“Hibakusha are a rapidly aging population. I too am now a senior citizen and my days are limited. Now is the time for hibakusha survivors to step forward – however difficult – and tell future generations about the hellscape that we endured.”

“’Look after your mother,’ my father told me. It was past 8 o’clock in the evening; the train platform was dark. My mother, brother and I were on our way to our grandmother’s home in Hiroshima to evacuate from the B-25 air raids in Tokyo. My father stayed behind as he worked for the Navy Department. I was 10 years old at the time.

I peered back at my mother. Her eyes welled up with tears, but she kept a straight face. The train slowly left the platform, and so began our 18-hour journey to Hiroshima. It was July of 1944, a little over a year before the atomic bomb attack.

I was bullied relentlessly in Hiroshima, for speaking in a Tokyo dialect. The local kids seemed to take a special liking to the way I said ‘iya’ – or ‘no.’ Food scarcity was also a problem. Rice was in low supply, so we survived off potatoes, kabocha squash and wheat bran paste. ‘Hoshigarimasen, katsumadewa (we will not want, until we win the war)’ was a common slogan back then.

Starting in April 1945, students were evacuated further into the outskirts of Hiroshima. I joined the group evacuation in July 1945, only to be met by further bullying. My mother had packed a secret stash of parched soybeans and wheat for me on the morning of my departure – sure enough, a group of sixth graders found it and demanded that I hand it over. I refused. They beat me into submission. The beatings continued every night. A teacher saw my deteriorating health and recommended that I go see a doctor in central Hiroshima, so I returned back home. A week later, I was exposed to the atomic bomb.

Luckily, my mother, brother and I survived the bomb. We carved out a living space in a nearby air raid shelter. We hadn’t heard from our father, however. ‘You know, the air raids in Tokyo have been terrible,’ my mother would often say. We expected the worst. One night, I woke up unusually early and crawled out of our air raid shelter to wash my little brother’s diapers in the dark. I stoked a fire to warm my hands. Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching.

‘Mutsuhiko?’

I lifted a lit piece of firewood and squinted into the darkness. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

It was my father, whom I hadn’t seen since he saw us off at the train platform over a year ago. He had been searching in the dark for us for hours on end, and was led to us by my small campfire.”