Hibakusha: Survivors of the Bomb

At the Brink

In this episode, we hear the wrenching stories of two survivors of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. These two women, known as “Hibakusha” or “explosion affected persons”, both suffered injury and radiation sickness, but unlike the more than 200,000 who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, survived to bear witness to the horrors of nuclear weapons. One, Setsuko Thurlow, culminated a life-long effort at nuclear awareness and activism, when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for ICAN, along with ICAN leader Beatrice Fihn. We’ll learn more about why the bombs were used, and why they were so uniquely devastating.