Posted by Lorraine Harrell.
The launch of our new blog embraces the ideas, social causes, insight and energy of several startling topics and authors whose works exhibits the inspired, ignited and innovative approach to the Heart of a Woman mission for covering provocative, interactive and inspiring weekly, hour-long radio programs. With so many wars dominating the hemisphere of our world’s view, it becomes a juggling act to balance and streamline the enormous stimuli vying for our collective and imaginative attention.
Nearly sixty-six years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the recent wake of Japan’s horrific double whammy natural disaster, author Rhana Reiko Rizzuto in her recent book Hiroshima in the Morning reminds us to never forget the quiet dignity of the compelling surviving voices willing to bear witness, to uncover the truth of the long-term, devastating, deteriorating effects to the human body as a result of the atomic bombing, and the enormous range of deformities and cancers caused by radiation.
Like the phoenix, the miraculous 165 survivors of the atomic bombing, broke their silence and talked openly about the ordinary beginning of that August 6, 1945 morning at 8:06 a.m. that shattered forever their definition of normal. The bomb’s explosion colliding to earth creating a tremendous meteoric white flash which in nine seconds managed to wipe out and alter the landscape of the lives of over 500,000 innocent people. Learn more about the survivors' stories. Tune in to the "Heart of a Woman," March 27, 2011 interview with the author of Hiroshima in the Morning. Click on the Media Player.
Rizzutto’s narrative stories, in the survivors own words, teaches us how to measure survival one moment at a time.
"After the bombing…my brother and I had no clothes on. Our feet were bare, and the ground was so hot that the soles of our feet burned and our skin stuck to the soil. I carried my infant sister on my back, and my father carried my mother, so our pace was very slow. Still we made a desperate effort to get out of the burned area, which stretched as far as my eyes could see. The water pipes were broken everywhere, and near them, the dead bodies of people who had come for one last drink of water were piled on top of each other, crawling with maggots. There were half-burned bodies under the crushed houses. I made such a great effort not to step on those bodies, but there were too many. This is one memory I shall have to carry all through my life. I was eight years old then, but still now, after more than fifty years, the soles of my feet ache when summer comes."
~ Sixty-four-year-old female survivor
"Rizzuto’s new book is intimate and global, lyrical and clear-eyed, a compelling personal narrative, and an important social document. Here past and present, Hiroshima and 911, interweave to tell a story of unendurable loss and tragedy but also of tenacity, survival, and rebirth."
~ Lauren Kessler, author of Stubborn Twig:
Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family
Congrats on the launch of the HOAW Blog.
ReplyDeleteRahna's book is timely with Japan's second confrontation with the perils of atomic power. I like the ghostly shadows of paper cranes on the book cover.