Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor speaks to MHCC

A Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor, Ed Kawasaki, shared his testimony at the Student Union on Wednesday in hopes of encouraging peace.

His powerful words about World War II and the historic bombing silenced the crowd.

“World War II left us in an imperfect world. Someone had to make an imperfect decision to end the war,” he said, refusing to criticize the Americans’ decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki, in August 1945.

Kawasaki was born in 1929 in Hawaii, where his parents had migrated in 1906. His family moved back to Japan in 1941 when they heard that his grandfather was ill.

While living in Japan Kawasaki went to a program that gave students the opportunity to go to school and work in the farms and clothing factories. “A unique experience was the student mobilization program,” he explained. He attended a boys-only school and was taught some English, he said.

The war had a dramatic impact on Japanese civilians, he said. Since the military was the first priority with critical material and supplies, black marketing was common. “Inflation was rapid because food and clothing was scarce. Prices continued to skyrocket,” he said.

Even so, residents kept their composure. “Crime and looting was almost unheard of. Basically, the Japanese people were well behaved, disciplined and morally strong people,” Kawasaki said.

U.S. bombing raids on Japanese cities brought more worry.

Towns and communities used the block system, with 10 to 12 homes, in case residents would have to help someone during a bombing or fires. “Some families were split. Many of the younger children from the city were sent to the country side to their relatives to avoid the bombing in the cities,” Kawasaki said. His family lived on the outskirts of Hiroshima, by the farming and fishing villages.

Since his family had lived in Hawaii for a long time, the Japanese military took his father and interrogated him to make sure he wasn’t an American spy.

“Unfortunately, some of the U.S. citizens of Japanese-American (descent) living in Japan at the time were not treated friendly by the native Japanese people,” he said.

The atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, killing at least 90,000 people. Kawasaki was at a hospital called Shima Hospital that was 3,300 meters away (about 2 miles) from ground zero.

Japanese people call the bombing “Pika-Don” which means “flash and boom” in Japanese. Everyone there was instructed to go to the bomb shelter that was outside the hospital, he said.

Kawasaki lost 17 classmates from the bombing; his cousin was killed while on her way to school. His aunt resented America for the attack, he said. But he would move to Oregon and the U.S. in the 1960s.

The country would recover, and later thrive. Kawasaki said he achieved one of his goals when he showed his (American) family around Japan, decades after the bombing. “One of my personal goals was to talk about my experience in Japan to my family,” he said.

Kawasaki’s visit and an accompanying exhibit on the bombings were made available to MHCC by The Wholistic Peace Institute and The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima.