Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story

As Fat Man hurled toward the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, Sachiko Yasui, 6, was play­ing house. She ducked for cov­er, awak­ing hours lat­er just “half a mile from the [bomb’s] hypocen­ter,”, buried beneath moun­tains of debris, her mouth clogged with ash. Stelson first heard Sachiko speak in August of 2005. From 2010–15, Stelson trav­eled to and from Nagasaki, con­duct­ing a series of five inter­views with the sin­gu­lar Sachiko. The result is a sto­ry of stag­ger­ing hard­ship and extra­or­di­nary resolve. In it, Stelson out­lines the plight of Sachiko, her fam­i­ly, and oth­er hibakusha (“explosion-affected peo­ple”), from the Yasui’s’ lengthy trek to safe­ty in near­by Shimabara and dec­i­mat­ing radi­a­tion sick­ness, to the gru­el­ing restora­tion of a bar­ren city. The nar­ra­tive is fur­ther sup­ple­ment­ed by two-page edu­ca­tion­al tid­bits, inter­spersed through­out. Here, Stelson address­es the Japanese gov­ern­ment, Emperor Hirohito and prime min­is­ter Hideko Tojo, intern­ment camps, the U.S.’s sti­fling occu­pa­tion of Japan, and “long-term effects of radi­a­tion.” With Sachiko for­ev­er in the fore­ground, read­ers learn of her griev­ous loss, devo­tion to edu­ca­tion, regard for peace (and its devo­tees: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller), and her fair­ly recent deci­sion to give voice to her expe­ri­ences. Sachiko and her sto­ry, much like the resilient Nagasaki cam­phor trees she so admires, are an indeli­ble force. Luminous, endur­ing, utter­ly nec­es­sary. —Briana Shemroske