Do Not Make the Mothers of the World Cry Kazumi Tsuchida speaks at Atlantic Life Community witness at White House August 2009

The 6 th of August and the 9 th of August are very special days for me.

On the 5 th of August, I was exposed to the atomic bomb at a place that was 2.5 km away from the hypocenter. I was with a boy who lived nearby. He was burned, but I, who was walking with him, was unhurt. I started to realize afterward that I was not directly exposed to the flash because it was blocked by the boy and that was why I was not burned or injured.

The 9 th of August is the day on which the atomic bomb was dropped onto the city of Nagasaki , and is also my birthday. 54 years ago, on my 15 th birthday, a young student, with whom I had played together, passed away from leukemia. The reason for the disease was the “black rain” that she was exposed to at the age of two, right after the atomic bombing. That was a deeply shocking as well as a sad incident for me.

Since those days I have started to feel fear toward the atomic bomb whenever I have felt ill. Since I was always in good health, nobody understood my fear except my mother, and she was worried about me.

36 days after the atomic bombing, my father died a heroic death. My 33-year-old mother raised four children, including myself who was five at the time, all by herself. She died two years ago in December at the age of 95. Before she passed away, she wrote a vivid account of the day of the atomic bombing on the 6 th of August. She wrote it on the 5 th of August 1995, 50 years after the atomic bombing. However, she started losing her appetite, found it difficult to work and suffered from an unknown pain in her chest after writing her account of the bombing. It is no exaggeration to say that writing about the 6 th of august was, for my mother who was 83 years old then, a task that took somewhat of a toll on her life.

This assumption of min (that she wrote this memorandum at the expense of her health) stems from my personal recollections of her. She once told me about one of the scenes she remembered from the day of the atomic bombing. That was the only time she talked to me about it.

In front of my house were several schoolgirls being laid down. They were all severly injured and were impossible to identify. They were desperately asking for water: “Please give me water…” I scooped some water for them from the bucket in which I had pumped water.

Telling me the story, my mother was crying. She said she could see horrible figures and faces of the schoolgirls through her hands. She also said that their voices remained in her ears.

In the memorandum, it was written that my father died after suffering two whole days and that when he passes away, his body looked like it was covered with a purple spider web. I remember that my mother once told me that hearing his moans was so painful that she felt as if she had been stabbed in the chest. Thus, to remember and write down what had happened on that day must have required tremendous courage. After my mother's death, I very vividly started realizing the strong determination that she had. 

Last year, I was invited by Peace Boat to join the “Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World—Peace Boat Hibakusha Project.”. It was an enormous, unexpected present for me. I had just finished parenting, as well as taking care of both my and my husband's mothers. I spent four months on the ship together with 103 Hibakusha. I was able to reaffirm that each of the Hibakusha has their own thoughts and feelings toward his or her experience of the atomic bombing. And, through visiting 23 ports in 20 different countries, I started to feel embarrassed about myself. I had lived my life without knowing anything. For instance, I did not know that not only the Hibakusha in Nagasaki and Hiroshima but also Agent Orange victims and their families have been suffering. I did not know that even now, there are people who suffer from the effects of the nuclear testing.

When I pause for a while and ponder the significance of nuclear weapons, I simply think that they are a purely suicidal act that will lead to our own extinction of the destruction of the Earth. Nobody wants to see their parents suffer. I find it universal that people also wish the children of generations to come great happiness.

The young people I travelled with on Peace Boat launched a project to inherit the responsibility of the Hibakusha to talk about their experiences to achieve nuclear abolition. I would like to keep watching and supporting their activities, I also have how for the young people here in Washington DC to sincerely take our message to heart.

Lastly, I would like to mention that I was helped by “LARA (Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia ) Supply” when I was having a hard time after the war. LARA Supply was a volunteer movement started in the US Even to my juvenile mind, their cheese tasted of Hope and the elegant flavor of the chocolate was itself a dream. The blue dress that I was given was modern with the pattern of little white followers. I sometimes imagined the lady who must have originally worn the dress. I would like to give thanks t the LARA volunteer group on this occasion.