Hibakusha: Hearing from the survivors in their own words
Retired Nagasaki Broadcasting Corp. (NBC) journalist Akihiko Ito has spent decades — and a small fortune — recording a huge collection of testimonies from the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are now online with English transcriptions.
Ito, 70, gathered verbal testimonies from 1,003 hibakusha in the period from 1971 to 1979 and added recordings of another 837 A-bomb survivors collected by NBC from 1986 to 2006.
He produced a series of nine CDs containing the statements made by the hibakusha and, together with copywriter Yoshihisa Furukawa and a group of 18 volunteers, added pictures and English transcripts to the recordings and listed them on a free Website called Voices of the Survivors From Hiroshima and Nagasaki (VOSHN.com).
