Survivor devoted her life to ban-the-bomb message.

HIROSHIMA--Staunch anti-war poet Sadako Kurihara, herself a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, died at her home here Sunday night, family members said. She was 92.

Kurihara is best known for her moving anti-war poem about a baby's birth amid the devastation.

Her poem, ``Umashimenkana'' (``We Shall Bring Forth New Life''), describing the birth of a baby in a Hiroshima basement shelter, poignantly voiced the anti-war feelings of the postwar generation.

Kurihara was at home, about 4 kilometers from ground zero, when the Aug. 6, 1945, nuclear flash became part of history.

That night, huddled in a dark basement with dead and dying people, a woman gave birth to a girl. The mother was assisted by a wounded nurse who died before dawn.

Later, in the devastated city that Kurihara described as a ``living hell,'' she wrote her famous poem based on the girl's birth. It was first published in a magazine in March 1946, and later in English in 1980.

``Kurihara was very determined to express her furious hatred of nuclear weapons and to protest their use,'' said Takashi Hiraoka, a former mayor of Hiroshima. ``Her will to protest never faded, even in her later years.''

Leaders of A-bomb survivor groups mourned her passing.

``Kurihara decried the inhumanity of nuclear weapons throughout her long life. We must carry on her aims,'' said Sunao Tsuboi, leader of the Hiroshima branch of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Hidankyo).

Born in a suburb of Hiroshima in 1913, Kurihara started writing tanka (poems of 31 syllables) for magazines while in high school.

Despite opposition from her parents, she married Tadaichi Kurihara, an anarchist.

After a peripatetic life, the couple opened a small grocery store in Hiroshima. During the war, her husband was drafted and shipped off to Shanghai.

Despite feeling political pressure, Kurihara described her yearning for freedom in an anti-war poem called ``Kuroi Tamago'' (``Black Eggs'') in 1942.

After the bombing, she devoted her life entirely to writing poems with strong anti-war and ban-the-bomb messages.

An anthology spanning her 70-year career, including several poems never before published, is planned for release in April or May.

The baby girl described in Kurihara's famous poem survived and now runs an izakaya restaurant in Hiroshima.(IHT/Asahi: March 8,2005)