Mr. Issey Miyake's Op-Ed "A Flash of Memory"

Mr. Issey Miyake, a prominent clothing designer wrote op-ed, “A Flash of Memory” on New York Times on July 13.

It is about Mr. Miyake’s experience of the atomic bomb over sixty yeas ago. He was in Hiroshima and seven years old.

Japanese news media extensively reported his op-ed because many people did not know that Mr. Miyake is an A-bomb victim.

Neither did I.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/opinion/14miyake.html

“When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should every experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in very direction trying to desperately to escape—I remember it all. Within three years, my mother dies from radiation exposure.” He told.

Mr. Miyake had not revealed his memories and thoughts of August 6, 1945. He disliked to be labeled as “the designer who survived the atomic bomb”.

But, President Obama’s speech in Prague changed Mr. Miyake’s state of mind. Mr. Obama asserted to quest peace and prosperity without nuclear weapons in the world.

Mr. Miyake says, “The President’s words awakened something buried deeply within me, something about which I have until now been reluctant to discuss.”

He also hopes that President of the USA will accept to attend Universal Peace Day on August 6.

When I was a college student over 20 years ago, I went to Hiroshima from Tokyo as a translator for an American professor who interviewed dozens of Hiroshima survivors. Before visiting there, I thought I had known about Hiroshima’s August 6 through books and pictures. However, through meeting, interviewing the survivors and translating what they told, I realized that I had not known much about shocks, tragedies and pains that they had received.


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