(water flowing) - I have two memories of Hiroshima.

One is a memory of my hometown Hiroshima when I lived the first 23 years of my life.

When I return to Hiroshima, I often take a streetcar ride, but not another way of going to somewhere in the city.

Riding the streetcar brings my childhood memories back.

It is a nostalgic journey that traces memories of places, school friend, activities, and the rush hours when the street would fill with the people going to work and school.

Changes to the cityscape sometimes makes it difficult to recall parts of the city as they were many years ago.

Over 40 years have passed since I left my hometown.

The other memory is about Hiroshima.

That was changed forever by the atomic bombing.

I was born 6 1/2 years after the Hiroshima bombing, so this is not my direct memory, rather it is through my imagination that I remember.

On the streetcar, the stop announcements reminds me the streets and towns that are familiar, but sometimes I cannot help but imagine what these streets and towns were like on the day Hiroshima was bombed.

My streetcar ride often becomes an emotional experience of two memories of Hiroshima overlapping one another, one with which is my own and the other through my imagination.

Hiroshima today does not have a trace of the destruction brought by bombing at the end of the World War II, getting off a streetcar at the stop Genbaku Dome the skeletal ruins of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall come into view.

This building's frame is known as atomic bomb dome, and stand as historic eye witness of history.

The original building was Hiroshima Prefectural Promotion Hall designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel which opened in 1915 on the bank of the Motoyasu River.

The European style building with oval-shaped dome was a landmark.

In 1933, the building was renamed the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and it was the pride of the city.

On the morning of August 6th, 1945, atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall stood only about 160 meters away from the hypocenter.

At the close range, the powerful blast and the heat rays from the explosion destroyed and burned the building to the ground with only the oval shaped dome and the skeleton of the building remaining.

People of Hiroshima began to call it the A-bomb dome in the 1950s.

The A-bomb dome is today a symbol of Hiroshima, the first city who suffer the impact of the atomic bomb in human history.

It stands as a testimony of the threat and the misery of atomic bombing.

The A-bomb dome resembles aging hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, who are now getting fragile but remain stoic to keep the legacy of Hiroshima from fading away.

I have two places I always visit when I return to Hiroshima, the cemetery where my mother rest and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The park located in the delta between the Motoyasu River and the Honkawa River is dedicated for the legacy of Hiroshima and the memories of the atomic bomb direct and indirect victims.

The location of the park was once the city's busiest downtown commercial and residential district.

The area was a home to about 4,000 resident because of its very close proximity to the hypocenter shops, inns, houses, temples, movie theaters, and the other buildings were all destroyed and burned down.

The residents and the people in the area were all annihilated instantly.

Every year, on the anniversary of the bombing, the Peace Memorial Ceremony is held in the park.

I was probably seven or eight years old when my mother took me to the ceremony for the first time.

Since then, until I left Hiroshima at the age of 23, I had annually attended the ceremony with my mother.

For my mother, attending the ceremony meant a proof of her survival each year since the fatal day of the bombing.

During the ceremony, she was overwhelmed with the memory of that day, thinking back to her survival and the living afterward.

When the ceremony ended, she always said to herself quietly, (speaks in Japanese) I was let to live another year.

Although when I was young, I felt the weight of the word and I remember her word somehow made me sad.

The year of 1995 mark the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima bombing My mother became hibakusha at age 17.

And then I am a hibaku nisei, second generation atomic bomb survivor.

The year of 1995 was the year I was reassured what hibaku nisei.

I and my mother together attended the ceremony as we used to do.

After the ceremony, we walked to the place where my mother was exposed to the atomic bombing.

We stood on the exact spot where my mother jumped into Honkawa River to escape the fierce fire.

Near the center of the Peace Memorial Park is located the Cenotaph for the Victims Of the Atomic Bomb.

Inside, registries.

They contain the names of the all known victims of the bombing.

Names are added to those registries each year.

My mother's name was entered in the registries in 2003.

Many visitors come to the park all year round.

Many of them stop in front of the cenotaph to show their respect to the victims.

The nearby residents enjoy their morning walk in the park, and some walkers stop and bow in front of the cenotaph.

My visit to the cenotaph since my mother passed away, become like visiting her second cemetery and then I treasure my silent conversation with my mother, which makes me think about her life as hibakusha.

Monday morning, on August 6th, 1945, the midsummer temperature had already risen.

People in Hiroshima were about to begin their day.

At 8:15 AM, the B-29 Bomber Enola Gay released Little Boy, a uranium bomb, aiming at the T-shaped Aioi Bridge.

43 seconds later, the bomb exploded 600 meters above the sky with a blinding flash, creating a fireball just like a small sun.

