I don't use the word “witnessed” because I don't remember her speaking of the immediate devatsation of the explosion. I don't know how far from ground zero she was located. Maybe it didn't matter. She did say how her sister managed dodge the effects of the blast, shielded in the shadow cast by a tree. My mind had created images of Terry as a silhouette etched into the sidewalk. Fortunately, she too practices Tai Chi with us many decades later.
Instead, Ayako would talk about how when riding the bus, she would encounter the countless number of injured people; how she would hear the pervasive moaning of those slowly dying of radiation poisoning. She talked about the ruined city. She also talked of the ruination brought on by starvation and disease that was taking its toll on Japan's civilian population long before a bomb needed to be dropped. She spoke of the emotions of a society and culture that would haunt and go unspoken until the end of one's days.
Ayako is an American citizen. She was born in the United States and left with her parents as they returned to their native country just prior to the start of World War II. Our conversation happened some 14 years before the events of September 11, 2001 would occur. We haven't had a chance to talk about that.
But she is not a bitter person for it. For all she had to experience, she seems to have survived fully and wholly. Ayako has a bright and cheerful personality that everyone enjoys being around. I am humbled when I realize I can't possibly fathom what she and others who must find a normal life in a time of war must have gone through (and are going through even now).
Ayako simply wonders: how do people find it possible to harm each other in such atrocious ways? She wonders how any kind of act of violence can be justified in the name of peace.
Update: from the BBC, When Time Stood Still, a Hiroshima Survivor's Story
© Richard Aquino, 2007
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