VOICES OF FRIENDS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN A-BOMBING -- JCP member Hibakusha at 57th year (Part 1)

Akahata in early August ran stories of atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha) who are members of the Japanese Communist Party. They relate their tragic experience and hopes for a future free of nuclear weapons. We present Below the first of the series: JCP member Hibakusha speak at 57th year after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I hear voices of friends

"The JCP's program includes the call for nuclear weapons to be abolished, and this is what I'm proud of the most," says 66-year-old Kawaguchi Tatsuya, the secretary of the Nagasaki Prefectural Association for a Non-Nuclear Government.

Sound from deep under the ground

I was 9 years old at the time. I was catching cicadas with my friend in the precincts of a shrine when something detonated with a flash that made me close my eyes. I reopened my eyes slowly to find everything completely changed.

Nagasaki Station and the surrounding streets and houses which I used to see from the same place were all coal black. I'll never forget the groaning sound arising from under the surface of the ground. I still suffer from flashbacks of numerous burnt bodies lying on top of another at a riverbank. This scene can never be obliterated from my memory. Actually, that's something that I must not forget.

Resolution at 25

At 25, I learned that there had been people who devoted their lives to defend peace even since the prewar days armed with the theory of scientific socialism through union and circle activities in the workplace. I was a prefectural employee at the time.

The most important thing for my life is peace, and opposition to war is what my activities are all about. My life as a human being and my life as a Hibakusha are unified, and this is not a coincidence.

I devote my life to achieving a nuclear-free government

In February 1985, I was impressed by the Appeal from Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a Total Ban and Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. People braved a heavy rain to attend an assembly to launch the appeal together with anti-nuclear peace activists from 12 countries. This event led us to establish the Nagasaki Prefectural Association for a Non-Nuclear Government in May 1986. I strongly believed that grassroots movements are absolutely essential to get rid of nuclear weapons and that the A-bombed city needed such a movement.

In 1999, we finally succeeded in getting all municipalities in Nagasaki Prefecture to declare their rejection of nuclear weapons: Not to allow the production, bringing-in, or passage of nuclear weapons. At present 97.5 percent of municipalities have adopted resolutions calling for an international treaty to be concluded for eliminating nuclear weapons. One day, a senior municipal official of a town administration said to me, "Things have changed. We must accept it if it is the right thing to do, even if it was initiated by the Communist Party."

I have been given strength by my dear friends who lost their lives in the atomic bombing. (From Akahata, August 1) (end)