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Opinion

Voices of A-bomb survivors: Mitsuo Kodama, 83, resident of Minami Ward

Exposed to the atomic bombing at a location about 870 meters from the hypocenter as a first-year student of present-day Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Kokutaiji High School. Published his A-bomb account in English in March 2016.

A-bomb radiation does damage to human chromosomes, and the survivors have suffered from the health effects of their radiation exposure throughout their lives. This is incredibly inhumane. Just over 300 schoolmates were in the same school building with me or were mobilized to work at a site near the building when the bomb exploded. Only 19 of us survived, and today only two of us are still alive. And this friend has suffered from radiation-related diseases, one after another, since the war. I hope that President Obama will declare to the world that nuclear weapons are evil to human beings and take action to advance a nuclear-free world.

[This is a shortened version of the original Japanese text.]

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