BY CHRISTINE GRIMALDI
Staff Writer
MONROE – The atomic bomb’s fallout killed Yoshio Sato’s mother and young sister in Hiroshima, Japan, and years later wreaked carcinogenic havoc on both him and his younger brother.
It also instilled in Sato a commitment to promoting peace.
“We must in no way allow the existence of nuclear weapons,” Sato, 75, now of Yokohama City, Japan, told a packed audience at the Monroe Township, Middlesex County, municipal building on Aug. 7.
The Monroe Township Chapter of the National Coalition for Peace Action presented Sato as its guest speaker just one day after the 61st anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, United States atom bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb, on Naga-saki, Japan, on Aug. 9.
Japan surrendered days later, bringing an end to World War II.
Sato, then 14, was at home with his mother, 12-year-old brother and 5-year-old sister when the bomb exploded one kilometer away.
“All the houses as far as I could see were flattened to the ground. The sky was dark with smoke as if it were after sunset. A fire was breaking out 2 to 300 meters ahead of me,” Sato said, describing the scene after he regained consciousness.
He freed himself and then rescued his family from beneath the rubble of what had once been their home.
“We left our property, driven away by fire. Blasts of intolerably hot wind blew continuously,” he said.
The family tried to cool off by jumping into a water reservoir, but their clothes dried instantly upon emerging.
“We had to leap into the water so often that the dirty water entered our mouths and caused us to vomit gastric fluids,” he said.
Survivors packed into a rescue truck that evening, some with their skin peeling and bodies throbbing as they came into contact with severely burned neighbors. Sato and his family, along with the other survivors, were transported to army barracks on Kanawa Island, Hiroshima Bay.
This is where Sato’s father, who had been away from Hiroshima on business the day of the bombing, found his wife and children.
The facility had barely any medicine. Sato described two of the victims, one badly burned, the other in shock over the death of the baby she still clutched.
Sato’s mother died the following month at an area hospital, where she and the children were sent with high fevers.
“My father told me later that he had been prepared for our funerals to come one after another,” Sato said.
His sister died the following year.
Sato’s brother lived until 1984, when he died of liver cancer, although he had previously undergone two surgeries for the disease.
Sato himself had half his cancerous stomach removed in 1971.
Akiko Seitelbach, now of Somerset Lane, Monroe, survived the Nagasaki bombing and briefly shared an eyewitness account after Sato spoke.
“I have seen a man naked, his whole body was burned, he had no hair on his [head],” Seitelbach said.
She described his skin as charred and hanging like seaweed. She wanted to run but realized she had to help him. He died as well.
“It was extremely emotional and moving, and terribly sad,” Ellen Norman, co-founder of Monroe’s coalition chapter, said of the discussion. “We wish we could say never again, but unfortunately, look at what’s happening to the world today.”
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, rounded out the presentation.
Hoodbhoy sits on the council of the Pugwash Conferences, which, according to its Internet Web site, gathers an international array of “influential scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems.” Scientists Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell crafted the 1955 manifesto that led to the first conference in 1957.
“Although I am a nuclear physicist, I am absolutely opposed to the creation of nuclear weapons,” Hoodbhoy said.
Hoodbhoy was in now-bustling Hiroshima last year, six decades after the bombing, and felt drawn to a museum there where pieces conveyed the devastation.
He viewed the steps of a bank where he said a person must have been sitting; the person had apparently been incinerated instantly, his or her shadow permanently melding with the stone.
“It is only when you see the true impact of the atom bomb that it hits you,” Hoodbhoy said.
Hoodbhoy also spoke extensively about the implications of aggression. The enemies of India and his homeland of Pakistan each thought acquiring nuclear weapons would stabilize their strife, with the other side scared of the devices. But nuclear capability “brings out the barbarity that’s latent in all of us,” he said.
He said the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is in “tatters” and such agreements must be strengthened.
He expressed his support for the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but also spoke of the “false pretenses” under which the United State invaded Iraq, and the global community’s wary perception of America.
Norman noted she was struck by Hoodbhoy’s remarks to break with societal ties that lead to aggression.
“We are just one step above the apes, because we are still a tribal people and we are still using nationalism and religion for aggression,” she said, echoing his remarks.
Part of Sato’s mission is to remind society of the reality of atomic weapons, as was evident in the large color photos he presented – one depicting the baldness he experienced as a result of nuclear radioactivity. Another was of his mother holding his young sister under their flattened wooden home.
“At war, every nation has been and will be apt to inflict brutalities on the opponent,” Sato said. “This was true for Japan as well. I believe that it is thus war that we must reject.”