By Carola Rico
“Speaking of world peace is easy, achieving it is not easy; you have to work hard. You need to raise your voice and say, ‘No to nuclear weapons.’” This is what Yasuaki Yamashita Takeno, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, says.
As part of the Mexican Culture seminar at the Sanmiguelense Institute, Yamashita gave an account as a survivor of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki 76 years ago. The conference took place on February 24, on the very day that Russia launched its first missiles against Ukraine.
On August 6, 1945, Harry S. Truman, president of the United States, ordered a nuclear attack on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an act without precedent in the history of mankind. As the survivors age, the devastation of the atomic bombs quietly becomes part of history. However, both cities and the survivors continue to pass on their memories to prevent a repeat of the tragedy. Yamashita now lives in San Miguel de Allende, and speaks perfect Spanish. He is originally from Nagasaki, and was six years old when he experienced the bombing. He says that it is still not easy to talk about this powerful experience, but he is convinced that it is an obligation to talk about it because no one, he says, should suffer what he suffered.
He reminds us that the consequences of the atomic bomb continue to this day, and the survivors still suffer physically, mentally, and psychologically. Yamashita pointed out that the world situation is currently becoming fraught, and what he experienced could happen again anywhere in the world.
His story began on the morning of August 9, 1945. It was common for children to go out to the mountains to hunt for insects because they had no toys to entertain themselves. That morning, Yamashita couldn’t go with his friends, so he stayed near his house, where his mother was preparing the midday meal. Suddenly, a neighbor passed by and said that a plane was mysteriously flying overhead, and that they should be careful. One of his sisters came to his house and said the same thing—that a mysterious plane was flying through the city. Then his mother brought Yamashita inside the house to take refuge. Suddenly there was a tremendous light, as if a thousand lightning bolts had all struck at the same time. This is how Yamashita describes it—like an unimaginable and intense light. His mother covered him with her body. Then there was a very strong explosion, and they felt like thousands of things were flying above them. When the explosion ended, there was an overwhelming silence, nothing could be heard. When they got up, they saw the tremendous destruction that was all around.
They stayed in the house for 15 minutes, until his mother decided to take her children to the community shelter on the mountain. When they arrived, many neighbors were already there. No one understood what had happened, because they had never seen destruction like that. They had heard that a bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima days before, but they couldn’t understand what that meant.
There were no doctors, no nurses, no medicine. Yamashita saw a friend of his killed by the bomb, and it was terrible to lose someone so special in that way. Days passed, and all the residents remained in shock; no one could utter a word. There was also no food in Nagasaki, so they were starving.
His mother took them to the countryside to some of her relatives to get food. They walked and passed near the explosion. The landscape was filled with corpses, everything was black, the people who had survived walked about like ghosts, as if they had no soul. When they arrived at their relatives’, they realized there was not enough food, so they had to walk back. Once again they saw that horrible landscape, horrible images, difficult for Yamashita to describe. But they needed to survive, there was no choice.
Yamashita says that the suffering was not only at the moment of the explosion, but the consequences that followed. After high school he began to work in the hospital near where the atomic bomb had exploded, and no one there had any idea of the effects that this nuclear explosion had caused. He began to experience health problems: he vomited blood and could not work. The doctors did many tests, but they could not find the reason for his discomfort. Every six months he lost blood and suffered tremendous anemia. Later, when he began to recover his health, he returned to work at the hospital on a regular basis. He saw how people died daily from cancer and leukemia, and that’s when he realized that he was a survivor. It was difficult for him to continue working in that hospital because of the deaths he witnessed. He also began to suffer from discrimination, as people said that the survivors of the bomb could not marry or start a family because they thought that nuclear radiation was contagious. Because of that, many women and men decided to leave Nagasaki; only then were they able to start a family. Many of the men and women who stayed in the city committed suicide because they could not bear such discrimination.
Yamashita left Japan in 1968. He came to Mexico to work at the Olympics, and decided to stay. He did not want to talk about the atomic bomb, much less say that he was a survivor. His health worsened again. He began to vomit blood and faint, but the Mexican doctors also could not determine why.
In 1995, he received a call from the son of a friend who knew that he was a survivor of the atomic bomb. He was asked to go to the boy’s school and talk about his experience, but Yamashita found it impossible to do that because he was still suffering from the consequences of that event. The young student insisted, because he felt that it was very important for students to understand what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Yamashita finally accepted. He suffered greatly in telling his experience, but he was able to finish speaking. He began to feel that his suffering was diminishing; he felt relief, and understood that it was important to talk about this in order to heal. He also realized that he had an obligation to recount the event so the world would know what happened.
That is why Yamashita now speaks at every opportunity, to make everyone aware of the consequences of these terrible bombs in destroying humanity. Other survivors have also shared their story with young people because they consider it important that younger generations understand what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The message of this atomic bomb survivor, 76 years later, is a warning and a call for peace. Yamashita insists that talking about peace is easy, but achieving it is difficult—you need to work hard to obtain it. Yamashita firmly believes that by raising your voice and committing to action, no matter how small, a world of peace can be achieved. He stresses that most of the planet does not want life to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
