Latest news with #Yahata
NBC News
6 days ago
- General
- NBC News
80 years later, Hiroshima bombing survivors warn of new nuclear warfare
HIROSHIMA, Japan — For more than half a century, chimes have rung out across the Japanese city of Hiroshima every morning at exactly 8:15. The solemn ritual marks the precise moment Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped the world's first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing about 70,000 people instantly. On Wednesday, people in Hiroshima commemorated the 80th anniversary of the devastating attack, as nuclear fears mount globally amid unresolved military conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. In a one-minute silent tribute, the city remembered the widescale death and destruction caused by the 10,000-pound bomb, which created a huge mushroom cloud that rose to more than 60,000 feet. 'It is our duty to convey the reality of the atomic bombings not only to the people of Japan but also to the people of the world,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in a speech. Initially meant to strike a T-shaped bridge, the bomb veered instead toward an exhibition hall with a distinctive dome, which after the explosion was the only building still standing within a 1-mile radius. The blast unleashed a whirlwind of fire and force, incinerating thousands of people. Then came the radioactive black rain, which fell over the city, silently poisoning countless more. Teruko Yahata was 8 years old at the time. Yahata, who is now in her 80s, says she still has a scar from when she was hurled by the blast. Fearing another bomb, she huddled under a blanket with her family. 'I didn't really understand what it meant to die,' Yahata said, 'but the warmth I felt at us dying together … I still remember to this day.' Three days after bombing Hiroshima, the U.S. unleashed a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki that killed another 40,000 people immediately. The unprecedented bombings hastened Imperial Japan's surrender and the end of World War II, most historians say, though at the price of nearly a quarter-million lives. From the ashes, Hiroshima was rebuilt into a busy city of more than a million people, drawing tourists from around the world. Near the hypocenter, where the bomb detonated about 2,000 feet above, is a peace memorial park and museum that includes the iconic atomic dome. Using virtual reality headsets, visitors can immerse themselves in the bombing and its brutal aftermath while touring the park. Yet, the bombing still feels visceral to Hiroshima survivors, who are called hibakusha, or 'bomb affected persons.' Now more than 86 years old on average, they have spent most of their lives struggling with illness, depression and discrimination. Kunihiko Iida, whose father was killed in the war and whose mother and older sister died shortly after the bombing, is now 83, defying predictions that he would not live to the age of 20. Those who say the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, he said, 'don't know the reality of a nuclear bomb.' Last year, the work of Japanese survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Toshiyuki Mimaki, the group's co-chair, is among those advocating nuclear disarmament and making sure that Hiroshima is neither forgotten nor repeated. 'We're in a very dangerous situation with Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran,' he said. 'Even a single nuclear bomb would mean disaster.' According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the world's nine nuclear-armed states — Russia, the United States, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — spent more than $100 billion on nuclear weapons last year, up 11% from 2023. The increase in spending on nuclear weapons contrasts with public attitudes about them. In a June survey of Americans by the Pew Research Center, 69% of respondents said the development of nuclear weapons had made the world less safe, compared with 10% who said it had made the world safer. Nearly 70% of Japan's atomic bomb survivors believe nuclear weapons could be used again, according to a poll this year by Japanese news agency Kyodo News. Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow, 93, lost 10 members of her family in the bombing. She said she remembered seeing a procession of people fleeing to the hillside who 'looked like ghosts.' 'Everybody's hair was just standing up, raised upwards, and the skin and the flesh was coming off from the bones,' she said. Thurlow, who went to the U.S. to study in 1954 — the same year the U.S. tested a hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima — has spent her life campaigning for nuclear disarmament, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 on behalf of ICAN. 'I beg world leaders to stop and come to the negotiation table. Diplomacy needs to have greater attention,' she said in a video interview from Toronto. 'It's not nuclear weapons, but diplomacy, exchange of words and ideas.' The number of hibakusha is dwindling, raising fears that living memory of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings will soon be gone. As of the end of March, there were 99,130 survivors nationwide, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Responsibility for remembering is being taken up by young people such as 12-year-old Shun Sasaki, who has been giving foreign visitors free guided tours of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park since he was 7. Sasaki said that even though his great-grandmother was among those killed in the bombing, for a long time his family barely acknowledged it. 'The scariest thing that might happen in the future is to forget what happened a long time ago,' Sasaki said. 'I don't want anyone to have the same experience as my great-grandmother.' Sasaki's is not the only family that has avoided talking about that day. More than 70% of the respondents in the Kyodo poll said they had never spoken about their experiences. Even so, some feel it is their duty to speak up. 'As long as I live, I want to continue telling,' Yahata said. 'I'm a survivor.'
