tragic incident, it was a sunny day as it always is during that period of the season. Then I heard a deafening explosion outside and soon fire began to engulf the building where I was staying .When I ran out, I saw people rushing from the epicenter.

Their faces were black and the skin was falling from their bodies”, he said and added, “As long as nuclear weapo-ns are available in this world, no one can live peac-efully here. Nuclear weapo-ns and human kind cannot co-exist. I don’t want this to happen again”.

Earlier, Prof M.K. Sanu inaugurated the function. K. Radhakrishnan, the secretary of BEAME, presided over the function.

The delegation consisted of 10 Hiroshima survivors and is called Hibakusha in Japanese. Currently, there are approximately 2,20,000 Hibakusha, officially certified by the Japanese government.

As part of this project, the survivors travel across the world promoting peace and protection of human rights through international exchanges on board the ship and at ports. They left for Singapore in the evening.