Hiroshima Bombing Survivor Stories Focus of Upcoming Talk

Michiko Yamaoka

Certified Atomic Bomb Legacy Successor Michiko Yamaoka, whose mother and aunt experienced the World War II bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, will share stories about the event and its aftermath on Wednesday, Sept. 4 from noon to 12:50 p.m. in the University of Findlay Alumni Memorial Union’s north multipurpose room. Her talk will be free and open to the public.

Memoirs and other information from atomic bomb survivors, collected by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, will be shared by Yamaoka with the intention of preventing such future suffering and combating hatred with peaceful approaches.

Yamaoka’s aunt was in middle school, located less than a mile from the bomb’s epicenter. Her mother searched for her sister for two days amidst the rubble. The sister died shortly after she was found and taken home. Yamaoka’s mother suffered for years from radiation sickness, which required numerous hospital visits for “a series of ill-defined diseases.” Yamaoka said she did not know about her mother’s survival story until, as a sixth-grade student, she asked why her mother was sick so often.
As an A-Bomb Legacy Successor, Yamaoka works with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to share survivor stories and wishes on their behalf.

This lecture, presented by UF’s Language and Culture Program, is being made possible through collaboration with The Ohio State University’s School of Earth Science and East Asian Studies Center.