Sydney Morning Herald
30-07-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
They were on opposing sides at Hiroshima in 1945. Now, they're campaigning together
When Teruko Yahata and Bill Plewright meet for the first time, within minutes they are posing for a photo side by side, her hand clasping his hand. Against all odds, these two survivors of nuclear blasts have been brought together in an exhibition space in Perth. At nearly 88, Yahata is a diminutive Japanese figure, hair cut in a neat bob and a perpetual smile on her face. Plewright is taller, and his dapper suit and erect military posture hides that he's nudging his 97th birthday. Eighty years ago, a catastrophic event changed the course of both their lives. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, then, three days later, on Nagasaki. Yahata was eight years old; Plewright was a young able seaman when his ship arrived in Japan in the aftermath of the bomb. Her experience of nuclear weapons was as an instantaneous explosion over a civilian target; his experience was as one of 16,000 Australian troops who served in Occupied Japan and later at nuclear weapon test sites – in his case, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. Yahata is one of a dwindling group of hibakusha, or survivors of Japan's nuclear blasts. Plewright is now one of the oldest remaining Commonwealth atomic-test veterans in the world. The pair's first – and very probably the last – meeting was at the travelling event, Never Again: The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibition, held at the WA capital's Holmes à Court Gallery in May, at which each described their experiences of being exposed to nuclear weapons. Plewright says he will commemorate this week's 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb by sending an email greeting to Yahata in Japan. When he arrived in Japan, the young sailor had stood on a bridge near the Hiroshima 'epicentre' dome, barely two kilometres from Yahata's house. 'When I was on that bridge, we were so far apart yet so close,' Plewright tells Yahata in front of an emotional crowd. 'And now we are here, friend to friend. It's absolutely magnificent.' Despite their ages, both are activists in the global campaign to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They say the world will only be a safer place when every nation – including a recalcitrant Australia – signs up to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted in 2017. This week's 80th anniversary is special to them; by the time of the next commemoration, and certainly by the 90th anniversary, the Japanese hibakusha and the Australian ex-serviceman may no longer be able to bear witness. Black rain 'This is a map of Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing,' Yahata tells the exhibition crowd, her head peeking above the dais. 'Somewhere between the railway station and the river was our house. It was summer: the cherry blossom was in full bloom in the school grounds, the petals creating a pink-peach-coloured carpet.' You strain to listen to her accented English, yet the poignancy strikes deep: her words convey a child's perception of beauty in a once-safe world. The Pacific War had been going for nearly four years with intense fighting and terrible losses on both sides. To bring war to an end and Japan to its knees, it was deemed by the Allies that a new weapon of destruction should be unleashed on Japan, even on child citizens like Teruko Yahata. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 aircraft dropped 'Little Boy' – a 15-kiloton atomic bomb – which exploded over the city of Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and children. 'It was a fresh morning, clear and sunny,' recalls Yahata. 'In our family home, my paternal great-grandmother, grandmother, parents, older sister, me and two younger brothers lived. Eight members in total. 'After breakfast, I stepped down into the garden to go next door. At that moment, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish white. I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness.' The force of the blast had thrown her small body six metres from the back garden to the entrance of the family home. The bomb had exploded approximately 200 metres overhead. 'I was awoken by the sound of my mother's voice calling out and the image of my father carrying my great-grandmother on his back. There was so much smoke I could barely see.' The house interior was scattered with glass fragments from a sliding door. 'It was like we had been stabbed by a mighty spear. My mother began to pull bedding and futons from the cupboards, and as she did so I noticed fragments of glass sticking out of her back and her white blouse was stained a bloody red. 'We felt sure there would be a second and perhaps a third bomb. So we believed we were beyond saving. As my mother spread a quilt over us all, I remember – and indeed will never forget – what it felt like as a child to be surrounded by my family in the warmth and security of that blanket.' Yahata remembers the eerie silence outside, the blackened houses nearby and huge drops of rain 'that soaked us to the skin'. Nobody knew at the time that it was radioactive 'black rain'. Then came 'a legion of ghosts, crippled figures of death and hundreds of bodies covered in dust; their skin was peeling off their arms and dangling from their fingertips, resembling old tattered rags.' Seeking first aid at her primary school three days later, Yahata encountered classrooms strewn with tightly packed bodies. 'Faces were blistered so badly that they could no longer open their eyes. The dead were being taken outside to the sports ground on makeshift stretchers. And rows of holes had been dug for the clusters of bodies to be thrown into.' On a table near the school gate, Yahata's eye was caught by rows of white paper bags. 'They were not filled with sweets, but the bones of unidentified cremated people.' After several days, the fires that were raging in the city began to subside. 'My mother and father went out looking for my father's friend. Under the blazing sun, shovel in hand, they stepped over the charred remains of corpses. Male and female, indistinguishable from one another. They took the skull of my father's friend home with them. Everyone put their hands together in prayer as we looked upon the transformed remains of a once bright and cheerful man.' By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had reached an estimated 140,000 people, 38,000 of them children. 'That the exact figure is not known is testament to the destructive nature of the bomb,' says Yahata. Many who escaped instant death – including members of Yahata's family – later died of radiation sickness, burns and other injuries. 