Japan's survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known referred to as Hibakusha. Photograph of Hiroshima hibakusha Shuntaro Hida, 90. (Photo by Tsuyoshi Nishimura, Mainichi Shimbun)TOKYO (Mainichi Shimbun), August 7, 2007:
"The Americans are peddling a great lie with respect to the atomic bomb. They say they used it to prevent the war's death toll from rising. They're still trying to hide what they really used it for -- to test how much impact it would have."
Hiroshima hibakusha Dr. Shuntaro Hida, 90, peppers his lectures with this and similar denunciations of the U.S. Besides treating hibakusha outpatients at two hospitals in Saitama Prefecture, Hida crisscrosses the country delivering some 80 lectures a year.
One day in May he suddenly collapsed.
He'd noticed some time ago that his physical condition was deteriorating, and shortly before the collapse he'd cut back his hospital work from once a week to once every two weeks. Doctors suspected a brain illness. Fearful of a second attack, Hida slowed his lecturing pace, reducing his appearances from twice to once a week. "I can't be a front-line activist any more," he tells me over the phone, his voice quavering. "I've reached my limit."
In person, he seems as hale and hearty as ever. He's been lecturing all summer without a break. On August 5, he was in Hiroshima to attend the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, in which he's been active since its founding in 1955.
The slow pace of progress vexes him. "I give my lectures, and people tell me how awful it is, but I get no sense of a groundswell of feeling that nuclear weapons must be abolished."
At the time of the bombing he was an army doctor. Helplessly he watched as people died before his eyes. After the war he opened a clinic in Tokyo. Hearing he was from Hiroshima, hibakusha came to him from all over the Kanto area. They had survived, but lived in fear of a horrified recoil from employers and marriage partners. Many kept their hibakusha identity a closely guarded secret.
Hida figures he's examined some 6,000 hibakusha patients to date. "I'm the only one they can talk to about what it's like to be a secret hibakusha, about the discrimination they face, their personal circumstances, their thoughts concerning the bombing. There's nothing for me to do except go on."
Many hibakusha find the bombing they lived through has cut them off from society. Hida in his lectures does more than simply condemn nuclear weapons. He seeks to deepen understanding of the hibakusha and ease their way back into an active social life.
By Fusajiro Takada, Mainichi Shimbun
Source: Mainichi Japan
