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I am a Japanese artist.
I had an aunt who was exposed to the radiation from the atomic boming in Hiroshima.
Her dauter born the following year developed thyroid cancer,and her son born later had no brain.
During August 2011 ,I interviewed three female atomic bomb survivors at Nagasaki Genbaku Home,a welfare facility for atomic bomb survivors,in hopes to relay their thoughts from their experience to the younger generation.
The following is an abstract of one of them.
　　

Ms Kazuko Nagase
age 73 at the time of interview2011　　
＊Shiroyama Elementary school ・・500m far from the
　　center of atomic bomb attack.
I was a first -grader at Shiroyama Elementary school when I was exposed to the radiation of the atomic bomb .At that moment I thouht that sparks came out of my eyes. I fell uncontious being trapped under my collapsed house.(That was how I injured my leg and became disabled.) When I regained my conciousness and saw my aunt's badly crushed face,I fainted again. The next time I woke up ,I found myself in a bomb shelter.The world seemed to be turned upside down. Someone from beside, her entire body burnt red, her eyes and mouth deformed, called out "Kazuko".I looked carefully at her and found out that it was my mother.My elder sister also looked like my mother. Both of them died the next day. My fathe rtook their body to the waterless river.There,he spread the firewood that my mother used for cooking, placed their bodies on top, lit the firewood and burned their bodies. Most of my neighbors were also dead, so my father placed each body on top of the wood and burned the bodies as if he were baking potatoes. My younger brother had inhaled poisonaous gas. Purple spots formed all over his body ,and eruptions formed on his head here and there. He wanted water too ,but he, too ,eventually died.
Out of ten siblings ,only my elder brother, my eldest
sister and I survived. The remaining six either died or were missing. It rained often after the bombing ,so my father built a shack from timber and tin seets that he picked up. He eventually built a small house ,but he also died in November. Later my second brother sold that house for his living and I had no place to live. I grew up hopping from one house to another ,babysitting for a living.
When I was around 20,my elder brother build a small house and I lived in with him.
He eventually got married. I was extremely bullied by his wife. She really must have despised me. She took away my futon ,my personal seal and my 3000-yen allowance I was receiving monthly from the hospital for atomic bomb survivors. She forced me to work as a live -in at a garment factory in Osaka. In order words ,I was kicked out. There since I had no knowledge of dressmaking ,I was transferred to do housework labor.
I had to babysit ,do all of the house chres for the president's residence, prepare meals for 40 live-in workers and their families, and also clean up after each meal all by myself. It was hard work. Food was scarce. The live-in workers and I were able to eat fish just once in five years. .I worked too much that my bad leg got worse so I had to quit the job. I went back to Nagasaki and had a surgery. In the hospital there wrere a kind doctor and he introduced me to a vocational training school for the disabled. I was able to study dressmaking there. I was so happy then. I finally was able to get educated. I learned to sew business suits for men after living in the dormitory for a year.
But after that since there weren't any decent job offers and I had no place to go ,I've been at this care center since I was 37.
There weren't much happy moments in my life. and I can't recall how many times I thought of dying.

Ms Sizue Nobeta
age 92 at the time of interview2011
I was 26 when I was exposed to the atomic bomb 3.7 kilometers from the hypocenter. My family ran ashop that sold art,artframes and posters. When the war began I started to work in the accounting department of the military food agency headquarters. On the morning of August 9th,the day the atomic bomb was dropped, the sky was clear and the cicadas were buzzing aloud. The air-raid alerts were called off, so many people were outside. I went to get the ledger which was stored in the bomb shelter. Just when I enterd the shelter,there was a loud blast and I was blown away like a thrown ball. There was a strong flash in my eyes. I was thrusted to the shelter wall and fell down. When I returned to my workplace,every one was bleeding all over stabbed with shards of broken glass. I couldn't tell apart who was who. I started to pull out the glass fragments but the blood squirted out,so I had to wait a while for the blood to clot. I couldn't help but leave the small fragments.
What was once a blue sky had turned dark with some oranges flashes. That night,the sky of Nagasaki was bright red like a sea of fire. The next day the city was full of people rushing around picking up the dead and the injured into carts. One time,I thought that someone was carrying pieces of wood ,but actually they were charred arms and legs. There were people who lost their hair, people whose skin was sagging down. No words can describe it. It was a horrendous sight. Firebombs used in the air raids had a small range of destruction, but this atomic bomb had a wide range of massive destruction.
Two days later,I went to my workplace. There,an old man and woman were trying to stop a furiously crying little boy from jumping into fire. Apparently,the boy's mother was being burneｄ.・・・My father survived. He once told me that when he offered his water bottle to someone,that person's skin fell off and stuck to the water bottle.
I didn't get married because I heard that women who were exposed to radiation would give birth to a malformed child (microcephaly).
There's no sense making a child live through hardship being disabled. Only I syould be enough.

Ms Sizue Takayama
age 87 at the time of interview2011
I was 21 when the atomic bomb was dropped. I build torpedoes at the Mitsubishi Ordnance Works, which was located near the hypocenter of the explosion ,but I survived by miracle. I was inside the factory building when I felt the flash coming towards me. I fell unconscious for a while. When I recovered, nobody was around. I went outside and saw a sea of fire. I thougt to myself that had to run. As I ran, another man ran beside me, and that man's right eyeball was dangling from his eye socket. I was frightened by the way he looked, but I had no choice but to run. People were piled up on top of each other,wailing. We all crossed the Futago Bridge to get to Jujikayama and spent the night there. B-29 bombers were circling in the air all night long.The night was bright from the fire. I heard houses crumble down in the fire. There were charred bodies and bodies without hands and legs over the city. I heard that those bodies were brought to the Irabayashi Elementary School playground on a truck and were dumped and cremated there.
It was said that women who were exposed to the radiation will give birth to children with microcephaly, so no man would marry such a woman. On the contrary, I had someone who didn't maind about it, and was able to get married the following year. We had a baby girl and we named her Mieko. When she was just a week old, she had a sudden high fever and diarrhea, fluid flowed out of her head and her hair fell out. Then, she had pneumonia,,bronchitis・・・We were so scared of losing her. My father-in-law even went to the church to give prayers. By the time she was 2, the fluid stopped flowing out. She was weak, but she was growing up fine, well enough to smile. She attended elementary school, junior high school and then graduated from high school. She began to work, got married and had a boy. Then suddenly, when she was 34, I received a call that Mieko was hospitalized in Nagasaki University Hospital. I rushed to the hospital. That night,she died. She died of leukemia. I was so sad. If I had known that I would be going through this pain, I shoud have died when the atomic bomb was dropped.
Now, I am grateful to Virgin Mary for letting me survive. I think that she allowed me to survive and talk about my experience. Many high school students come here to listen to me. I always tell them, "You all look clever. If you ever become the Prime Minister, never make war. It's best that we all live happily."

Nagasaki Genbaku Home
Established by Sister Yasu Esumi, founder of Junshin Women's School, entrusted to care for the parents of her students who died from the atomic bomb.
Widely accepted atomic bomb survivors in general.
Survivors offered their prayers here.
Visited by Pope John Paul Ⅱin 1981.