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Grandfather’s memoir published to spread desire for nuclear abolition worldwide

by Kazuki Doi, Staff Writer

Kimiko Kuwamoto, 57, a company executive in Higashi Ward, Hiroshima, has published an English version of her grandfather’s memoir, entitled Black Butterfly, and sent copies of the book to libraries in the city of Hiroshima and to libraries abroad. In it he relates losing his daughter to the Hiroshima A-bombing. Ms. Kuwamoto, realizing that the devastating aftermath of the atomic bombing is not well known to people outside Japan, decided to convey this reality to the world for her grandfather and translated his memoir into English over a period of 10 years. After making some revisions, she also published the Japanese original.

Tsuruji Matsuoka, Ms. Kuwamoto’s grandfather, who died in 1981, kept a diary from January 1945, seven months before the atomic bombing, to September, one month following the A-bomb attack. His diary was compiled into a book entitled Kuroi Cho (Black Butterfly) and published as a memoir in 1960.

Mr. Matsuoka was evacuated to Miwa-son (now part of Kitahiroshima-cho) during the war, but his eldest daughter, 15 years old at the time, stayed in the central part of the city to work as a mobilized student on August 6, 1945, and was then killed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Matsuoka entered the city three days after the bombing. In his diary, he wrote vividly about what he witnessed there, which included scores of charred corpses, scattered about, and his daughter’s suffering. “My body is burning,” she told him before her death. He stressed his hatred for nuclear weapons with these words: “In spite of all the tender care and treatment available, in the end she left, ephemerally, without ever flowering. Alas! She became a sacrifice to the atomic bomb.”

Ms. Kuwamoto was a senior in college when she read her grandfather’s diary. It was the first time she encountered her grandfather’s wish to eliminate the suffering that nuclear weapons bring. During his life, he had never shared his A-bomb experience with others.

When she was in high school, Ms. Kuwamoto visited the United States on a short-term study abroad program. There, she found that her host family and the young people of her generation knew nothing about the atomic bombings of Japan, which was a great shock to her. Ever since, she wanted to spread her grandfather’s memoir and his thoughts to the world and thought of translating the full text of his diary.

She began translating it in 2005 and continued doing so while raising her children and working at a family-run women’s clothing store. A Canadian friend helped proofread the document, and the text was finally ready in August 2015.

Ms. Kuwamoto published a total of 1,500 copies of the Japanese original and the English translation. In addition to supplying the public libraries in the city with copies of the memoir, she is also sending copies of the English version to libraries overseas. She said, “I hope this book will be read by as many people as possible, all over the world, to help create a world without war.”

The book is priced at 1,080 for both the Japanese and the English versions. Information on obtaining a copy of the book is available from the publisher, “Green Breeze,” at 082-511-3915.

(Originally published on December 28, 2015)

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