‘Then the city started to burn, the fires were chasing me’ – 80 years on, Hiroshima survivors describe how the atomic blast echoed down generations

Posted on 25 July 2025 • Arts and social sciences

I’m not sure if it was the effect of the atomic bomb, but I have always had a weak body, and when I was born, the doctor said I wouldn’t last more than three days.

These are the words of Kazumi Kuwahara, a third-generation hibakusha – a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 80 years ago, says Elizabeth Chappell, Affiliated Researcher, The Open University.

Kuwahara, who still lives in Hiroshima, was in London on May 6 this year to give a speech at a Victory Over Japan Day conference organised and hosted by the University of Westminster. Now 29, she told the conference that she felt she had been “fighting illness” throughout her 20s. When she was 25, she needed abdominal surgery to remove a tumour which post-surgery tests showed was benign.

When she found out about the operation, her grandmother, Emiko Yamanaka – now aged 91 and a direct survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – told her: “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.” Kuwahara explained:

Ever since I was young, whenever I became seriously ill, my grandmother would repeatedly say: ‘I’m sorry.’ The atomic bombing didn’t end on that day and the survivors – we hibakusha – continue to live within its shadow.

Read the full article on The Conversation

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