What we tried to achieve in workshop 2 was to explore together methods for learning from the thoughts of Hibakushas and propagating their thoughts and to do that first what we tried to do at a preparatory stage is to find and uncover those Hibakushas who have not talked about their experiences in public yet.
We also aim to have a workshop where people could casually drop in and simply say letʼs see, maybe – perhaps there is something I too can do and so forth. Also we invited guests from overseas because we thought that their viewpoint different from the Japanese may have more appealing power.
The first speaker was Mr. Takashi Kado. This was the first time for him to talk about his experience. Kadosan was 9 years old and he was 3.5 kilometers away from the hypocenter. He was a family of six; father, mother, two older brothers, one older sister, six all together and except four, the older brother the eldest brother who was a solider all five of the family members were exposed to this atomic bombing.
The father was exposed to the radiation at 1.2 kilometers from the hypocenter and another older brother who was killed, who was 600 meters from the hypocenter, he was at school he also died and Kado-san and his mother went to look for the two of them – to look for the older brother and so the devastated city that was used to be Nagasaki. He saw many bodies, dead bodies and then when his father came home he was all in bandage, the white bandage and he suffered so much with severe burns and then another brother who just had severe burns and wanting to have last drop of water, drinking water. He too died and these are some shocking memories from his past.
Second speaker was Yamanishi-san, the third generation Hibakusha and she worked as a peace messenger.
She works still and she talked about her thoughts. She first heard about her grandmotherʼs experience in June this year and she was so shocked to hear that and she said, she thought no one should ever experience what her grandmother had gone through and so she started to work and narrate the atomic bombing experiences that her grandmother had gone through and that she realized also the peace is not something that somebody will create for you. You have to really work for it yourself and if you think about peace with great deal of interest your landscape will change and you will find something that you can do.
The third speaker was Susan Southard, ʻNagasaki: Life After Nuclear Warʼ the realities of nuclear bombing because she thought it would serve as nucleus for the movement for nuclear aberration. So, she thought that it was essential that we imprint in peopleʼs mind this memory of the atomic bombing.
So, many people who read her book or who saw her and talked to her and she did too and through this she began to realize that there are still mountains of things that she must do.
There are so many people who really having one sided views or information and so many countries have no ears to listen to different opinions. What we need is that for in order to secure safety you have to change peopleʼs mind by talking about this nuclear explosion experiences. It becomes a living experience for all the people who listen to these stories that bombs are not simply abstract things that you have to listen to the voice or the stories of various people step by step they can begin to understand the different value systems or views and they begin to realize that this nuclear deterrence is logically and morally have some big serious flaws and in the end the nuclear deterrence theory will began to seem as something totally meaningless and Susan appeals to all the activists in Hibakusha that Nagasaki should become the last place to have been bombed by the atomic bomb.
The last speaker was Kathleen Sullivan and she talked about her way of living or transmitting the legacy of Hibakusha through various art forms like philharmonic concert, the concert by Choir, group Himawari and atomic bomb panels by Maruki Toshi and Iri and then dancing in front of those panels, the performances and for 7 days she also conducted disarmament education program and some 100 of students from New York participated in it and Pioneer Works, an organization made exhibition of relics of atomic bombing from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and several workshops were held. She had a strong response from the students. She also makes films, takes photographs and also introduces Susanʼs books wherever she has the opportunity.
When we conducted disarmament activities itʼs important for people to think about those that you love and you donʼt want to lose and then to be reminded in 1945 those people who you loved or those places you loved were suddenly taken away from you. Itʼs important for people to feel how that is. We had exchange of views with the people, with the audience which deepened our understanding and also we had exhibit space later on for further stepping up exchange, a very happy exchange of views in this case.