Hiroshima at 76: Professor Yuki Miyamoto, second generation Hibakusha,
whose mother survived the A-bombing of August 6, 1945
By Libbe HaLevy
Listen Here:
Audio Player00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Podcast: Download
This Week’s Featured Interview:
- Hiroshima Anniversary – 76 years after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effects of that bombing persist. Survivors – who are known as Hibakusha – went on with their lives as best they could, but the legacy of the a-bomb persist into second and now third generation.
- Hiroshima born Yuki Miyamoto is a second generation Hibakusha. Her mother was in Hiroshima one mile from the epicenter of the bombing, yet survived it with what seemed like little physical damage… though other truths later emerged. Yuki’s story of what it was like to grow up in Hiroshima, the illnesses around her, the judgments made by others in Japan, makes for a gripping little-known narrative of the atomic bomb’s aftermath.
- Yuki Miyamoto is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where she introduces a new generation of young people to the hard truths about the atomic bombing and its continuing impact on survivors – especially women – their children, grandchildren, and beyond. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and teaches nuclear discourse and environmental ethics at DePaul University in Chicago. 2011’s Fukushima nuclear accident urged her to examine environmental ethics, which led to her most recent work, A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata (Lexington Books, 2021). Miyamoto’s current work is on the formation of postwar nuclear discourse both in Japan and the United States. She has taken DePaul students to Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 2005 and has been appointed Nagasaki Peace Correspondent (2010) and Hiroshima Peace Ambassador (2011). We spoke on Friday, July 30, 2021.
