[/media-credit]Takaaki Morikawa, a survivor of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, eats and talks with students last Wednesday.
The lecture began as a simple reiteration of facts: an overview of the inner-workings of nuclear weapons, U.S.-Japanese nuclear policy, and Japanese foreign policy circa August 1947.
A clock is displayed on the screen; it reads 8:15 a.m., the time the U.S. dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima. Then the lecture took a decidedly more intimate tone, transcending to more of a dialogue. Morikawa showed pictures of his mother, sister and father, and explained he was lucky to escape the 100-mile radius of complete destruction.
He went on to share horror stories about a “clouded white” sky, “shattered windows and sticky black rain.”
As a six-year-old boy living in the hospital post-operation, he recounted confusion over the “victims looking like ghosts coming to seek help…I remember a man with no eyeballs—due to low pressure in the atmosphere, people’s eyes would fall out—who came creeping and crawling in. I still remember the screaming and groaning. All we could do is wait and pray to God.”
His family, although lucky enough to cheat the instantaneous death that claimed over 100,000 lives, suffered from the effects of the silent leftover radiation, and he lost both parents relatively early to cancer. Morikawa explained that he and his sister are screened every six months for cancer.
He concluded by sharing his personal experiences and asking people to sign a petition to end nuclear weapons.
Criticizing U.S. policy, but also maintaining a tone of respect, he answered questions diplomatically about the political pragmatism and feasibility of removing all the world’s proliferated weapons.
[/media-credit]Here, Morikawa stands next to a clock displaying the time the US dropped the bomb.
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