Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | A memory of war
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20 Nov A memory of war

Posted at 06:02h in aging, dementia, family, history, Japan, war by

Forgotten history remembered: I took a Digital Storytelling class through StoryCenter that was held at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, and this is the story I produced as a result.

The focus on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have obscured in history, the months of firebombings and air raids on dozens of Japanese cities in 1945 before the atomic bombs were dropped. Tokyo suffered more casualties from one night of firebombs on March 9 dropped by 334 B-29 bombers than Hiroshima from the first atom bomb on August 6.

My mom’s hometown was destroyed just weeks before Hiroshima, in July. She never talked about her life during the war as a young girl, but when we took her to the Hiroshima Peace Park and Atomic Bomb Museum, she opened up — briefly — about the horrible trauma of the night she and her family were forced to flee Nemuro.