I Would Be A Witness for Hiroshima

I wish, as a survivor, / To be a real human being;

Besides, as a poor mother, / Fearing some day when the blue sky

Above the red-cheeked children

And those thousands with promising futures

Be smashed to atoms all of a sudden,

Endangering their bright futures

And now, to be repeated at the nation's cost,

I resolved to shed tears supposed to be shed on dead bodies,

Afresh for those people living now,

Declaring against all war, first of all.

Even if I should perchance be punished under a disgraceful name—

From a mother's protest against death for her own son's sake,

I should never dare to hide myself, never!

Because the day was too much impressed on my retina,

The hellish day of that fatal blaze.

It was August 6 in 1945, / At an early hour of the day;

Men and women were to start their daily work, / When unexpectedly

The city and all were blown away; / Blistered hideously, each and all;

The seven rivers were filled with naked corpses.

Imagine a tale of the inferno / Which he caught a glimpse of once, And wants to tell of himself, when he is called by the lord of the inferno,

I would go wherever it is, as a witness of the Hiroshima Tragedy, That I might proclaim its misery; / I would sing for my life

"No more wars on the earth!"

The nationwide campaign awakened the public, and public opinion in turn drove the government to pick up the long-neglected issue of medical aid to the atom-bomb survivors. In 1956 the Hiroshima ABomb Hospital was founded and the next year the Act Concerning the Medical Treatment for the A-Bomb Survivors was promulgated. However, the law provides only token medical care to the survivors who have been acknowledged as such by the authorities.

In the late 1950's and early 60's, Britain, France and then the People's Republic of China joined the nuclear camp and intensified nuclear weapon diplomacy through successive tests. With this trend, the campaign against nuclear weapon started losing the effect which had once had a world-wide impact. The organization to ban A- and H-Bombs was infested by ideological infighting that eventually led to its split. While the survivors' political and social situation thus worsened, there continued the persistent ominous terror created by the bombing.

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