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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/16/80th-anniversary-hiroshima-bomb-japan-white-australia-policy>
"On the edge of the Seto Sea, in the Japanese city of Kure, not far from
Hiroshima, there is a park bench facing towards Australia.
Set there by locals, the Koi-Niji – or “Rainbow Love” – bench commemorates an
unlikely romance: between a Japanese girl who survived the first atomic bomb
and an Australian man whose love for her helped change the course of his
country’s history.
Sixteen-year-old Nobuko Sakuramoto was in her school uniform, eating breakfast
in the kitchen with her family, when air raid sirens went off on 6 August 1945.
She didn’t think much of it because she couldn’t hear any planes. Then there
was a bright white light and an explosion, and the building collapsed on top of
her.
Cherry, as Nobuko is known to her Australian family, never spoke much about her
experience of the bombing and its immediate aftermath. The fragments her
children have pieced together over the years are the stuff of nightmares – a
city transformed into flaming rubble, the stench of burning flesh, the screams
of the wounded and bereaved. By all accounts, it was a miracle she survived:
her home was right near the centre of the blast that killed an estimated
140,000 people, and thousands more suffered in the following years from the
effects of radiation.
But Cherry’s survival at Hiroshima would not be the only remarkable experience
of her life. Hers is a story that, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the
bombing, her family believes is all the more important to tell."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
