need help

My name is Hideko Tamura. In 1945 on August 6th, when a world’s first nuclear bomb exploded over a city, called Hiroshima, I was there, just returned the night before as a 6th grader from a country haven for a dental care. Our house was little over a mile away from the center of explosion. The house was destroyed and I was pinned under the wreckage. I freed myself by crawling to the light before the fire storm which burned down our home, garden, all to ashes as the rest of our city, including my school, Seibi Academy, where no children or teachers survived.

Freeing on foot with injury I saw people crawling on ground, bleeding and burned, calling for help, and water which no one was in shape themselves or able to provide. Soon, the extreme physical conditions were taking place including the men and women burned through all their outerwear through the skins and exposed innards, some wandering with an eye out of the socket, and internal organs spilling out, caused by the sucking force of the thermal wind force. The scenes were completely incomprehensible or we were descending to “hell” itself.

Those who were indoors fared not much better if the building crushed upon them and one could not be freed.

My mother, Kimiko Tamura, was one of them. A concrete building fell on her and she was burned alive near ground zero at barely 30 years of age. So was my best friend and classmate, Miyoshi who came back with me the night before. My beloved cousins and other middle school aged relations all perished near the ground zero, who were all gathered to help dismantle the evacuated buildings. Burned and radiated, walking feebly, Cousin Hideyuki a 7th grader, was last seen falling on the ground, but urging his classmate to move on to save themselves.

With the force of 15,000 tons of TNT, it scorched stone, set wood on fire and killed thousands of people instantly. Radiation, the unique characteristic of the atomic bombing, however, affected people in mysterious and random ways, with some dying immediately, and other weeks, months, or years later by the delayed effects and radiation is still killing survivors today, nearly 74 years later. The long term researches into generational harms have also shown some links. None of these would come to light or even allowed among us during the 8 year military

occupation by the Allied Forces. No reporting of the pain and suffering was allowed under press censures and any photos and records taken were removed by the occupational authority, barring access to trace the human consequences of the use of nuclear weapon.

However, the monitoring the survivors’ physicals from early on was followed litigiously through an institutionalized facility at ABCC(Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission), to which surviving citizens were summoned, clothes stripped, blood drawn, specimens collected and thoroughly monitored, without benefit to the examined, for the sole purpose of a research. Public relations and cooperation with the research suffered eventually and service friendly changes were made later.

After the occupation ended, and the press censure lifted, the flood of information suddenly became available, enabling the survivors to contemplate the meaning of our survival in historical perspective and global context.

We became convinced that no human being should ever have to repeat our experience of inhumanity and cruelty of an atomic bombing and that the facts of the consequences of the nuclear weapons’ use must be made public and present our belief that the humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

As a survivor of Hiroshima, with memories of the horrific deaths and suffering still vivid in my mind even after nearly 74yrs later, I don’t want anyone ever to experience what we lived through.

Please help support the Senate Joint Memorial 5, as it is the compelling issue for the survival of the human race and our planet.

Thank you for considering this testimony.

Hideko Tamura Peace Ambassador for Hiroshima Chair, One Sunny Day Initiatives [email protected] www.osdinitiatives.com