‘Atomic bomb hell cannot happen again,’ say Japan’s last survivors

It was early in the morning, but already hot. As she wiped the sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake looked for some shade. As she did so, she saw a blinding light, unlike anything the 15-year-old girl had ever seen before. It was 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.

“I felt like the sun had gone down – and I felt dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Chieko’s hometown. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in war. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, the Allied forces engaged in World War II were still at war with Japan.

Warning: This article contains graphic content that may be disturbing to some readers.

Chieko was a student, but like many older students, she had been sent to work in factories during the war. She staggered to school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burned. She rubbed used oil, found in the home economics classroom, on their wounds.

“It was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the other,” Chieko said.

“The older students who survived were ordered to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated (my classmates) with my own hands. I felt very bad for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It has been almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims, called hibakusha in Japan, to tell their stories.

Many of them suffered health problems, lost loved ones and faced discrimination because of the atomic attack. Now they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can serve as a warning for the future.

After the heartbreak, new life began to return to her town, Chieko said.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she said, “but in the spring of the following year, the sparrows came back.”

Throughout her life, Chieko says she has come close to death many times, but she has come to believe that she was kept alive by the power of something greater.

The majority of hibakusha still alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As hibakusha—literally meaning “bomb-affected people”—age, global conflicts intensify. For them, the risk of nuclear escalation seems more real than ever.

“My body is shaking and tears are flowing,” says Michiko Kodama, 86, when she thinks about the conflicts shaking the world today, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Gaza.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to happen again. I feel a crisis.”

Michiko is a passionate advocate for nuclear disarmament and says she is speaking out so that the voices of those who died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to future generations.

“I think it’s important to hear first-hand accounts from hibakusha who experienced the bombings firsthand,” she said.

Michiko was at school – she was seven years old – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, a bright light was coming toward us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how windows shattered and splintered throughout the classroom, debris scattering everywhere, “impaling the walls, the desk, the chairs.”

“The ceiling collapsed. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the explosion, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction, she could see trapped hands and legs.

“I crawled from the classroom to the hallway and my friends were like, ‘Help me.’”

When her father came to pick her up, he carried her home on his back.

A black rain, “like mud,” fell from the sky, Michiko said. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She could never forget the journey home.

“It was a hellish scene,” Michiko said. “The people fleeing towards us had almost all their clothes completely burned and their flesh was melting.”

She remembers seeing a girl, all alone, the same age as her. She was badly burned.

“But her eyes were wide open,” Michiko says. “That girl’s eyes still pierce me. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is etched in my mind and soul.”

Michiko would not be alive today if her family had stayed in their old house, located just 350 meters from the site of the explosion. About 20 days before, her family had moved, a few kilometers away, but it saved her life.

The number of lives lost in Hiroshima by the end of 1945 is estimated to have been around 140,000.

In Nagasaki, bombed by the United States three days later, at least 74,000 people were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2 km from the epicentre of the Nagasaki explosion. He was 5 years old at the time and suffered burns on part of his face. His mother, who suffered more serious injuries, had protected him from the impact of the explosion.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission to prevent the creation of other hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently traveled to New York to deliver a speech at the United Nations warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after passing out from the impact of the explosion, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil drum. For years, he believed it was this oil drum that caused the explosion and the damage around him.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to hide the fact that it was a nuclear attack from him – but every time he mentioned it, they cried.

Not all injuries were immediately visible. In the weeks and months after the explosion, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning, and rates of leukemia and cancer increased.

For years, survivors faced discrimination in society, especially when it came to finding a partner.

“We don’t want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,” I was told,” Michiko explains.

But later she got married and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died of the disease in 2011.

“I feel alone, angry and scared, and I wonder if maybe it will be my turn next time,” she says.

Kiyomi Iguro, another atomic bomb survivor, was 19 when the bomb hit Nagasaki. She said she married a distant relative and suffered a miscarriage, which her mother-in-law blamed on the atomic bomb.

“Your future is scary.” That’s what she told me.

Kiyomi says she was asked not to tell her neighbors that she was a victim of the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly passed away.

But until she was 98, she would go to the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 a.m. – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi later taught Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow over his identity, he says. But he then realized he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humanity.

“The feeling of being a special person was born in me,” Sueichi explains.

It is something that all hibakusha feel is common: an enduring determination to ensure that the past never becomes the present.

The Atomic People will air on Wednesday 31 July on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

If you are affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, you can get support and advice through the BBC Action Line.