The Opinions - Hiroshima Survivors Were Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hear Their Warning.

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

This week, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bombing survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” Over the summer, in an effort to bring light to this new and terrifying nuclear era, Opinion’s editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, and the writer W.J. Hennigan interviewed Japanese survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this audio essay, they share stories from two of the survivors they met, Chieko Kiriake and Keiko Ogura, who were just 15 and 8 years old on Aug. 6, 1945.To see more photographs and read more stories from them and other survivors, click here.This piece originally appeared on nytimes.com on Aug. 6, 2024.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Kathleen Kingsbury, and I oversee the opinion report at the New York Times. This year, we are doing a series to call attention to a burgeoning nuclear age. As the Cold War closed, many people in the United States stop thinking about nuclear weapons. Yet now, countries like the United States, Russia, and China, the largest nuclear powers on Earth are spending trillions of dollars

to build new arsenals of weapons. We're really in a new arms race. In many ways, this has been hidden from the American public. There is no public conversation about it. There are no protests in the way that we saw in the 1980s. And what we saw then was that

when the public raised its voice, when it raised its concerns with lawmakers, then there was real change. and arsenals began to shrink. As we enter this new nuclear age, I thought it was really important to go and talk to the only people on Earth who have lived through an atomic bombing before

and understand the aftermath and the pain and suffering that they have gone through over many, many years. So last fall, I traveled to Japan with my colleagues, Bill Hennigan, who covers national security for opinion, and our research assistant, Spencer Cohen. After we returned from Japan, Bill Hennigan and I sat down to talk about who we spoke with

and the themes that we heard from the survivors' stories. Hi, Bill. Hi, Katie. Before we talk about our reporting in Japan and the incredible experience of meeting with the survivors, I think for both of us it was the first time visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, of course, as a national security reporter, you've been seeped in these questions around, nuclear threats. Before our trip to Japan, how did the idea of a nuclear explosion live in your own imagination? Really is a historical fact, you know, it was more like a history than it was a

real thing. You know, I've read so much about this over the years, but the power of a nuclear bomb, it's very hard to come to grips with. Like many Americans, you don't think about this being reality. And it wasn't until when we were on the ground in Japan. that you really got that human level of understanding. Yeah. I think it was actually really striking to me is when we are in Hiroshima. It's just like any other city.

In my imagination, it feels like this place should be a living memorial. And actually, there are certain ways that it is. In the center of the city is this incredible memorial museum to the victims of the bombing. And you go into that museum and you can tell the care that the community has put towards trying to make sure that the world doesn't forget what happened

that day. But there are other things that made it seem as though the city had really tried to move on quickly. They began rebuilding right away. And what was it? Four years later, they had a baseball team that the city rallied around in Nagasaki. It's a thriving port. It's huge. And I think it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that these communities pick themselves up in and try to figure out how to rebuild. Yeah, I mean, the other thing that struck me about Hiroshima was, once you start talking to people, how many have a connection to the bombing. If you engage people, they all have their own stories. A lot of these people are in their 80s or 90s, and their experiences are seared into them since they were little kids. And so,

When you're talking to them, you're seeing it and hearing it through a child's eyes. Yeah, I think that's something actually that's really important to remember, that the oldest survivor was probably only a teenager, basically, in 1945. One of the people who really stuck with me was Chieko Keriake, who, even though she's in her 90s now, she remembers that day an incredible detail. If you could start by telling us how old you were and where you lived on the day of the bombing. She was 15.

She was 15. At that point in the war, most of the school children in Hiroshima had been mobilized. They were no longer going to school. They were working in factories. She was working in a school and she was working in a cigarette factory.

she had a pass to walk down to a health clinic. And I was walking along the river and I was walking along the river. It was such a hot day and my knee hurts. So I kind of took a shade in the little hut and sort of stopped in the wipe the sweat off my head. That's when I saw a great flash. She talked in detail about first the flash light.

Then the noise. The light came first. It was so blinding that I couldn't see anything in. And I don't know how long, but it felt like a while after I heard the sound and the blast came together with the sound. The shock was so big that the little storage house that I was in, I was buried. underneath the rubbles.

Muckl' black night in the moment there was a pitch dark. And then I thought, the end of the neck of the haji of the haji of the as I look back, I must have been on the fringe inside this mushroom cloud.

And then what was really incredible was hearing her talk about the scene out The scene afterwards. After I really consciousness, I saw all that wooden houses are flattened to the ground and the smoke started to come. It was just slowly coming to burn,

but it wasn't yet engulfed in playing. That's how I managed to escape. The people she had seen whose skin was melting off their bodies. and it like to upro hair like it's like to go ahead and like aftain't like like a half a bit of a bit of hair like that's

who's got like that's and they're gonna get up and so that so she came back like that came back yeah all of burnt hair's burnt and almost like curled and standing

like an opera hair she said their face swollen almost a double of size and that their lips are swollen too swollen to say anything.

