JUNKO’S STORY

SURVIVING HIROSHIMA’S ATOMIC BOMB

 Children’s Book Artist

She is Junko Morimoto.

She now lives in Sydney, but She was born and brought up in Hiroshima.
When the bomb exploded on the morning of August 6 1945,
She was a 13-year-old schoolgirl.
She lived 1.7 kilometers away from where the bomb fell.
 STORY
She was supposed to go to the middle Hiroshima City
for mandatory labour Service on the day of the
bombing, but she had had a stomach bug for two
days.

She was in the bedroom chatting with her second

older sister when she heard the aircraft.

Suddenly there was a moment of blinding light with

intense heat.
“I couldn’t see anything. There was a strange reverberation, a noise
that’s impossible to describe, followed by a bang”

She thought she was going to die and lost

consciousness after that.
FACTS
At Seventeen seconds after 8:15 a.m. on August 6 1945
the “Little Boy” was dropped from Bomber Enola Gay.

That Was a response to Japan’s failure to agree to

unconditional surrender in the second war.

The bomb was as powerful as 16 kilotons of TNT and 2000

times more powerful that any bomb used to date.

The bomb exploded around 580M above Hiroshima

intentionally to spread its radioactivity.

The bomb created a fireball 280m in diameter, the

temperature was as hot as the surface of the sun.
STORY

After she regained consciousness people was

crying out, she didn’t understand what happen.

Every House in the area had collapsed, the

whole area was destroyed.

Some people was their arms entirely skinless.

Her Father was coming back cycling to through

all the debris. His skin and his clothes was
burnet.
 FACTS

Exactly casualties and population number cannot

be know but researches gives a number a range
of 90.000 to 166.000 deaths caused for the
radiation within the first four months.
 STORY

Thousand of people were slowly making their way from Problems to get medicines, food and water increased
the city to the river, all badly burned. the suffering.

It was run by the military. Every school became a hospital.

They rested at the entrance of the one cave the first For a long time people thought it might flew another
night. plane with another bomb.
 INJURY PHASES
First two weeks: mainly burns from rays and flames, and wounds (trauma) from blast and falling structures.

3rd week through 8th week: symptoms of damages by radioactive rays, e.g., loss of hair, anemia, loss of white
cells, bleeding, diarrhea. Approximately 10% of cases in this group were fatal.

3rd and 4th months: “some improvement” in burn, trauma, and even radiation
injuries. But then came “secondary injuries” of disfiguration, severe scar formations (keloids), blood
abnormalities, sterility (both sexes), and psychosomatic disorders.

Even now, after over half a century later, many aftereffects remain: leukemia,
A-bomb cataracts, and cancers of thyroid, breast, lungs, salivary glands, birth defects, including mental
retardation, and fears of birth defects in their children, plus, of course, the disfiguring keloid scar
 STORY

After a number of the other difficult situations she graduated from high school and enter the university in
Kyoto, she Studied Arts for 4 years and after that she became an Art teacher at the high school.

When she was 50, her sister who had moved to Australia and invited her them she migrated to Sydney.

She wants to keep telling this story for people as long as she can.
 THE UNITED STATES
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have
used it against those who attacked us without warning
at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and
beaten and executed American prisoners of war,
against those who have abandoned all pretense of
obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it
in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save
the lives of thousands and thousands of young
Americans."
PRESIDENT HARRY S TRUMAN
 ALBERT EINSTEIN
In 1939 Einstein sent a Letter to President Roosevelt.
Einstein considered his duty bring the attention for
a new discover with uranium.

“This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is
conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this
type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and
exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of
the surrounding territory”.

-Albert Einstein
 QUESTIONS
WHAT WOULD ANY MORAL PERSON HAVE DONE IN PRESIDENT
TRUMAN’S POSITION?

IS THERE SOME POSSIBLE BENEFIT TO PRODUCE NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

There are many nuclear weapon more powerful than atomic

bomb in Hiroshima an Nagasaki, is the Disarmament the best
alternative to abolish nuclear weapons?
 REFERENCES
Junko’s Story: SURVIVING HIROSHIMA’S ATOMIC BOMB, 2015 HTTP://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/HIROSHIMA/

TRUMAN, H, 1945, "Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S Truman, 1945", pg. 212

Atomic Archive, Einstein's Letter to President Roosevelt – 1939,

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Begin/Einstein.shtml

Morimoto, J, 2014, “My Hiroshima”, Hachette Australia, AU