'A girl who I went to school with as a student was exposed to the bomb one kilometre from the hypocentre [epicentre],' she says. 'One day, 16 years later, spots began to appear on her arms. She was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, but she still wished to live. I can clearly recall her words: 'I want to look up at the bright blue sky, wearing a beautiful dress and shoes to match … I just want to get better and to live, to live.' She died the following year at the age of 25.' In 2013, aged 76, Yahata began giving formal testimony – in Japanese and gradually by learning English – about the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. She joined a peace ship voyage to several countries, and since 2019 has been active as a witness speaker for the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. She has also been designated a 'Special Communicator for a World without Nuclear Weapons' by the Japanese government. 'I realised [each time telling the story] the cruelty and ugliness of war,' she says. 'And that once started, we become both perpetrator and victim.' Australia's atomic blasts When Bill Plewright visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the young Australian sailor was struck by the sight of Japanese orphans huddled in doorways. 'The thing that horrified me most was that some had webbed hands,' Plewright told the exhibition crowd following Yahata's testimony. 'Maybe they put their hands up to their faces with the heat. Some just had little holes on their face for a nose and little holes for ears.' He had arrived in Japan aboard HMAS Bataan in 1947 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The adventure was not all grim; he took photos of quaint streets and a fish market and drank Japanese Kirin beer with his shipmates. The invisible but deadly legacy of radiation exposure would only be understood much later. Plewright went on to become a direct witness to, and victim of, nuclear weapon explosions on his home soil. In October 1952, Britain's first atmospheric nuclear test bomb was detonated at the Montebello Islands, which lie 120 kilometres off the north-west coast of Western Australia. That first test, named Operation Hurricane, produced a mushroom cloud three kilometres high and covered the islands and northern parts of the Australian mainland with radioactive fallout. Two more nuclear tests, G1 and G2, were detonated on two Montebello islands in 1956; the final test, G2, was the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted in Australia, six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Able Seaman Plewright, by then 22, was on HMAS Shoalhaven the day of the first blast. His ship was conducting safety and security patrols out of visual range of the explosion, but Shoalhaven later travelled along an inshore route to rejoin the fleet and likely passed under the upper portion of a radioactive cloud seen drifting towards the mainland. 'I recall that we saw the fallout cloud, which drifted directly over the ship,' Plewright says. Yet the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia rejected such claims, saying the ship was too far from the blast to be contaminated. Author Paul Grace has written a detailed account of the Montebello tests, titled: Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain's First Atomic Test in Australia and the Legacy that Remain s. Grace says he was prompted by his own grandfather's experience that exactly paralleled Plewright's – he served in Japan and on the Montebello Islands. 'Bill Plewright was certainly exposed on many more occasions, returning to the Montebello Islands for a radiation survey in November 1953 and two more atomic tests in 1956,' Grace says. The first 1956 test, G1, was detonated on Trimouille Island, part of the Montebello archipelago. 'We were not allowed to talk to anyone about what was going to take place,' says Plewright. 'And when it got very close to minus 10 countdown, we were told to turn away from the blast, close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes, and then the countdown started. It hit zero.' The split second of the blast is still etched in his memory. 'In that instant, we all saw the x-ray of the bones in our hands, so bright was the initial blast. We were told to stand by for perhaps a tidal wave. There was a ripple and the ship rocked a little, but our breaths were taken away from us when this huge [cloud] thing sucked up the oxygen for miles out. And it was a very frightening thing.' Plewright went back north in the aftermath of G2 to salvage equipment. 'There were very strict rules about what you could do and couldn't do, but I didn't understand when I went ashore. The whole area around where the bomb had gone off was glazed glass. And as you took a step, your foot sank through it.' Loading Plewright retired from the Australian navy in 1957 and is grateful to have survived into old age. But cancer, a stroke and other illnesses have dogged him; many of his navy mates did not survive beyond late middle age. Some suffered similar problems to Japanese survivors of the radiation blast; many believed their military exposure was the cause. So did Plewright, who would later become president of the Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association. 'After I got out of the navy, I had a little grain of sand that I felt in my neck and I would be scratching it until I was told to go and see a doctor. I put it off, but after a couple of years it was the size of a lemon. I wore a 14.5-inch neck shirt but with the growth I had to wear a 17-inch neck and my tie always disappeared to one side. So I went in and had surgery for a malignant growth. 'In a report that I had to give to the government [for recognition of the radiation injury], I told them about this. The remarks were that I did not seek medical attention because I was scared. I then suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Some years later, I had cancer of the bladder, and I'm happy to say that my oncologist, neurologist and my own GP got me through it. I've been seven years in remission. 'When William Penney, the father of the British bomb, came to Australia, he told the Australian Commonwealth that there was no danger to human or animal life. So much for, 'Nothing will happen to you.' 'I took our people through the royal commission and I battled with our government and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They were covering up – we were guinea pigs, there is no doubt about it.' Plewright reached out to a worldwide organisation called Labrats, which operates out of the UK and represents the 22,000 Commonwealth servicemen who worked on nuclear tests in Australia and the Pacific. Plewright is now one of its oldest members. 