A speaking tour of Japanese students and a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing made its way to professor Peter Kuznick's Social Forces that Shaped America class Friday to talk about the first atom bomb drop and the future of atomic weapons.
The Chugoku Shimbun newspaper is sponsoring the speaking tour, which began in San Francisco and will end in New York this week.
"It is really an unforgivable happening," said Ai Maekawa, a college student from Hiroshima whose grandparents survived the 1945 atom bomb. "But the past is in the past, and I want to forgive and make sure this incident doesn't repeat."
On Aug. 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the first atom bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. One hundred thousand people died that day, and another 40,000 were killed by after-effects by the end of 1945.
Keiko Murakami, a "hibakusha," or atom bomb survivor, was 8 when the atom bomb destroyed her home. She was hiding in her home's bomb shelter with her brother and father.
Her mother and baby sister did not make it to the shelter before the bomb dropped. Murakami described in detail how her mother came knocking on the shelter door clutching her baby sister, covered in broken glass with one eye hanging out of her socket.
Murakami said when the family emerged from the shelter, "it was dead silent, as if we were the only ones left in the world." They walked to the river, where other survivors, many burnt beyond recognition, had gathered.
"Our throats were parched, it became hard for us to breathe," she said. "No one could save us."
Murakami and her brother were sent to their grandparent's house. They had to walk over debris and dead bodies to get there.
"That feeling on the soles of my feet comes back to me even 60 years later," she said.
Tears gathered in her eyes as she recounted the months after the bomb dropped. Many Hiroshima survivors suffered secondary radiation diseases. She said people gave up getting married or having kids because they feared the effects of radiation.
Murakami eventually became a radiologist to help other survivors.
"I aimed to do anything to help victims of war and prevent new victims of war," she said.
According to Murakami, nuclear weapons have been used in the Iraq war, and people there are suffering from the effects of radiation. She said she saw herself in pictures of Iraqi children.
"Those children will have to carry that memory for the rest of their lives, just like I will have the memory of Hiroshima for the rest of my life," she said.
Taka Kimura, another college student from Japan, showed pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the atomic bombs were dropped. Pictures of thermonuclear scars and charcoaled bodies hung on the blackboard as Kimura spoke.
"The reason we are looking back 60 years ago is that this is a very real threat today," he said.
Professor Kuznick told the class that nine countries currently have nuclear weapons. He said the U.N. recently reported 40 more countries have the capability to quickly create nuclear weapons.
