A Boy’s Story Sixty Years Later

On March 16, 2008, I came across an article in the Star Ledger called “Hiroshima, through one survivor’s eyes”. This related the experiences of Kenji Kitagawa in Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped. That time, he was 10 years old. Mr. Kitagawa is now 72 and he share his memories of the atomic bomb being dropped by an American B-29 bomber, flying 26,000 feet above his hometown. He was at school. He said: “There was an amazing roaring sound and the entire school started to collapse.” He said: “I remember falling and feeling like a hammer was hitting me over the head.” When he came too, the classroom was in total darkness. He ran home only to find his mother and brother dead because their wooden home had collapsed and burned. Of the 120 students in his 5th grade class, only 3 or 4 survived. The high temperature from the bomb literally ignited the street of Hiroshima. Mr. Kitagawa is part of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. He said it is hard to relieve the memories, which he had suppressed for so long. He is now on a mission to raise awareness of the destruction of nuclear weapons. His message is “Never again!”

This article would work well with my Unit on World War II. It gives a Japanese prospective. It humanizes history. This article shows the results of nuclear weapons on a child. It further shows the metamorphosis of the child into adulthood where he is not bitter but is helping to make mankind become more responsible for their actions.