Survivors
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Out of fire, a Hiroshima survivor helped build peace advocacy
Badly injured by the atomic bomb, a young woman endured more than a dozen surgeries and raised a family while becoming a voice for peace and nuclear abolition. And she has been a witness to the hibakusha movement to abolish nuclear weapons. (Author photo, 2009) By Joe Copeland Abe Shizuko has long remembered the parents
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Tea, a photo, and how a family helps preserve the truth about nuclear warfare
Some months after the war ended, the photographer who had taken the family’s pictures before the bombing ran into Chizuko. She had forgotten about the photo sitting. So, after the chance meeting, he came to visit her and bring the photo of the family. By Joe Copeland As Hiroshima has grown more distant from the
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A Catholic priest survived the atomic bombing to build a peace cathedral and help bring Zen to the West
A Jesuit priest who survived the bombing of Hiroshima devoted his life to building a memorial cathedral for world peace and introducing Zen meditation to fellow Christians in Japan and the West. By Joe Copeland First of two articles on Hugo M. Enomiya-Lassalle Update, Jan 16, 2025: Orbis Press is publishing author Ursula Baatz’s Jesuit
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Hiroshima Jesuit Enomiya-Lassalle built bridges to Zen (part 2)
A Jesuit priest who survived the bombing of Hiroshima devoted his life to building a memorial cathedral for world peace and introducing Zen meditation to fellow Christians in Japan and the West. Above: Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle in an undated photo. Source: Grentidez/Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons license By Joe Copeland Read part 1 on Enomiya-Lassalle here After the
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A Hiroshima elementary school’s ‘miraculous’ survivor spoke for peace
“I remembered my father happily talking about sending me to girls’ high school and even to college,” she told students. “At that time [after the bombing], though, all I could do was just to survive one more day. It was beyond all hope for me to go on to high school.”
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors tell their stories
The survivors have been at the forefront of the peace and disarmament movements that have helped maintain a tenuous, uncertain restraint on the use of nuclear weapons ever since the horrors inflicted on the two Japanese cities in August 1945.