The memorial portrait of her mother shows a gentle smile. She was a warm but strict person.
“She would get angry if I made mistakes, like when cooking fish or cutting vegetables,” says Hiroe Kawashimo, 79, who was born with intellectual and physical disabilities due to her mother’s exposure to radiation from the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. “Maybe she wanted me to be able to do everything on my own.”
Kawashimo now lives alone in an apartment in Hiroshima after her mother, Kaneko Kawashimo, died in 2014 at the age of 92.
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