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My name is Yamashita Yasuaki.
I was born in Nagasaki 66 years ago.
I experienced the bomb 2.5 km away from the hypocenter.
Currently I live in the city of San Miguel de Allende
where I make pottery and paint.
This is my house.
I was 6, when I experienced the atomic bombing.
I vividly remember everything about that day like a photo.
As I was only a child back then,
nearby mountains during the summer vacation, catching cicadas and dragonflies.
On that day, for some reason, I didn't go to the mountains with my friends.
Right before 11 a.m.,
my mother was preparing lunch outside of my house,
and I was next to her, playing by myself.
Then a neighbor walked by and warned us because a plane was flying overhead.
Just to be cautious, my mother took my hand and brought me inside.
As we entered the kitchen, I heard an enormous explosion.
And at that moment, my mother pushed me onto the ground and covered me with her body.
There was a thunderous sound of destruction, as loud as a hurricane.
About 10 minutes later, it suddenly became silent.
Then I got up, only to find out that the entire house was mostly gone except for a few posts.
When we were in the shelter following the bombing, all my friends came back from the mountain.
One of them had a severe burn on his back from the explosion.
Within three days, there were maggots in his infected scar and then he died.
Had I gone to the mountains with my friends, I could've died like him.
Because there was no food in the shelter, my mother took us to our relatives’ house.
This is when we were exposed to the radiation for the second time,
because we walked through the hypocenter on our way out of the city.
There were numerous charred corpses left all over the streets.
To this day, I can't erase what I saw that day from my mind.
Mostly I work mornings from Monday to Friday
usually in the morning for about 2 to 3 hours.
Although I have been in Mexico for years, my identity as a Japanese hasn't disappeared.
People say that my Japanese sensibility is always apparent in my work.
Although by no means I am trying to express my Japanese identity.
After graduating high school, I started working for Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital.
There, I interacted with atomic bomb survivors on a daily basis.
Even though I was in the administration,
I had to help with autopsies when someone died late in the evening,
because there were not enough hands. So even the administrators had to help.
There was one patient who had leukemia.
I used to give him blood transfusions all the time.
But soon this patient had purple spots all over his body.
As I witnessed these conditions, I became haunted by the fear that I would one day be like them.
There was also tremendous pressure with regards to marriage.
If I were to get married, my children would be born with symptoms like those of the hibakusha.
I knew that I would not be able to bear that.
Because all the things I had witnessed manifested in my mind as a delusion,
So I decided that I would never get married.
Back then, not getting married was something that was not socially acceptable.
I felt that as long as I was in Nagasaki, I would have to face these circumstances,
But in a new place where nobody knows me, I wouldn't encounter such things,
and that my fear would be gone.
Back then, I really wanted to go to Mexico
Then the Olympics gave me an opportunity to come to Mexico, so I finally resigned my job.
Since arriving in Mexico, I've always lived near the Revolution monument,
so I am very familiar with this neighborhood.
Even the Maya Hotel, where I am staying now,
is the hotel that I stayed at on the first night I arrived in Mexico.
After the Olympics, I initially planned to stay in Mexico to study Spanish for a few years before returning.
However, back then people like myself who left their companies in the middle of their careers
had no future in terms of job opportunities in Japan.
So I asked myself, “Why not stay in Mexico for another year?”
That has continued every year, and now here I am, having been here for years now.
A few years after I came to live in Mexico, I suffered from severe pneumonia.
While suffering from an extremely high fever, I felt for the first time that I wanted to go back.
However, when I do return to Nagasaki, I feel as though I am a foreigner,
and I immediately want to go back to Mexico.
I fell in love with Mexico from the very moment I arrived here.
maybe it is because I met so many good friends.
I make pottery in the mornings and paint in the afternoons.
Additionally on Mondays and Wednesdays, I teach ink painting
to three women, two Mexicans and one American, in my studio.
I have given three lectures about my experience in the atomic bombing in the past.
About a decade ago, I spoke at the Queretaro branch of Tech de Monterrey, a renowned engineer school.
That time, many students expressed an interest, and I received many questions after the talk.
As someone who saw the atomic bombing first-hand and experienced it with my own body,
I certainly feel the need to pass this information to the next generation.
Especially because the nuclear threat is now increasing, not decreasing.
I always try to speak about my experiences, even among my friends as much as I can.
But people rarely seriously listen to my full story.
As a witness, it is not easy for me to get rid of this fear.
They all think that the fear I feel is something completely different.
I believe it is a challenging task for us to communicate our stories to others.
His works reflect human sensitivity and creativity
One can appreciate his works from various points of view, not just as a visual art.
His works are beautiful in their shapes
but also contains tranquility of his spirit.
I don't draw flowers as much any more, but in the past they were the only things I drew.
I have a strong memory from my childhood of seeing flowers
filling up the devastated city in the following spring after the atomic bomb.
This image was so powerful that it has remained with me ever since.
As a hibakusya, and as an artist, I stay away from depicting the actual tragedy.
Rather, I draw an image of flowers filling up the devastation following the tragedy.
Even in the midst of tragic conditions, nature provided us with a blessing,
a sense of peace and tranquility.
By doing so, I want to appeal to people about the absurdity of things like war and atomic bombs.
I want people to see and feel it in order for us not to repeat the same mistake again.
If people can understand that I think I am a very happy person.