And she talks about in detail how the fact that she had been on one side of the river essentially saved her life. The people on the other side closer to the hypo center, their eyes bulged out, the ears burned off, and the clothes were burned and all those, so I barely survived. If it was only a few-minute, just-minute, so-to-sci got went to be able to be able to be able to be. If it was only a couple minutes later, then I would have died as well. It's such a horrible luck.

These stories are really hard to hear, but I think they're really important to sit with because there's no denying the destruction. that a nuclear weapon can bring. Once you hear these horrific tales of people not only from August 6th, but 80 years later,

they're still living with the trauma of having been there on that day. What the experience of August 6th? Toward the end of our conversation with Chieko, I asked her about her life after, 1945. I thought I thought so, so. So,

so, I never considered myself lucky to be able to survive despite many of my friends lost their lives. Even a year later,

the 1946 and 1, the commemoration, official commemoration started, you know, the people came together to, you know, commemorate the losses. And I hate it to go, because I would see the parents who lost their children in atomic bombing.

They're looking at us. It's not that they directly say anything to us saying, like, my child had to die and why do you survive? I felt so as their piercing look. And I really wish that I died with them so that I don't feel this guilt. So I never considered myself lucky surviving the bomb. That was a common theme that we came across from the survivors, this sort of burden of living

and having to carry these experiences around with them for the rest of their lives. And, you know, the idea that why did I live when my friend or my family member died? What makes me the person that lives? Can you say your name to begin with? Another survivor we spoke with was Keiko O'Gura. All right.

Let me. Introduce myself, is it okay? My name is... She lived near a shrine, which people were told to go visit if there was some sort of disaster. We were told, in case something happened, that means air raid time, go to Shinto Shrine or Buddhism temples,

and the doctors will be there. So many people thinking of that and rushed, but actually there were. was no doctor. People were coming up the hill to where she lived. Many of them were begging for, you know, a drink of water because they were parched. I only heard what they say was water.

Somebody seed my leg and said, give me water. And then I ran back and go to the water and they delivered. And then my father asked to us, children, you didn't give water. We shouldn't give water. If we give water, heavily wounded people will die. I did not know that. And two persons actually died in front of me. She did.

She gave two people cups of water, and they both died because of their internal injuries as a result of drinking that water. That became my trauma, you see. I blame myself. Kiko, you were a stupid girl. You don't know anything. You kill them. As if there was some sort of knowledge that she was supposed to have as this young girl,

knowing the injuries that these people were enduring. It continued more than 10 years. I saw nightmare and then recalled dreadful days and then blame myself. So in a way, I didn't have scars, but I had the invisible scars. Here she is now, a woman in her 80s, still carrying around this tremendous guilt for what happened. And, you know, it went beyond guilt. In Japan, a lot of survivors faced discrimination in the years since. Well, I think it's a cultural thing, primarily not wanting to talk about your bad luck or there was some thought as if these people were stained that they carried around this kind of unseen. disease as a result of the bomb. And so admitting that you were a victim was something that you did not

reveal to another person for fear that you might not be seen as a good prospective spouse or employee or, you know, mother or father. That they were permanently damaged. Right. That they carried around this mark of shame. Of course, they were also reminders to the Japanese of the fact that the country had lost the war. Yes. But now they kind of see it as responsibility to talk about their experiences so that it never happens again. Right. And they are very keenly aware of the rising threat in a way that I think most of the American public is not because they've had this lived experience. Yes. I mean, you know, the fear over nuclear use is why Keiko travels the world telling her story. Now, what survivors are worrying about is to die and meet our family in the heavens.

I heard many survivors say, what shall I do? I'll be asked, Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons? There is no answer I can tell them. I saw many people who died in front of the world. me and then every year standing by the river I say that I'll endeavor to abolish total nuclear weapon because for us a single bomb a thousand, ten thousand bombs means the same. Please tell the truth of the nuclear weapon. Don't talk about the knowing it's the most important peace education, I think.

We survivors are so fearful. Right now, every day, I'm so afraid because of Putin's world. We have to do something. But what I can do is just tell my story, the reality of nuclear weapon. The world is facing a lot of major challenges. right now, climate change, income inequality, the rise of authoritarianism, global pandemics. This is a problem that the world is facing that at one point we contained. You know, we obviously didn't solve it entirely, but there was a moment in which the world

came together and through the treaties that were signed. There was an active decision made that we wanted to make this threat less volatile. And now we've turned the corner and we're headed in the opposite direction. And so it feels a few. feels like a moral imperative to try to put the world back on that safer path. I mean, after you hear what we've heard, you can't help but think, how are we inching closer to a more volatile era when it comes to nuclear weapons? You can see photographs and hear more from Cheiko Keriake, Keiko Ogura, and the other survivors Katie and Bill interviewed by visiting n.witimes.com

and searching Hiroshima. this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichaca, Fibylette, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera.

The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.