HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By ICAN*, August 4, 2014 — At the Little White House in Key West Florida, on 16 May 2014, atomic bomb testimony was delivered in an official forum on Truman ground for the first time. Together with Clifton Truman Daniel, Hibakusha Stories organized an event where  and Yasuaki Yamashita were able to share their experience of being children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.

Setsuko Thurlow | Photo: ICAN

Thanks to support from the Truman Family, The Little White House and The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, atomic bomb survivors are now on the official record defending the position that nuclear weapons are immoral no matter in whose hands. The following is Setsuko Thurlow’s speech from that evening.

“On that fateful day, August 6, 1945, I was a 13 year old grade 8 student and a member of the Student Mobilization Program, we were at the Army headquarters, 1.8 km from ground zero.

About 30 of us students were assigned to work as decoding assistants of secret messages. At 8:15 AM, as Major Yanai was giving us a pep talk at the assembly, suddenly, I saw in the window a blinding bluish-white flash and I remember having the sensation of floating in the air.  As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building.  I could not move, and I knew I faced death.  I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries, “Mother, help me” “God, help me”.