'A lot of us had tests taken of blood and urine at the time, which the British government denied ever existed,' Plewright says. 'We had so much evidence that the test results did exist, that they were given 21 days by the High Court in London to produce it. Twenty-four hours later they were produced.' The UK government has not yet compensated its nuclear test veterans, although in 2022 then-prime minister Rishi Sunak awarded a service medal to all veterans who served at Britain's nuclear tests, including Australians at Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Says Paul Grace, 'I'm pleased they made the medal available to Commonwealth veterans, both surviving and the next of kin of the deceased. It's a shame it took as long as it did.' The legacy of the nuclear tests has recently been exposed by samples gathered by Edith Cowan University scientists and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Marine-sediment samples from several of the Montebello Islands sent to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the chief regulator for historic nuclear testing sites, have revealed plutonium levels up to 4500 times higher than samples taken 1000 kilometres away on the West Australian coast. The findings were published in June this year in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Last month, Grace led an expedition of historians and servicemen relatives to the Montebello Islands 'to explore the human impact' of nuclear testing. 'For us, it was a personal pilgrimage to understand the experiences of our forebears. Three of us are descendants of Montebello nuclear veterans, including me and Maxine Goodwin, the daughter of RAAF leading airman Max Ward, who died at 49 of blood cancer.' Plewright remains bitter about the protracted delay in heeding Australia's nuclear victims. 'I think of all the lies that I received from the Australian government and the royal commission, which did not act properly or ask our members relevant questions. Nothing was done, only millions of dollars spent to make them look good.' Suicide bombs As the Hiroshima exhibition event draws to a close, Yahata and Plewright are sitting in a corner, laughing and giggling with their interpreter as they share confidences. Soon Yahata will board a plane back to Japan, before departing again for another 80th anniversary event in the US. Yahata's visit was partly hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which originated in Melbourne and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. 'Everything is jeopardised by these global suicide bombs,' says ICAN co-founder Tilman Ruff, a Melbourne-based, public-health physician who attended the exhibition. 'To think of Hiroshima's rivers being full of blackened bodies, of people who survived calling for water, of fragments of people's cups, clothes and bedding.' When he gives his speech, Ruff stands in front of a 12-metre-high nuclear missile prop: 'It's inflatable and, surprisingly, it fits into one suitcase.' Ruff has visited Japan and Hiroshima many times and spoken widely with anti-nuclear organisations on the health dangers of radiation, including that of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. On one trip to Hiroshima, Ruff says he was drawn to a huge camphor tree, one of several trees obliterated by the blast, but whose roots miraculously survived and resprouted. 'I was told this tree was planted 500 years ago,' he says. 'It regrew against all expectations – it's still sprouting forth in every direction, and I was moved to see that beneath its boughs is a kindergarten. 'Yet arsenals are being expanded, and multiple nuclear-armed nations are in open conflict. The overall picture of disarmament is bleak. It's stalled and going backwards.' Ruff says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a perfect opportunity to lead the way in signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 'This is the year if Albo is serious,' says Ruff. 'He was the major champion at the 2018 Labor conference when he put forward a resolution that if Labor got into government, he would sign and ratify the treaty. He's been returned by a massive political majority, so will Australia find the courage to act?' Loading Meanwhile, Ruff says, ICAN has a proud record of giving voice to witnesses who can describe exactly what nuclear weapons inflict on human beings – witnesses such as Yahata, Plewright and, importantly, Aboriginal survivors of nuclear testing in their homelands. 'The testimonies are more relevant today than they have ever been,' Ruff says. 'When they speak, you can hear a pin drop.' 'Who do you love? What do you love?' says Yahata at the end of her speech, carefully stressing each English word as she scans the crowd. 'If a single nuclear weapon was used now, mankind would cease to exist,' she tells them. 'All that I have left to do is to communicate the truth of the atomic bomb to the world, and to continue to sound the alarm bells.' She bows deeply. 'Thank you very much for listening.'
The Age
30-07-2025
- General
- The Age
They were on opposing sides at Hiroshima in 1945. Now, they're campaigning together
When Teruko Yahata and Bill Plewright meet for the first time, within minutes they are posing for a photo side by side, her hand clasping his hand. Against all odds, these two survivors of nuclear blasts have been brought together in an exhibition space in Perth. At nearly 88, Yahata is a diminutive Japanese figure, hair cut in a neat bob and a perpetual smile on her face. Plewright is taller, and his dapper suit and erect military posture hides that he's nudging his 97th birthday. Eighty years ago, a catastrophic event changed the course of both their lives. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, then, three days later, on Nagasaki. Yahata was eight years old; Plewright was a young able seaman when his ship arrived in Japan in the aftermath of the bomb. Her experience of nuclear weapons was as an instantaneous explosion over a civilian target; his experience was as one of 16,000 Australian troops who served in Occupied Japan and later at nuclear weapon test sites – in his case, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. Yahata is one of a dwindling group of hibakusha, or survivors of Japan's nuclear blasts. Plewright is now one of the oldest remaining Commonwealth atomic-test veterans in the world. The pair's first – and very probably the last – meeting was at the travelling event, Never Again: The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibition, held at the WA capital's Holmes à Court Gallery in May, at which each described their experiences of being exposed to nuclear weapons. Plewright says he will commemorate this week's 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb by sending an email greeting to Yahata in Japan. When he arrived in Japan, the young sailor had stood on a bridge near the Hiroshima 'epicentre' dome, barely two kilometres from Yahata's house. 