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British theater company to stage play about Hiroshima next year, script based on children’s interviews of A-bomb survivors

by Atsuko Hirai, Staff Writer

London Bubble Theatre Company, a British theatrical troupe, is creating a play based on interviews of atomic bomb survivors conducted by children in Hiroshima. The costs of the project, called “The Grandchildren of Hiroshima,” are being covered by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. On August 18, children listened to a survivor’s experience at the Satellite Campus Hiroshima.

The play will be presented in both the United Kingdom and in Japan to convey the horror of the atomic bombing to younger generations in August of next year, which will mark the 70th anniversary of the event. A total of 17 students from Hiroshima, Fukuyama, and other cities in Hiroshima Prefecture are involved in the project, which began on August 4. The youngest is in second grade and the oldest is a first-year student in junior high school. By August 19, they will have interviewed 15 A-bomb survivors. The students are asking questions about the lives and feelings of the survivors, who were children themselves at the time of the bombing.

On August 18, they interviewed Takashi Teramoto, 79, who experienced the atomic bombing in Hirosekita-machi (now part of Naka Ward). Hibiki Fujita, 10, a fourth-grader at Ushitashinmachi Elementary School, said, “Some people died instantly, but others died some time later. I could feel how frightening the atomic bombing must have been.”

Three years ago, the theater company produced a play based on children’s interviews with survivors of the Blitz, the great air raids on London during World War II. In a similar fashion, the interviews by Hiroshima children will be shaped into a script. Marigold Hughes, 34, the director, said she hopes the play can highlight the dangers of nuclear weapons in the upcoming milestone year.

(Originally published on August 19, 2014)

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