Meeting Keijiro Matsushima, atomic bomb survivor
On Friday morning, I attended a class on Peace Education. One of the speakers I heard was a man named Keijiro Matsushima. Mr. Keijiro is a hibakusha. That is the word that the Japanese use for survivors of the atomic bomb. Mr. Keijiro was a high school student in Hiroshima, sitting in a classroom on the morning of August 6, 1945. He was looking out the window when he saw two planes flying very high in the sky. What happened a few seconds later changed his life forever.
As he described the terrible things he saw that day and in the days that followed, I found it hard to even comprehend so much suffering. He told us how, in the years that followed, hibakusha were looked down upon by other Japanese, many of whom mistakenly believed that the symptoms of radiation poisoning were a contagious disease that they could catch from contact with the survivors.
Over the years, this discrimination has stopped, and hibakusha are no longer looked down upon in Japan. Most of the remaining hibakusha experienced the atomic bombing as children, and are in their seventies or older. Mr. Keijiro, who told his tragic story in such a quiet, gentle way, feels that it is his responsibility to share it with others. He does this in order to try to insure that atomic weapons are never used again, anywhere, anytime, against any people in any country in the world, ever. Nobody who hears his story can help but believe in the truth of this message.