'When I was on that bridge, we were so far apart yet so close,' Plewright tells Yahata in front of an emotional crowd. 'And now we are here, friend to friend. It's absolutely magnificent.' Despite their ages, both are activists in the global campaign to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They say the world will only be a safer place when every nation – including a recalcitrant Australia – signs up to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted in 2017. This week's 80th anniversary is special to them; by the time of the next commemoration, and certainly by the 90th anniversary, the Japanese hibakusha and the Australian ex-serviceman may no longer be able to bear witness. Black rain 'This is a map of Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing,' Yahata tells the exhibition crowd, her head peeking above the dais. 'Somewhere between the railway station and the river was our house. It was summer: the cherry blossom was in full bloom in the school grounds, the petals creating a pink-peach-coloured carpet.' You strain to listen to her accented English, yet the poignancy strikes deep: her words convey a child's perception of beauty in a once-safe world. The Pacific War had been going for nearly four years with intense fighting and terrible losses on both sides. To bring war to an end and Japan to its knees, it was deemed by the Allies that a new weapon of destruction should be unleashed on Japan, even on child citizens like Teruko Yahata. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 aircraft dropped 'Little Boy' – a 15-kiloton atomic bomb – which exploded over the city of Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and children. 'It was a fresh morning, clear and sunny,' recalls Yahata. 'In our family home, my paternal great-grandmother, grandmother, parents, older sister, me and two younger brothers lived. Eight members in total. 'After breakfast, I stepped down into the garden to go next door. At that moment, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish white. I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness.' The force of the blast had thrown her small body six metres from the back garden to the entrance of the family home. The bomb had exploded approximately 200 metres overhead. 'I was awoken by the sound of my mother's voice calling out and the image of my father carrying my great-grandmother on his back. There was so much smoke I could barely see.' The house interior was scattered with glass fragments from a sliding door. 'It was like we had been stabbed by a mighty spear. My mother began to pull bedding and futons from the cupboards, and as she did so I noticed fragments of glass sticking out of her back and her white blouse was stained a bloody red. 'We felt sure there would be a second and perhaps a third bomb. So we believed we were beyond saving. As my mother spread a quilt over us all, I remember – and indeed will never forget – what it felt like as a child to be surrounded by my family in the warmth and security of that blanket.' Yahata remembers the eerie silence outside, the blackened houses nearby and huge drops of rain 'that soaked us to the skin'. Nobody knew at the time that it was radioactive 'black rain'. Then came 'a legion of ghosts, crippled figures of death and hundreds of bodies covered in dust; their skin was peeling off their arms and dangling from their fingertips, resembling old tattered rags.' Seeking first aid at her primary school three days later, Yahata encountered classrooms strewn with tightly packed bodies. 'Faces were blistered so badly that they could no longer open their eyes. The dead were being taken outside to the sports ground on makeshift stretchers. And rows of holes had been dug for the clusters of bodies to be thrown into.' On a table near the school gate, Yahata's eye was caught by rows of white paper bags. 'They were not filled with sweets, but the bones of unidentified cremated people.' After several days, the fires that were raging in the city began to subside. 'My mother and father went out looking for my father's friend. Under the blazing sun, shovel in hand, they stepped over the charred remains of corpses. Male and female, indistinguishable from one another. They took the skull of my father's friend home with them. Everyone put their hands together in prayer as we looked upon the transformed remains of a once bright and cheerful man.' By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had reached an estimated 140,000 people, 38,000 of them children. 'That the exact figure is not known is testament to the destructive nature of the bomb,' says Yahata. Many who escaped instant death – including members of Yahata's family – later died of radiation sickness, burns and other injuries. 'A girl who I went to school with as a student was exposed to the bomb one kilometre from the hypocentre [epicentre],' she says. 'One day, 16 years later, spots began to appear on her arms. She was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, but she still wished to live. I can clearly recall her words: 'I want to look up at the bright blue sky, wearing a beautiful dress and shoes to match … I just want to get better and to live, to live.' She died the following year at the age of 25.' In 2013, aged 76, Yahata began giving formal testimony – in Japanese and gradually by learning English – about the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. She joined a peace ship voyage to several countries, and since 2019 has been active as a witness speaker for the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. She has also been designated a 'Special Communicator for a World without Nuclear Weapons' by the Japanese government. 'I realised [each time telling the story] the cruelty and ugliness of war,' she says. 'And that once started, we become both perpetrator and victim.' Australia's atomic blasts When Bill Plewright visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the young Australian sailor was struck by the sight of Japanese orphans huddled in doorways. 'The thing that horrified me most was that some had webbed hands,' Plewright told the exhibition crowd following Yahata's testimony. 