OSAKA -- While Yoshikuni Inoue's is a familiar face in Kansai business circles, he is better known for his efforts to boost the region's economy as joint chairman of the Kansai Association of Corporate Executives in the early 1990s than as a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing.

Yoshikuni Inoue

Inoue, 69, senior adviser to Osaka-based machinery maker Daikin Industries, Ltd., was surprised to receive more than 300 letters from people who read his book, which describe his experience on that dreadful day.

Published in both English and Japanese, "Before and After 'That Day,' " was released by Kansai Journal Co. on Aug. 6 -- the 55th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which devastated Hiroshima and, according to the city, instantly killed almost 140,000 people.

The city said this month that the number of victims of the bombing has ultimately reached about 217,000.

"I'm glad I published the book, although I was rather reluctant to do so," Inoue said in a recent interview. "I did not expect to receive such responses from readers."

He started to write the story two years ago, persuaded to do so by a friend.

It was initially for his own sake -- writing it down before he forgot. But the story eventually appeared in an Osaka-based newspaper as a 14-part series and was then compiled into a book -- complete with an English translation and water-color drawings.

At the time the bomb was dropped, the 14-year-old Inoue was heading for the city center from a factory 4 km away where he had been working. Although he escaped injury, he lost relatives and many of his classmates.

Inoue described the sight that met his eyes when he and his friends entered the city after the bomb had fallen as "nauseating."

"Some were completely covered in blood and were being carried. Another victim was burned on the face and upper body. Skin hung like rags from those who had sustained severe burns. They walked, their arms hanging like ghosts. It was so terrible and tragic that I had to look away," he writes in the book.

With survivors of the bombing decreasing in number and the legacy of the bomb consequently fading, he believes it is important for those who experienced the tragedy to pass their experience on to the younger generation -- as well as to tell non-Japanese what really happened.

Inoue believes the emotional rationale for eradicating nuclear weapons adopted by many Japanese, that Japan "is the only country on which the atomic bomb was dropped," will not be enough to gain international support for their eradication.

But people at least should know the tragic aftermath of the bombing, said Inoue, who played a leading role in bringing about the 1988 Pacific Economic Cooperation Council meeting in Osaka.

"I heard that a group of Americans in Atlanta who had read my draft of the book had said they were deeply moved by the story. That means they did not know what actually happened," he said.

He also believes reading his book might influence the widely held justification among Americans for the bombings -- that the actions spared millions of Japanese lives as it obviated the need for an Allied invasion of the main islands.

Inoue remembers his discussion about 10 years ago with an American professor, who maintained that view and dismissed Inoue's argument that it was wrong for the U.S. to resort to the atomic bomb and indiscriminately kill a great number of civilians.

Because Inoue wants many to read his book, he plans to donate copies to libraries and other places in the U.S. where people have easy access.