“Hiroshima: Creating a Future Without Nuclear Arms”

November 18, 2010
7:00pm

Fort Howard Theater
Bemis International Center
St. Norbert College

Hideko Tamura was just 10 years old when an atomic bomb destroyed her home city, Hiroshima. Seventy-five thousand people were killed instantly, and another two hundred thousand died of radiation poisoning within a year.

Having just returned home from a more sheltered school in the country, Hideko witnessed the devastation of Hiroshima and lost several immediate family members in the blast. However, she herself survived. Many years later, she said, "Most of us survivors weren't glad we survived," she says. "It wasn't like falling off a cliff and a rescue party finds you alive and says, 'You are so lucky.' With this bomb, everything you knew as reality disappeared before your very eyes. I felt like air, like I didn't exist."

Tamura later studied sociology and worked as a clinical social worker in the Radiation Oncology Department of the University of Chicago Hospitals. She retired in 2003 and now lives in Medford, Oregon. Throughout her adult life, Dr. Tamura has actively advocated for the elimination of nuclear arms. She writes, "We have seen ultimate destruction, but it is not enough to simply warn against it. Amid the threat of human extinction, the formidable challenge is living and spreading a life-affirming quest for being truly human. Our future depends on it."