'Maybe they put their hands up to their faces with the heat. Some just had little holes on their face for a nose and little holes for ears.' He had arrived in Japan aboard HMAS Bataan in 1947 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The adventure was not all grim; he took photos of quaint streets and a fish market and drank Japanese Kirin beer with his shipmates. The invisible but deadly legacy of radiation exposure would only be understood much later. Plewright went on to become a direct witness to, and victim of, nuclear weapon explosions on his home soil. In October 1952, Britain's first atmospheric nuclear test bomb was detonated at the Montebello Islands, which lie 120 kilometres off the north-west coast of Western Australia. That first test, named Operation Hurricane, produced a mushroom cloud three kilometres high and covered the islands and northern parts of the Australian mainland with radioactive fallout. Two more nuclear tests, G1 and G2, were detonated on two Montebello islands in 1956; the final test, G2, was the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted in Australia, six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Able Seaman Plewright, by then 22, was on HMAS Shoalhaven the day of the first blast. His ship was conducting safety and security patrols out of visual range of the explosion, but Shoalhaven later travelled along an inshore route to rejoin the fleet and likely passed under the upper portion of a radioactive cloud seen drifting towards the mainland. 'I recall that we saw the fallout cloud, which drifted directly over the ship,' Plewright says. Yet the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia rejected such claims, saying the ship was too far from the blast to be contaminated. Author Paul Grace has written a detailed account of the Montebello tests, titled: Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain's First Atomic Test in Australia and the Legacy that Remain s. Grace says he was prompted by his own grandfather's experience that exactly paralleled Plewright's – he served in Japan and on the Montebello Islands. 'Bill Plewright was certainly exposed on many more occasions, returning to the Montebello Islands for a radiation survey in November 1953 and two more atomic tests in 1956,' Grace says. The first 1956 test, G1, was detonated on Trimouille Island, part of the Montebello archipelago. 'We were not allowed to talk to anyone about what was going to take place,' says Plewright. 'And when it got very close to minus 10 countdown, we were told to turn away from the blast, close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes, and then the countdown started. It hit zero.' The split second of the blast is still etched in his memory. 'In that instant, we all saw the x-ray of the bones in our hands, so bright was the initial blast. We were told to stand by for perhaps a tidal wave. There was a ripple and the ship rocked a little, but our breaths were taken away from us when this huge [cloud] thing sucked up the oxygen for miles out. And it was a very frightening thing.' Plewright went back north in the aftermath of G2 to salvage equipment. 'There were very strict rules about what you could do and couldn't do, but I didn't understand when I went ashore. The whole area around where the bomb had gone off was glazed glass. And as you took a step, your foot sank through it.' Loading Plewright retired from the Australian navy in 1957 and is grateful to have survived into old age. But cancer, a stroke and other illnesses have dogged him; many of his navy mates did not survive beyond late middle age. Some suffered similar problems to Japanese survivors of the radiation blast; many believed their military exposure was the cause. So did Plewright, who would later become president of the Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association. 'After I got out of the navy, I had a little grain of sand that I felt in my neck and I would be scratching it until I was told to go and see a doctor. I put it off, but after a couple of years it was the size of a lemon. I wore a 14.5-inch neck shirt but with the growth I had to wear a 17-inch neck and my tie always disappeared to one side. So I went in and had surgery for a malignant growth. 'In a report that I had to give to the government [for recognition of the radiation injury], I told them about this. The remarks were that I did not seek medical attention because I was scared. I then suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Some years later, I had cancer of the bladder, and I'm happy to say that my oncologist, neurologist and my own GP got me through it. I've been seven years in remission. 'When William Penney, the father of the British bomb, came to Australia, he told the Australian Commonwealth that there was no danger to human or animal life. So much for, 'Nothing will happen to you.' 'I took our people through the royal commission and I battled with our government and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They were covering up – we were guinea pigs, there is no doubt about it.' Plewright reached out to a worldwide organisation called Labrats, which operates out of the UK and represents the 22,000 Commonwealth servicemen who worked on nuclear tests in Australia and the Pacific. Plewright is now one of its oldest members. 'A lot of us had tests taken of blood and urine at the time, which the British government denied ever existed,' Plewright says. 'We had so much evidence that the test results did exist, that they were given 21 days by the High Court in London to produce it. Twenty-four hours later they were produced.' The UK government has not yet compensated its nuclear test veterans, although in 2022 then-prime minister Rishi Sunak awarded a service medal to all veterans who served at Britain's nuclear tests, including Australians at Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Says Paul Grace, 'I'm pleased they made the medal available to Commonwealth veterans, both surviving and the next of kin of the deceased. It's a shame it took as long as it did.' The legacy of the nuclear tests has recently been exposed by samples gathered by Edith Cowan University scientists and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Marine-sediment samples from several of the Montebello Islands sent to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the chief regulator for historic nuclear testing sites, have revealed plutonium levels up to 4500 times higher than samples taken 1000 kilometres away on the West Australian coast. The findings were published in June this year in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Last month, Grace led an expedition of historians and servicemen relatives to the Montebello Islands 'to explore the human impact' of nuclear testing. 'For us, it was a personal pilgrimage to understand the experiences of our forebears. Three of us are descendants of Montebello nuclear veterans, including me and Maxine Goodwin, the daughter of RAAF leading airman Max Ward, who died at 49 of blood cancer.' Plewright remains bitter about the protracted delay in heeding Australia's nuclear victims. 