As aging hibakusha find it increasingly difficult to travel abroad to speak about the horrors of the nuclear attacks nearly 70 years ago, their children are stepping up efforts to follow in their footsteps.
Toyoko Tasaki, 46, and Yukino Hirayama, 57, both living in Tokyo, were among members of a delegation offering testimonies about the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Japan to coincide with a U.N. conference that started April 27 to review and strengthen nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.
The two, both fluent English speakers, had been living a life largely unrelated to their identity as "children of atomic bomb survivors" until Tasaki lost her mother and Hirayama lost her father — both of whom were in Hiroshima the day the atomic bomb was dropped in the final phase of World War II.