The fireball's surface temperature was 7,700 degree Celsius.

The ground temperature of the hypocenter rose to 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius.

At the time of the explosion, fierce heat rays and the radiation burst out in every direction, creating a super powerful blast.

The mushroom cloud resulting from the atomic bombing rose up to an altitude of 10,000 meters.

People sustained severe burns from the heat rays emanated from the fireball.

Within one kilometer from the hypocenter, people had also their internal organs damaged from the direct exposures to the intense heat rays.

The force of the blast collapsed buildings in an instant.

Almost all wooden houses within the two to three kilometers of the hypocenter were completely destroyed.

Concrete buildings remained standing, but they were severely damaged with the windows shattered and the interiors were destroyed by fire.

People were lifted and hurled in the air by the blast, knocked unconscious, severely injured, trapped under the buildings or crushed to death.

The blast also blew people's burned clothing to tatters and peeled the burn the skins off to hanging in strips.

the intense heat rays caused houses and anything combustible in the city center to burst into flames, and the fires quickly spread out of control.

Within two kilometers of the hypocenter, almost everything was burned to ashes.

The fierce fires peaked between 10:00 AM and two to 3:00 PM, and the fire continues to burn the city intensely all day long.

Countless people were trapped under the falling buildings and they burned alive.

The intense and the large scale fire reduced Hiroshima to a city of ashes.

The city of Hiroshima disappeared.

The devastation under the mushroom cloud was nothing but hell.

People's Monday morning routines were suddenly transformed to a chaotic situation.

The city was engulfed in the intense firestorm and the people were chased by ranging flames.

Encroaching flames consumed the people screaming for help in desperate pain, and then chased people to the rivers to escape the flames.

Among the people fleeing from the inferno, some collapsed by the riverbanks.

Some jumped into the rivers, but their desperate attempt to escape was overwhelmed by the exhaustion and the bodies were washed away.

The rivers in Hiroshima were flooded with countless corpses.

Charred bodies beyond the recognition lay everywhere.

Yoko Ota, a Japanese writer who survived the atomic bombing called the city of Hiroshima City of Corpses.

All day long, badly injured people were moving wordlessly to the outskirts to escape from the city.

Their clothing were ripped to shred and soaked in blood.

Many people were almost naked with swollen faces.

The peeled off skins were hanging down like pieces of rag.

The retched figures with their hands lifted half up no longer resembled human beings.

They were ghosts in procession.

"Water, water, water, please."

Dying or severely injured people with what sounded like their last gasp asked for water.

Countless people crowded into the fire cisterns placed around the city.

They drunk and died.

The sight of the piled corpses and the fire cisterns were so horrifying to see.

After the bomb explosion, black rain fell.

Wanting water so desperately, people opened their mouth wide to try to catch even a few drops without knowing the black rain was toxic.

Massive amount of the radiation emanated from the bomb and explosion inflicted grave damage to human bodies.

People within one kilometer radius of the hypocenter were exposed to excessive amount of radiation, and many died within a few days.

People within the 500 meters to one kilometer radius of the hypocenter, with no substantial injury or no burns, started showing acute symptoms of the radiation sickness within about two weeks.

People who entered the city after the bombing to search for family, relatives, and coworkers and those who entered for relief effort were exposed to the radiation on the ground.

They developed the symptoms like the result from the direct exposure.

Many died as a result.

The damage caused by the radiation led to decades of human suffering.

With over 40,000 military personnel, the number of the people in the city on August 6th is estimated over 350,000.

Over 50,000 people were presumed to be dead on that day.

And by the end of the year, 140,000 people had died.

A single atomic explosion obliterated the city of Hiroshima.

The atomic bomb, in an instant, transferred the city to a burned ruin.

(plaintive music) My mother was boarding at her uncle's house in Kawaramachi to go to work at Hiroshima Men's Normal School.

So she was exposed to the atomic bombing in uncle's house.

She gave her presentation, her own experience in August 6th, 1945 at the symposium that I organized at the school, the university I taught 32 years.

This is her script, and so I'm going to read portion of the script in Japanese, It's kind of hard because this is her handwriting.

Yeah.

It's a lot like mine.

(gentle music) My mother lived for 57 years as a hibakusha, out of 74 years of her life, her atomic bomb experience at age of 17 had an enormous impact on her life.

When she looked back her life, she always chose the word, (speaks in Japanese) I was let to live, but not the word, (speaks in Japanese) I lived.

She saw so many deaths on that day.

How she survive was more than just luck or a miracle.

She believed that it was a life saved for her to live.

She was grateful for the fateful life that she was allowed to live.

At the same time, she was constantly concerned with the effect of atomic bomb on her health.

