Survivors re-experience their stories

An elderly man stops in front of a picture of a little boy and starts to cry. The boy in the picture is ten years old and is carrying his dead brother on his back. It is August 1946, and he is in line for the crematorium in Hiroshima.

The old man opens his wallet and draws an image. It is the same as on the wall. He carries it with him as a memory of the day when the bomb hit Hiroshima and changed everything.

Mariko Higashino also stops at a special place in the exhibition. She sees herself on the wall where an IPad shows the stories of around 40 survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mariko is the daughter of a survivor. She was an adult before she asked her mother what really happened on October 6, 1945. Her mother was 17 years old and leaving her house when the bomb went off. She was blown 30 yards away, but was so not badly injured. She was able to go to the hospital and look for her mother, who worked there as a nurse. At the hospital people came in with burned bodies where the skin was peeled off. It took Mariko’s mother six days to find her mother, Mariko's grandmother. Her eyes were blown out of her head and her nose almost fell off, but she survived. Today, Mariko and her mother are called “Hibakushas” - in Japanese meaning survivors who bore witness to one of the darkest chapters in world history.

“I did not know that my story was part of the exhibition. It's very touching to come here to Oslo and discover it. We think it's important to tell our story so that the world becomes aware of how dangerous nuclear weapons are," says Mariko, who says that her mother is still alive and active in the fight against nuclear weapons.

About thirty survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki received a preview of the Ban the Bomb exhibition on Saturday, the day before ICAN receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall for its work on nuclear weapons. It was a moving moment, especially in that part of the exhibition that shows the consequences of the nuclear bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

"It was a powerful moment to meet some of those who experienced the disaster so close and personally," says Nobel Peace Center Director Liv Tørres.

"In the world we live in today, it is more important than ever to listen to these stories, which unfortunately become more and more relevant each day. The voices of the survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be listened to; it is more important to listen to them than to the voices of those who want to wreak war and destruction, she says.

On Monday, ICAN's leader Beatrice Fihn will open the Ban the Bomb exhibition together with another survivor from Hiroshima, Setsuko Thurlow. On December 12^th at 12pm the exhibition will open to the public.