Proponents of Peace: A-Bomb Survivor Speaks
by Julie Johnson and Catharine Richert

It was to be expected that the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibit would move many of its observers. The display opened last Sunday at the Fava Gallery and has proven to be profoundly prophetic and eerily relevant to the events of the past week. Perhaps even more fitting was the talk given Monday night by Nagano Etsuko, a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing.
“This exhibit is for educating people, just letting know what happened, so that we can all work on…world peace. That’s the reason I’m here. It’s not just that I’m presenting my personal experiences, but there’s a strong message here,” Nagano said.
Fifty-six years ago, on August 6 and 9, bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an American attempt to end the Pacific War. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered. The lasting repercussions of the bombings created a generation of hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors and their stories.
The collection of images displayed at the Fava is a sample of the collection displayed in the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Oberlin seemed to be an ideal place to display the exhibit, as the town was the first in Ohio to be an Atomic Bomb Free Zone. This dedication is apparent in the course “Living with the Bomb” co-taught by Wendy Kozol and Ann Sherif.
The purpose of the exhibit is manifold. Not only do graphic photographs of burn and radiation victims show the physical ramifications of a radiation bomb, but text accompanying the images provide the scientific explanation of the event. Much of the exhibit consists of charts, diagrams, maps, artifacts and personal accounts of the bombing, situating the exhibit somewhere between the realm of art and technical science.
Drawings and sketches done by witnesses are in an adjoining room. “Thousands of people made drawings and sent them into the Museum. All of them were done without any assistance…no artists helped them,” Diana Roose, coordinator of the exhibit, said. “They were all done as amateurs and survivors depicting what they wanted to say about what their experiences were.”
Nagano also spoke of the drawings. Specifically she pointed to a painting of a man wading through dead bodies as he holds his hands in front of him. At first, it seems that there is something dripping from his hands, but upon closer examination, it is his skin loosely hanging from his hands. Nagano mentioned that this was a typical effect of the blast. “The man’s skin was all just hanging, it was torn, the pieces of skin were hanging from his fingers, and he is lifting his arms because when you just let them go like this [puts arms at her side], it really hurts.”
Additional works by witnesses included images of burning houses, parades of victims stampeding for shelter and people carrying loved-ones.
For those removed from atrocities, whether by time or circumstance, understanding comes about through images. Sound bites of information received from exhibitons or the news provide a fragmented vision. The missing parts can only be filled in by listening to those accounts like the one given by Nagano on Monday night to people of Oberlin and the surrounding community.
Monday night’s lecture began with a documentary film. The original footage was shot by a director hired by the Japanese government, but during the American Occupation the film was deemed classified by the U.S. military. Twenty years later, the footage was released and edited into a documentary by director Eric Barnow. The documentary was relentless in its layering of image after image of the damage and injuries caused by the bomb. The shock and power of the almost unbearable brutal honesty in the footage was apparent by the silence that followed.
Nagano, visibly distressed by the film, which she had not seen before, began her speech with an apology. “First, I want to express my apology for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,” Nagano said. This impassioned apology took many off guard.
“It disarmed me. I relaxed and could listen to what she said without guilt,” said Jane Harty, a resident of Aurora. “I thought, yes, I can breathe and I can listen.”
Nagano, now 72, was 16 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. She was working as a laborer cutting metal for fighter planes, two miles from the hypocenter. Nagano remembers a flash of light, her mouth filled with dust, being unable to open her eyes. When she regained sight, they were telling everyone to go home, though there were also reports that the area she comes from was destroyed.
Concerned about her family, Nagano began walking in the direction of her home. Meeting her father along the way, the two found their house destroyed and began searching air-raid shelters for the rest of their family. They found her brother, Seiji, 9, by the name patched on his clothes, for his face was swollen to unrecognition. “I asked, ‘Are you my brother Seiji?’ He nodded, but his face was so swollen, so I had to ask again — ‘Are you my little brother Seiji?’” Nagano said.
Nagano’s father tried to pick Seiji up, but his hands stuck to the boy’s skin, loosened by the burns. Instead, they carried him home on a board. They met up with her mother and sister who had been hiding in the mountains at the ruins of their house. At the sight of wounded Seiji, her mother burst into tears. “I am so sorry, Seiji. You must be in so much pain. The fire must have been so hot,” Nagano said.
Seiji died two days later. Nagano’s sister, Kuniko, 13, died a month later. Their father died three years later, and though his death was not attributed to the A-bomb disease, Nagano believes differently. “His ashes were different. They were black and white, and other ashes were just white,” Nagano said.
Nagano had begged her brother and sister to come back to Nagasaki when they had been sent to the country, as many children were during the war. Nagano says that to this day she feels responsible for their deaths, which is a large part of the reason she decided to become a kataribe, a storyteller.
Thelma Collins, 87, another resident of Aurora who attended the talk on Monday, has been through much of the same history as Nagano, though from a U.S. perspective. Collins remembers when the bomb was dropped.
“I thought, what a terrible thing to do. I would never say it was all right,” said Collins. “They should visit schools and teach the children.”
The quest to let future generations bear witness to the devastation of war is a primary goal of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki exhibit, as well as Nagano herself. She feels that an oral history is equally as important as the visual history the exhibit provides.
“Those people, you have to see pictures of all this, since they are not here anymore,” Nagano said, “So pictures are really important as well as stories. They really depict what I saw and what I heard from people.”
Ultimately, it is the hope of all involved with the project that the exhibit will promote the universal desire for world peace. Ironically, as many who had attended Monday night’s lecture or the exhibit felt the next day, this goal is far from a reality. The emotions evoked by the stories told through Nagano’s visit and through the images at the Fava Gallery are timeless.

TheHiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibit will be on display at the Fava until Sept. 22.