She was never freed from the fear of death.

The meaning of her life (speaks in Japanese) reflect a mix of sense of relief that she had survived another year, a never ending anxiety of getting sick, and the sense of the gratitude of life she was given to live on.

From time to time, her will to live on had been tested.

On August 6th, she survived by jumping into the river.

10 years later, in 1955, she attempted to kill herself by jumping into the river.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings brought the end of the war.

My mother suffered serious radiation sickness which almost took her life, but she gradually recovered and resumed daily life by the end of the year.

She met my father at work and they got married in May of 1950.

Two years later, I was born.

Three years later, she got an ovary cancer.

After the surgery, her doctor told her that she would no longer be able to bear a child.

She was 27.

After the war, hibakusha was considered as unfit for marriage.

My parents had a lovely marriage.

My father did not care about my mother being a hibakusha.

But to my mother, unable to be another child and being financial burden to her husband were too painful to take.

In her mind, it would be better if she died, so my father would remarry.

Hopefully, he would have a son killing herself, taking me with her, by jumping into the river would give her husband a new life, hopefully with healthy non-hibakusha woman.

My mother told me about her suicide attempt when I was 18 or 19.

It made me realize the degree of the physical and psychological pain that hibakusha have suffered.

In the middle of the night, I would say around 3:00 AM, in early month of 1991, I received a phone call from my mother.

The phone call was different from a usual call.

Her voice was filled with anger.

I was stunned to hear my mother wording enemy.

"Why are you staying in enemy's country?

Why do you teach enemies?

You know what the enemy did to me?"

I had never expected to hear such a word from my own mother.

It made me so confused and very sad.

She needed to tell me that she was diagnosed with a thyroid cancer.

This was her second cancer, 46 years after the bombing.

In a medical consultation with a renowned doctor for his research on thyroid cancer among the A-bomb survivors, she was told that thyroid cancer was very common among hibakusha.

On the way home, she could not control the anger building up, anger to the United States for dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

She has to deal with the fear of death again.

This particular phone call made me wonder again how my mother had thought about my decision of going to the United States to study.

I believed my mother had accepted my decision, but she wanted me to not forget the United States dropped atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

Health is the biggest concern for hibakusha.

The effect of the atomic bombing on the children of the hibakusha is another big concern for hibakusha.

Although I was very energetic child, I was anemic and I had a nose bleed often.

My mother reminded me that I am hibaku nisei, the second generation atomic bomb survivor.

And her often overreaction to my physical condition was not fun at all.

Four years after my mother's had thyroid cancer, I was diagnosed with a breast cancer.

I was 43.

I live in the United States.

And my mother, then a widow, lived alone in Hiroshima.

So I decide better not to tell her about my cancer until I completed the treatment.

My homecoming in the summer of 1995 was very intense.

I had to tell my mother that I had the mastectomy and then reconstructive surgery.

And most importantly, I needed to explain why I decide not to tell my mother about my cancer, but I struggle to find a better way of telling her.

No matter how I explained my decision, I knew she would not easily take.

And this was exactly what happened as I was afraid of, the moment I told my mother about my breast cancer, she was silent for a few minutes.

Then she said, "That was my fault."

(speaks in Japanese) I could not find how to defend my decision.

I knew she would blame herself for my illness as she had a constant worry about her health.

Telling her it's not your fault won't convince her to believe my cancer had nothing to do with her being a hibakusha.

In her 57 years of life as a hibakusha, my mother had too many physical challenges, more than 10 hospitalizations, including too many surgeries.

Regardless of many illnesses, my mother was grateful for the life that she was allowed to live, although I wish she would live a lot longer.

(gentle music) Since my mother passed away, I often take a walk along the bank of the Honkawa River.

While walking, my imagination, my mother's experience flood my mind.

What was the city of Hiroshima like on that day?

What was it like for my mother to survive in the river?

Many hibakusha say what they experience on that day was beyond imagination.

It is true.

I can hardly imagine what they saw, what they went through, and then how they survived while so many others did not.

When I recall my mother's talking about her experience, I find more unspoken parts in her story.

Did she not want to talk about it?

Was she not able to find the words to express?

I'm no longer able to ask her, but I'm searching for the answers through the way I imagined Hiroshima on that day.

Like many other hibakusha, my mother chose the (speaks in Japanese) "I was let to live," not the word (speaks in Japanese) I lived, in telling her life after the Hiroshima bombing.

This choice of the word reflects deep meaning of hibakusha's life.

I'm still trying to have a better understanding of the life of the hibakusha.

In the not so distant future.

We will be unable to listen to hibakusha about the experiences.

Although we will not be able to listen to their voices directly, we can remember their stories and imagine what they would say to us.

