THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
“I’m not sure if it was the effect of the atomic bomb, but I have always had a weak body, and when I was born, the doctor said I wouldn’t last more than three days.”
These are the words of Kazumi Kuwahara, a third-generation hibakusha—a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 80 years ago.
Kuwahara, who still lives in Hiroshima, was in London on May 6 this year to give a speech at a Victory Over Japan Day conference organized and hosted by the University of Westminster. Now 29, she told the conference that she felt she had been “fighting illness” throughout her twenties. When she was 25, she needed abdominal surgery to remove a tumor which post-surgery tests showed was benign.
When she found out about the operation, her grandmother, Emiko Yamanaka—now 91 and a direct survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—told her “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.” Kuwahara explained:
“Ever since I was young, whenever I became seriously ill, my grandmother would repeatedly say: ‘I’m sorry.’ The atomic bombing didn’t end on that day, and the survivors—we hibakusha—continue to live within its shadow.”
Kazumi Kuwahara with her grandmother, Emiko Yamanaka, outside Hiroshima Peace Dome in 2025. Photograph: Kazumi Kuwahara, CC BY-NC-ND
Kuwahara came to stay with me 10 years ago during a study-abroad break after I had interviewed her grandmother for my doctoral research. When I’d made a film about Yamanaka in 2012, I immediately noticed her reluctance to share her harrowing experience. But she then invited me to interview her in Hiroshima—the first of 10 trips I made there for research that would become an interview archive.
I wanted to research hibakusha like Kuwahara and her grandmother as they continue to confront the physical, social, and psychological effects of the atomic bombs dropped on August 6 and August 9, 1945, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.
The 16-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 am by a US B-29 bomber was codenamed “Little Boy” by the Americans. It exploded about 600 meters above the Shima Hospital in the downtown area of Nakajima—a mix of residential, commercial, sacred, and military sites. The bomb emitted a radioactive flash as well as a sonic boom. A gigantic fireball formed (about 3,000–4,000 degrees C), as well as mushroom cloud which climbed up to 16 kilomters in the air.