'I think of all the lies that I received from the Australian government and the royal commission, which did not act properly or ask our members relevant questions. Nothing was done, only millions of dollars spent to make them look good.' Suicide bombs As the Hiroshima exhibition event draws to a close, Yahata and Plewright are sitting in a corner, laughing and giggling with their interpreter as they share confidences. Soon Yahata will board a plane back to Japan, before departing again for another 80th anniversary event in the US. Yahata's visit was partly hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which originated in Melbourne and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. 'Everything is jeopardised by these global suicide bombs,' says ICAN co-founder Tilman Ruff, a Melbourne-based, public-health physician who attended the exhibition. 'To think of Hiroshima's rivers being full of blackened bodies, of people who survived calling for water, of fragments of people's cups, clothes and bedding.' When he gives his speech, Ruff stands in front of a 12-metre-high nuclear missile prop: 'It's inflatable and, surprisingly, it fits into one suitcase.' Ruff has visited Japan and Hiroshima many times and spoken widely with anti-nuclear organisations on the health dangers of radiation, including that of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. On one trip to Hiroshima, Ruff says he was drawn to a huge camphor tree, one of several trees obliterated by the blast, but whose roots miraculously survived and resprouted. 'I was told this tree was planted 500 years ago,' he says. 'It regrew against all expectations – it's still sprouting forth in every direction, and I was moved to see that beneath its boughs is a kindergarten. 'Yet arsenals are being expanded, and multiple nuclear-armed nations are in open conflict. The overall picture of disarmament is bleak. It's stalled and going backwards.' Ruff says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a perfect opportunity to lead the way in signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 'This is the year if Albo is serious,' says Ruff. 'He was the major champion at the 2018 Labor conference when he put forward a resolution that if Labor got into government, he would sign and ratify the treaty. He's been returned by a massive political majority, so will Australia find the courage to act?' Loading Meanwhile, Ruff says, ICAN has a proud record of giving voice to witnesses who can describe exactly what nuclear weapons inflict on human beings – witnesses such as Yahata, Plewright and, importantly, Aboriginal survivors of nuclear testing in their homelands. 'The testimonies are more relevant today than they have ever been,' Ruff says. 'When they speak, you can hear a pin drop.' 'Who do you love? What do you love?' says Yahata at the end of her speech, carefully stressing each English word as she scans the crowd. 'If a single nuclear weapon was used now, mankind would cease to exist,' she tells them. 'All that I have left to do is to communicate the truth of the atomic bomb to the world, and to continue to sound the alarm bells.' She bows deeply. 'Thank you very much for listening.'
RTÉ News
06-07-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
Taoiseach 'deeply moved' by story of Hiroshima survivor in Japan
When the US warplane dropped a 4,400kg atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and 43 seconds later it detonated 600 metres above the city, eight-year-old Teruko Yahata was playing in her garden on what was a sunny August morning in 1945. The first indication of the enormity of what had just happened, she told Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Friday, was that the sky was suddenly and dramatically illuminated, in what she described as a blinding "bluish-white" light. The second indication was the rising black/grey nuclear cloud, which Ms Yahata said was "as if the heavens had become a huge flower". Then the force of the blast raced through her district, more than two kilometres from the point of detonation, and knocked her to the ground, causing her to lose consciousness. The atomic bomb dropped by the B-29 warplane, Enola Gay, triggered a powerful shockwave that levelled almost every structure within a radius of 1.5km. The intense heat it generated in-turn set off a firestorm that engulfed district after district. It is estimated that 70,000 people were obliterated immediately by the blast, with another 70,000 dying from 'radiation sickness' over the following months. More than half of the city's population was wiped out. Hiroshima had become the first city in the world to be targeted by a nuclear weapon and, to my amazement, Ms Yahata was steadily relating her incredible eye-witness testimony nearly eight decades later. I had spotted an unassuming, bespectacled woman, wearing a white cardigan and a pearl necklace over her dark dress, slipping into the office of Hiroshima Mayor, Kazumi Matsui, while Mr Martin was speaking with Japanese journalists. I'm not sure whether it was her purposeful stride that caught my attention, or the fact that she then carefully laid out a map of Hiroshima on a table. Either way, something made me enquire about this quiet and stylish woman at the back of the room. An official whispered to me: "She's one of the hibakusha" - a collective term which translates as "bomb-affected-people". Ms Yahata was introduced to the Taoiseach, and she first pointed out on her map where the epicentre, or more correctly hypocenter, of the blast was located, and how that related to her suburb. She had a strong voice and was speaking in English - a language she had mastered at the age of 83, so that she could dispense with translators and reach a wider audience directly. This small detail gave me a big insight into the petite, strong-willed woman sitting in front of us. Ms Yahata said she regained consciousness quickly after the atomic blast on 6 August 1945, and heard her mother's voice calling out for her. Like her city, Ms Yahata's childhood had just been blown to smithereens by the blast, and she'd now been catapulted into a nightmarish nuclear world. She told us that when she saw her mother: "I noticed that there were fragments of glass sticking out of her back, and her white dress was now stained bloody red." She witnessed her father carrying her great-grandmother on his back as he escaped their house. "There was so much smoke in there, that I could barely see the inside of the house. It had been turned upside down, and the shattered glass from the sliding doors was everywhere," she said. Ms Yahata remembered her mother praying as they left their ruined family home: "It