Kazuo Fukushima (72) of Saeki-ku, Hiroshima first told his A-bomb experience to parents and children from Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo who visited Hiroshima for a Peace Dispatch event on August 6 last year. It was only one time he had ever told his story in public. He wondered if he would be understood and accepted overseas. Even as he arrived in Beijing, he was still working on his talk.

Beijing University was founded in 1898, and its campus covers 1.8 million square meters. In a history classroom built at the end of the Qing Dynasty, eleven people including faculty and graduate students came to listen.

"Nihao." Fukushima offered his greeting in Chinese to relieve the tension, and Hiroshima University graduate student Xunfei Yue (32) (Higashi-Hiroshima City) began interpreting. "My house was 200 meters from the hypocenter." The ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) run by his family was just south of the T-shaped Aioi Bridge that was the target of the atomic bombing.

-Documentary photos

He was 13 that summer and experienced the atomic flash at the factory to which he was assigned as a mobilized student. The road to his house, the river surfaces, everything was so totally transformed he lost his senses as a human being. Holding in his hand the small burned sake pitcher found in the ruins of his parents' inn, which is now part of the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, he spoke forthrightly about the events of August 6.

As he told his story, Shota Moriue (20) (from Hatsukaichi City, 3rd-year student at Tokyo University) used a CD he had prepared to project photos of Hiroshima residents immediately after the bombing taken by a Chugoku Shimbun reporter and aerial photos taken by the US Strategic Bombing Survey Team. The participants were visibly shocked by what they saw, but then the atmosphere in the classroom turned to harsh questioning.

The spark was lit by Professor Xu Yong (55), a scholar specializing in the Sino-Japan War. "Listening to Fukushima, who has not forgotten his sorrow, I recalled the tragedy that befell my own hometown." He then told of the indiscriminate killing by the Japanese soldiers that attacked the salt-producing areas in Szechuan. He brought out some photos that he took himself at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The museum has an exhibit about "Hiroshima before the War" that presents a newspaper article reporting the Lugouqiao Incident that took place in 1937 and precipitated full-scale war between Japan and China.

He pressed his point incisively. "Does Hiroshima think it can use an article like this to explain the Sino-Japanese War? What do the Japanese people think about that war now?"

-Trouble responding

Moriue replied sternly. "We are not denying anything, but under this constant attack, the younger generation in Japan tends to avoid contact. It is important to share the facts as they were." Professor Yong replied with a request. "I hope you will go home and learn more about good and evil in history."

A question from a graduate student intensified the encounter. Zhang Huifang (24) raised the issue of the Nanking Massacre that took place in her home state of Jiangsu. "Are you aware of this incident?" "The atomic bomb stopped the Japanese invasion." "Fukushima, do you hate the Americans?" She fired question after question.

Fukushima was bewildered. He had just related a memory "I would really rather forget." Why was she being attacked even by young people with no experience of the war? He replied, "At one point I hated Truman (president) for ordering the A-bomb dropped, but I never hated the American people. I have no desire for revenge."

China has been investing heavily in "patriotic education" since the mid-1990s. Its young people are exposed on the Internet to radical arguments regarding Japan's past and its present understanding of history.

Yue had predicted that there would be emotional statements even by elite students in his home country. His face clouding occasionally, he faithfully translated the words derived from Fukushima's sorrow.

(Caption right) Students and faculty at Beijing University listening to A-bomb testimony.

(Caption)Kazuo Fukushima (foreground) talking about "that day" while holding the small sake pitcher found in the rubble of his home where he also dug out his parents' bones.