Imagine what the life of each of these hibakusha was like.

As of today, the registries of the victims stored inside the stone chamber in the cenotaph for the A-bomb victims contains over 340,000 victims' name.

Imagine what each victim would tell us about their experience.

Their unspoken voices are testimonies of the human tragedy on that day, and our imagination may enable us to listen to their voices.

To the south of the A-bomb dome, the Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students stand as a tribute to approximately 10,000 students who lost their lives in working for nation's war effort during World War II.

Students in the middle school, high school, and then higher education were mandated for the labor service by the Student Labor Service Act of 1944.

On August 6th, approximately 26,800 students were more mobilized from schools in Hiroshima city, and 7,200 fell victims of the atomic bombing, including 6,000, died in the building demolished.

A-Bomb Memorial Monument for Hiroshima's second middle school sits on the Honkawa embankment.

All 321 first year student were exposed to the atomic bomb explosion at the building demolition site, which was only 600 meters from the hypocenter.

Along with their four teachers, they were killed instantly or died in agony within a few days' time.

They were only 12 and 13 years old.

Behind the monument, the names of those students are engraved along with the names of the teachers.

541 second year students of Hiroshima Municipal Girl's High School were at another demolition site, which was only 500 meters from the hypocenter.

at the time of the A-bomb explosion.

There were no survivors.

They were only 13 and 14 years old.

The monument for those students, along with the 10 teachers, sit on the Motoyasu embankment.

On the plate next to the monument, the students and teachers' names are engraved.

Imagine what the life of each student was like before the bombing.

Imagine what the all too brief memories of the school life was like.

Imagine what they did with their friends and families before the bombing.

Imagine what the future of each of these students would be like.

(gentle music) The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum stores numerous personal items left behind.

Among these items, tattered school uniforms, footwear, and the lunch boxes of the mobilized student, are the silent eyewitness testimony of the misery of the atomic bombing.

Imagine how they died.

Imagine how they survive and then died in agony a few days later.

Imagine the sorrow and the pain of the parent searching for the missing children who went to work on building demolition.

Imagine the pain of the parents finding only personal items belong to their children, but not their remains.

The city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a single atomic bomb.

Although the city was transformed to a land of the rubble and the corpses, seven rivers in the city kept flowing, and these rivers were filled with the dead bodies of people in many days and the weeks after.

The rivers in Hiroshima witnessed hell.

Imagine what the land, change in the flow of the rivers today would tell us about the life, death, and tragedy in the city of the Hiroshima on that day.

In walking along the Honkawa and Motoyasu rivers.

I often listen to the flow of the water.

Sometimes I feel like talking to the river because I know the rivers have many stories to tell.

(gentle music) There are concerns that inheritance of memories of the A-bombing will be fading away as hibakusha age and die.

To prevent the memories from fading, imaginational learning from the past becomes more important for the next generation.

Motomachi High School A-bomb Drawing Project is one of the very innovative effort to preserve the hibakusha's memories of the A-bombing.

Based on hibakushas' individual accounts of the A-bombing experience, student spent about one year to create their drawings.

They listen to hibakusha testimonies repeatedly.

Then they take a valuable efforts to artistically create depiction of key images.

This collaborative artwork project has produced over 200 drawings since 2007.

While engaging in the project, the students often found it difficult to draw the scenes that they had never encountered.

The hibakusha's account of the experience are far beyond imagination.

Yet the students relied on their creativity to depict the scenes as accurately as possible while trying hard to reconstruct the scene, some students were troubled or discouraged by their sense of inability to complete their project.

In dealing with the difficulty of imagining the human tragedy, and by overcoming their frustration in presenting accurate depiction of the scene, they gained a strong sense of admission of conveying the reality of the atomic bombing.

They believed that their drawings would play an important role for passing on the memory of Hiroshima to future generations.

Their imagination and the creativity enhanced their understanding of the atomic bombing.

- Their experience in the project has made them a good successor of keeping the memory of Hiroshima alive.

The power of the imagination is alive in those student.

Their creative drawings are indeed powerful tools to provoke viewers' imagination.

The first nuclear career test was conducted on July 16th, 1945.

At the test site, 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Three weeks later, on August 6th, Hiroshima become the second nuclear test site.

Three days later, on August 9th, a third test was conducted over the city of the Nagasaki.

The second and the third test resulted in the death of 200,000 people.

Hiroshima attested that a human cannot coexist with a nuclear weapon.

Imagine the hibakushas' voices and the experiences.

We will keep imagining the world without a nuclear weapon.

Our memory of Hiroshima through imagination will keep guiding us with a sense of the direction to the world we want to live in.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)