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Isamu Inoue (male)
'Chokubaku' 1 km from the hypocenter / 14 years old at the time / current resident of Chiba11173
Photographer: Eiichi Matsumoto.
Ｔhe scenes of the A-bombed city are introduced here.
The photographs are not directly connected with the messages.
I want to appeal more loudly than anyone else in the whole world that war should not be waged no matter what the reason.
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago. The doctor told me that I could choose between radiotherapy and surgery. I chose radiotherapy because I didn't want to go through surgery. The doctor agreed to administer radiotherapy, but at about eight o'clock that evening he called me up and said, "Inoue-san, you're a hibakusha aren't you? Hibakusha already have twenty treatments worth of radiation in their bodies, so I can't give you radiotherapy." To think that the traces of radiation still remain in my body so many years after the atomic bomb was dropped fills me with anxiety.
It is not only the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are calling for the elimination of these awful nuclear weapons. It is the wish of the majority of people and nations of the world. At last, 64 years later, there is a growing sentiment in favor of the elimination of nuclear weapons among the nations of the world.
When I speak of these terrible things, I hate just remembering the time when the atomic bomb was dropped. But for the sake of our grandchildren, to create a Japan that is free of war and a world without nuclear weapons, as long as I live I will go on speaking of the horror of the atomic bomb to as many people as I can. I end my story with a prayer that these people will become the center of a great whirlpool swirling us into a world without nuclear weapons.
(2010)
