Students at Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, have translated an anthology compiled by atomic-bomb survivors into English.
The students have been sending paper cranes to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park since August 2003, when one of their peers was arrested for setting alight the paper cranes donated by well-wishers at the park.
When the students visited the park last August with a fresh batch of paper cranes, they met members of a Kanagawa Prefecture-based survivors' group, who asked them to translate "The Day Never to be Forgotten."
The book contains 44 drawings by survivors as well as Japanese and English poems depicting the landscape of Hiroshima just after it was devastated by an A-bomb in August 1945.
"It is very important that the anthology was translated by young people, as most A-bomb survivors are aging and have to pass on their experience to the next generation," said Yuko Nakamura, 72, secretary general of the survivors' group. "We want people around the world to read this book."
The group plans to distribute about 1,000 copies of the anthology at a meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference to be held in New York next month.
The students spent about four months translating the work, interviewing the survivors and seeking the advice of students from English-speaking countries.
