Kaho Ichimura, age 25, graduate student
Dear Hiroko-san,
Hello. My name is Kaho Ichimura. I am from Ofunato-shi, Iwate, and it’s been 7 years since I moved to Tokyo to start university. There is a sea near my house in my hometown, so I sometimes miss the sound of waves which used to be a part of my daily life back home.
I have something I’ve really wanted to tell the 19 year old you since I read your experience of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima for the first time.
“Thank you for surviving.”
When the Great East Japan Earthquake happened on March 11, 2011, I was 17 years old and still in my hometown. My aunt living away from Tohoku region told me that when I was almost the same age as you. Though a massive number of people were dead or missing as a result of the tsunami caused by the earthquake, I was fortunate to be at my high school on a hill and didn’t see the tsunami with my own eyes. It was not until my aunt said it to me that I truly feel alive by realizing that I could have been dead.
Hiroko-san, you survived the war although you were seriously burned and lost your eyesight from the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I cannot even imagine how horrifying the experience you had was. You must have lived with a stronger awareness of life and death than I have. That’s especially why I feel so much pain in my heart every time I read “I wished I’d been burned to death in the bomb”, which were the words of the 19 year old Hiroko-san. For you, there was still war going on even after the period called “postwar” came. I came to think that we should never forget about the people who lived or are living with suffering from the war and the radiation effects when we use the term “the postwar period.”
While Japan was recovering from the war rapidly, you had been suffering from and fighting the atomic bomb sickness and the prejudice against the survivors. It must have taken a lot of courage to share your experience, that had you believe it would have been better to die, that you had kept silent for so long about. However, you decided to tell your experience, and I assume that it is because you believed you could save the next generation from the war and radiation exposure by doing so as you said “We can’t have wars―none at all.”
I know it is important for us to tell our experiences to the next generation. My hometown Yoshihama is a small fishing village, which came to be called the "Miracle Village" after the earthquake because of the very little damage it suffered from the tsunami. However, I don’t think it was a miracle. Since our ancestors moved the village to high ground after the horrific tsunamis struck Yoshihama twice in Meiji and Showa era, they have passed down the dreadful experiences of the tsunamis to the next generation and did not build houses near the sea to keep the ancestors’ precepts. The area suffered only a little damage not because a miracle happened but because the past experiences of the tsunamis have been passed down from generation to generation in order not to repeat the same tragedy.
I’m very glad that Hiroko-san’s atomic bomb experience and the letter from Kaede-san to you will be shared with the world through this translation project. By translating the letter from Kaede-san to Hiroko-san into English and writing this letter to you, I have a great opportunity not only to know about the war just as a past event, but also reconsider what is going on at “present.” During March 2011, I experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake in Iwate, and Kaede-san experienced it in Fukushima. Kaede-san was also exposed to radiation emitted by the nuclear power plant disaster in Fukushima-shi, and you were exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing in Hiroshima-shi. Because Kaede-san is worried about the effect of radiation exposure on her body and on her baby if she gets pregnant, she identifies herself with the 19 year old you who had the same anxieties, and wrote “I know how you feel!” in her letter. Her letter to you made me feel strongly that your experience of radiation exposure is not just something happened in the past. Moreover, by looking to the present and thinking about the term “Hibaku,” we can see that radiation exposure like you experienced is not something happening only in Japan, but all over the world.
By hoping that Japan will never go to war again, and that no one will have to suffer from radiation exposure like Hiroko-san did, our generation must know the past from the experiences of the war survivors like you. Then we must think about the present by linking your experiences with our own, and pass them down to the future generation. I came to think that way because I participated in this translation project and learned from your account and Kaede-san’s letter to you. Hiroko-san, thank you very much for sharing with us your valuable story.
With affection,
Kaho Ichimura