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Special Report | LAST UPDATE January 8, 2009 | |
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Mr Yamashita, what was your experience of the atomic bombing? I was six years old at the time. On that day, I was left at home with my mother and my older sister. This was unusual as on a summer day like that because children would usually go to the mountains to catch insects or play in the river, but for a reason I cannot remember I was playing at home. When the bomb was dropped at 11:02 am, many people were making preparations for lunch and were going out in the street to get fuel for their charcoal burners. My neighbours had heard there were planes coming so they wanted to go to the air raid shelter, but my mother was sceptical because it wasn't unusual to have planes flying overhead. My other sister had heard an alert on the radio, however, and convinced my mother to go. Just as we were about to leave the house, I saw a blinding light and things falling into the air. My mother pulled me to the ground and covered me with her body. After a while there was complete silence, so I got up and everything was gone--doors, chairs, even roof tiles. We decided to run to the public air raid shelter, even though my sister had a prosthetic leg, the kind which was very heavy back then. Normally she had difficulty walking and she had never ran with her prosthetic leg before, but on the way to the air raid shelter she ran even faster than me. It was mid-summer, so many of the children had been playing in the mountains outside without their shirts or long pants on. After the bombing, they returned with severe burns on their skin, and they suffered for many days—not only from the burns, but also from the maggots that started to form on their skin. Because it was wartime, people didn't have much food to begin with. But after the bomb we had nothing at all, so we ate grass to survive. My father, who worked at the Mitsubishi shipyard, had to work processing all the dead bodies, because the only men left in town were either old or just children. Everyday, he had to go to the centre of town and work very long hours, and after a few days he said he felt like all his teeth were falling out. He died not long later--I’m sure from the intense radiation exposure he suffered. Later, the family decided to go to a rural area, because we heard there was some food in the countryside. So on August 17, we travelled through the city to a rural area, which gave us a double exposure to the radiation—but of course at that time nobody even knew that the kind of bomb that had been dropped on us was atomic, much less about the long term effects of radiation. Why did you decide to leave Japan for Mexico? From about the age of 20, I was attracted to Mexico through music I heard and travel notes I read. I wanted to see the ruins of Mayan and Aztec civilisations. After the bombing, I worked at the Nagasaki Hibakusha Hospital for ten years. Through working there, I saw many people suffering the effects of the bombing. Some staff were available 24 hours a day, but very few worked at night, like I did, so I had to help with many things. I helped dissect bodies, and I saw children born with very small heads and or only one arm. I did this for ten years. Many factors relating to the hospital affected my decision to leave Japan, but the decisive one was when a man with the same blood type as me was admitted with leukaemia. I donated a lot of blood to him, but he died anyway. After witnessing so many deaths of my fellow citizens, I thought, “this is how I’m going to die, too.” So I wanted to disappear--not just from the city but from Japan—and go to a new place where I didn’t know anybody and where I could forget about my own tragedy. In 1968, the Olympics were held in Mexico and I had the opportunity to work there, so I took the chance to quit my job, and headed to the country that had long attracted me. What was it like being Japanese, and particularly being a Hibakusha, in a foreign country? The reason I went to Mexico was to forget about my own tragedy, but soon after I arrived it was Mexico’s Independence Day festival. There was an air show and every time a plane flew overhead, I would remember the bombings. So I could not forget. When I went to Mexico, I was working at a newspaper covering the Olympics. Before the Olympics began, there was a student movement that the government suppressed by massacring many students and other ordinary people, and this also brought back memories and made me realise how evil wars are. After the Olympics, I had to find somewhere else to work, so I began to study Spanish intensively, taking the advice of a friend of mine who told me that to learn the language I should forget Japanese completely for two years and and not speak a word of it. After 2 years of studying on my own and talking and listening to people as much as possible, my Spanish had become good enough to work as a translator, and I worked as one ever since until my retirement 10 years ago. What has been the reaction of the Mexican people to you as a Hibakusha, and how have they reacted when you have spoken out? When I went to Mexico, I married a Mexican lady. At first, her parents were against her marrying a Hibakusha, but finally they gave us their permission—emphasizing, however, that they didn't want us to have a Hibakusha child. I myself was scared of having children, so that was okay with me. In Mexico, I started to give testimony when a friend who worked at a television station asked me if I would talk about my experience on TV. It was only a short five-minute program, but a lot of people reacted. Now when August approaches every year, people ask me to give testimony, mostly at universities or for student groups. There is always a lot of initial reaction, but listeners seem they forget pretty soon after. About twelve years ago, I spoke at the Monterrey University of Mexico, which is about three hours north of Mexico City. When I gave my testimony, there where about 300 students present, which was largest crowd ever at that campus. The students that came to listen were very interested, and there were many questions asked at the Q&A session afterwards. Some of the students really made sure that the story was told to other people long after I left the campus. However, other times I have met with people who are uninterested, even after if I explain the bombings and the suffering. Has living outside of Japan given you a different perspective on Japan and the actions of the US leading up to the atomic bombings? My perspectives haven’t changed , but I have been in Mexico so long that Japan has forgotten about me. More than forty years after the bombing, in 1996, I heard about medical treatment or benefits available for Hibakusha for the first time. Now I go to San Francisco to get examined every two years. All the doctors there are from Hiroshima, so I feel that the people of Hiroshima have made it possible for me to get help. I went back to Nagasaki once and visited a hospital there, and heard that doctors regularly go to Brazil to examine Hibakusha living in that country. I asked, “what about Mexico?”, only to be told that “there’s only one of you, so we can’t go all that way.”
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