By EMIKA TERASHIMA/ Staff Writer
March 29, 2024 at 07:00 JST
Emiri Kiba and her grandmother Midori walk around the streets of Nagasaki on Jan. 28 to trace her memory of the atomic bombing. (Emika Terashima)
NAGASAKI—From an early age, Emiri Kiba has known that her grandmother experienced the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. But the girl had felt uncomfortable about the connection after learning in peace education classes that atomic-bomb survivors faced discrimination.
“I thought something bad would also happen to me,” said Emiri, now 17.
However, she finally asked her grandmother, Midori, what she had gone through 79 years ago. And in the process, she gave Midori a form of release for the emotions that were bottled up for decades.
The change in Emiri occurred after she enrolled at Kassui Senior High School in the city's hoeicho district, located near ground zero. There, she met many hibakusha through her extracurricular activities.
In summer 2022, when she was a first-year student, Emiri asked Midori, 84, about her memories of the atomic bombing for the first time.
The student was hesitant and nervous about asking her grandmother to recall her painful past, and Midori herself was slightly taken aback.
But the grandmother explained her experience in detail for the first time to anyone.
In August 1945, Midori was in the first grade at a national elementary school and had evacuated to Isahaya, Nagasaki’s neighbor.
A few days after the Aug. 9 atomic bombing, she returned to her home in the Umegasakimachi district of Nagasaki, located 3.6 kilometers from ground zero.
She saw a person exposed to radiation walking up a slope while corpses were being burned nearby.
A friend of her aunt who took shelter at her home lost her hair and died a few days after the blast.
Midori’s mother was concerned for her daughter’s future and told her not to talk about the atomic bombing.
She rarely mentioned the topic after she married.
Emiri told her classmates about her grandmother’s experience, but she couldn't imagine the scene of the nuclear attack.
She went to the Umegasakimachi district near Nagasaki’s Chinatown with Midori in late January.
Midori pointed at a post office and said it was where her family’s wooden rented house once stood. The family had run a tobacco shop on the first floor of the three story building.
Looking at a narrow stairway next to the building, Midori said, “I saw a person who was covered with wounds and appeared all red, or even blackened, walking through here.”
A school route ran in front of her former house.
Midori also showed a parking lot about 100 meters from the post office where many bodies were taken, placed on timbers and burned, she said.
Wanting to know more about the bombing, Emiri went to see Michio Hakariya, 86, who attended the same school as her grandmother.
He was in his home near the Umegasakimachi district on Aug. 9, 1945, and felt intense light as if hit by headlights from a close distance.
He said shards of glass were embedded in the wall as if they were knives.
Emiri also asked him what he experienced at his school after the bombing because her grandmother had a faded memory about it.
Hakariya said that when the second semester began, he felt distant from his classmates.
With almost no classes held, he played with his friends in a vacant lot where bodies had been burned.
“There were burned remnants in the shape of humans,” Hakariya recalled. “But I felt nothing after getting used to seeing them.”
Later, Emiri asked Midori what she thought about his stories.
“That was because we were told not to talk about the atomic bombing,” Midori said. “As we pretended not to have been exposed to the blast, it may have looked like we were not long time friends.”
Emiri said she really understood the everyday lives of the people at the time.
“Walking with my grandmother and tracking her memories, I feel like I’m finally standing at the starting point,” she said.
Midori had tucked the memories deep in her heart after her mother told her not to discuss them.
“I might have kept mum if Emiri hadn’t asked me,” she said. “But I feel so happy. After all, I want people to know about it. I think we must pass down the stories.”
Emiri will become a third-year student at the senior high school this spring.
She plans to study at a university where she can learn English to share overseas what her grandmother and other hibakusha had experienced.
Emiri’s connection with the atomic bombing is becoming her identity.
“There are things I can do to achieve a peaceful world,” she said. “I think I also have a responsibility.”
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