was silent outside, and virtually all of the houses surrounding ours were destroyed." There was also fear, if not terror. "We thought that there was sure to be a second and, perhaps, a third bombing." Given that threat, and the intense destruction all around them, Ms Yahata's family decided to flee to the mountains where they had friends. But hunger stalked the land there, as the structures of society as they'd known it, were gone. Her direct testimony of eking out a life in a nuclear winter had a powerful impact on everyone in the room, including the Taoiseach. Mr Martin recounted afterwards how he'd been horrified as Ms Yahata described the hellish scenes she'd witnessed, including encountering people suffering from radiation burns with "skin peeling-off their arms". The Taoiseach said he had been deeply moved when Ms Yahata spoke of how her family, and so many others, faced starvation in those dark months after the bombing. He said she told him how, even to this day, she attaches huge significance to a bowl of rice - as she's never forgotten being given one by a stranger when she was starving as a child. Mr Martin said the purpose of his visit to Hiroshima had been to express sympathy to the victims, such as Ms Yahata, but also to reaffirm Ireland's strong and long-standing commitment to disarmament and denuclearisation. Against the backdrop of the bombing of Iran by Israel and the US, with the stated aim of destroying its capacity to make nuclear weapons, Mr Martin described the world today as "a very dangerous place." "If Iran… was ever to secure a nuclear weapon, then the prospect of proliferation for the nuclear weapons within the Middle East, for example, would grow very significantly," he contended. The Taoiseach suggested that there was a paradox about humanity, given its ability to exhibit both "incredible ingenuity" and "profound stupidity" as evidenced by its ever increasing capacity to develop weapons which could destroy the planet. "I was at the AI [Artificial Intelligence] summit in Paris… one person spoke about the application of AI to warfare, which would really be on a different level altogether, in terms of the destruction that could be wreaked on humankind." While in Hiroshima, the Taoiseach spent most of his time in the company of the city's Mayor, Kazumi Matsui. In blistering midday sunshine, they laid a wreath and stood together at the cenotaph for the victims, a sculptured arc designed to provide shelter for the souls of those killed by the bomb. In the near distance, we could see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, commonly called the A-Bomb Dome. This iconic building was left ruined by the nuclear strike but somehow is still standing - quite a feat given it was just 160m from the hypocentre of the explosion. The Taoiseach said he learned a lot from Mayor Matsui - not just about what happened in August 1945, but also how the population recovered from the collective trauma. "I think the mayor made a very good point when he said to me… that you have to break the cycle of hate. "And that's the key issue, that the people of Japan had a huge hate visited upon them. You must learn to stop hating, and if you can do that, then you can build peace," he said. But undoubtedly the most memorable person of all those introduced to the Taoiseach in Hiroshima was Teruko Yahata. "The thought that came through, [while] speaking to her, was the resilience of humankind. It's quite extraordinary that she survived," she said. The Taoiseach is among many impressed by Teruko Yahata. In 2013 she was appointed by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Ambassador for Denuclearisation - an official recognition of her tireless campaign work. Yet, while she has spoken to any and every nationality about her incredible story, it turns out there was a special reason why Ms Yahata really wanted to talk to Ireland's Taoiseach. Mr Martin told us after their meeting: "As it transpires, her daughter married an Irishman living in the United Kingdom, and she has a grandson, Conor. She said [he was] named after a great Irish King… so the world is indeed a small place." It clearly is a small place, just as it is a vulnerable place, as Ms Yahata has testified for 80 years.
The Mainichi
23-06-2025
- General
- The Mainichi
News in Easy English: Hiroshima bombing survivors talk with students in London
LONDON -- Two people who survived the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing talked about their experiences to university students here on June 15. They told the students about the terrible things they saw and felt. They also asked the students to help work for peace. The two survivors are Teruko Yahata, 87, and Kunihiko Iida, 82. They both were children when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Yahata was just 8 years old at the time. She was at home with her family about 2.5 kilometers from the bomb. The strong bomb explosion threw her about 5 meters. She had blood on her face and was hurt. She told the students, "My happy life changed completely. After the bomb, we had no food. We had to eat frogs and insects." Yahata said clearly, "If people use these terrible weapons, we can't live on Earth anymore. I want you young people to understand. Please try hard to make peace." Iida was 3 years old when the bombing happened. His family was also in Hiroshima. Sadly, he lost all his family. He also got sick many times because of the bomb. Iida said to the students, "People in other countries still don't know enough about the terrible things from atomic bombs. Near the center of the bombing, everything burned and turned to white powder. Nothing was left. It is very important to tell people about this horror so that no country uses these bombs again." Students felt deeply moved when they heard these stories. A student named George Beveridge, 24, said, "Now I understand clearly how terrible nuclear weapons are. It may be difficult for Britain to stop having nuclear weapons now, but our government can talk to other countries about stopping." Yahata and Iida continue to tell people around the world about what happened. 2025 marks 80 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. The two spoke in Paris on June 13, and in London on June 16. (Japanese original by Hojin Fukunaga, London Bureau) Vocabulary survivor: a person who lives after something very dangerous happens atomic bomb: a very strong bomb using nuclear power, causing great damage and heat peace: having no war, living safely without fighting nuclear weapon: a dangerous bomb or weapon using nuclear power explosion: when a bomb or gas suddenly breaks open with fire and noise government: the group of people who run or lead a country horror: very strong feeling of fear or shock
