Remembering Hiroshima
Remembering Hiroshima…
80 years on
August 6th 2025: the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
This 'Remembering Hiroshima' webpage is hosting a developing range of features memorialising and contextualising this major event in modern warfare.
The content will eventually include visual material kindly provided by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
There will be extracts from the legendary volume, 'Children of Hiroshima', which contains haunting eye-witness testimony of the impact of the bombing.
Among postings on a separate webpage will be reflections from singers from the UK-based Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and representatives of many other choirs, related to their visit to Hiroshima to sing Benjamin Britten's masterpiece, his 'War Requiem’.
Below, a series of interviews with individuals who can bring the events of August 6th 1945 and its aftermath alive.
Historian Richard Overy offers a narrative leading up to the bombing and asks what role it played in bringing about peace.
Tokyo-based journalist Tim Hornyak reports on the Japanese memory-keepers who pass on the story of the bombing to new generations.
Also from Tokyo, historian M.G.Sheftall recounts how his research has been enriched by interviewing survivors of the atomb-bombing.
Elizabeth Chappell has also conducted various interviews with survivors, work which is informing her ongoing work on a play.
Jazz pianist Jacob Koller describes the experience of playing Hiroshima’s ‘hibaku pianos’ - instruments damaged in the bombing which have been lovingly restored.
Yoshifumi Ishida, the director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, outlines the work of this remarkable location, which keeps alive the memory of the events of August 1945.
Interviews
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Richard Overy
Distinguished historian, Professor Richard Overy, has made an acclaimed contribution to our understanding of multiple dimensions of the Second World War. His latest book, 'Rain of Ruin’, focuses on the bombing campaign conducted on Japanese cities by the United States Air Force.
Click the link for Richard Overy's interview with UH senior research fellow, Andrew Green.
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Tim Hornyak
Tim Hornyak is an in-demand freelance journalist and author who has been based in Tokyo for many years. He talks here with UH senior research fellow, Andrew Green, about his article in The Times newspaper featuring Japan's 'memory keepers'...individuals dedicated to ensuring that memories of the atom-bombing of Japan are not simply confined to history.
Click the link for this interview with Tim Hornyak.
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M.G.Sheftall
Professor M. G. Sheftall was born in the USA but has lived in Japan since 1987. He is currently Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural History at Shizuoka University.
Professor Sheftall has written extensively about the impact of the Second World War on Japanese society, frequently seeking out eye-witness testimony, not least from the hibakusha...individuals who survived the atomb-bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His latest book - Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses - utilises amounts of this testimony within a long arc of history from Hiroshima's pre-war, to the bombing of the city, to the present.
Click the link for this interview with M.G. Sheftall.
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Elizabeth Chappell
Dr Elizabeth Chappell is an affiliated researcher at The Open University. She has extensive experience of interviewing hibakusha – as survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known - and members of their families. Prior to this she had lived and worked in Japan as a freelance journalist.
Dr Chappell’s PhD thesis, ‘Hibakusha Narratives in Context: A Dialogical Approach', is rooted in the memories not just of the bombing itself but of life in Hiroshima prior to the events of August 6th 1945.
More recently Dr Chappell has also been developing a drama - ‘Tales from my Grandmother’ - which is based on the story of three generations of a hibakusha family she interviewed in Hiroshima.
Here, in this interview, Dr Chappell firstly explains how hibakusha - the survivors - are very often reluctant to talk publicly about their memories.
Click here to watch the interview.
Dr Chappell’s work on Hiroshima can be seen here:
https://theconversation.com/profiles/elizabeth-chappell-182698
https://thelastsurvivorsofhiroshima.wordpress.com
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Jacob Koller and Hiroshima's Survivor Pianos
Alongside the sounds of the human voices of those who survived the atom bomb blast over Hiroshima are to be found the moving musical notes of the 'hibaku' ('bombed') pianos. The Hiroshima-based piano tuner/restorerMitsunori Yagawa has brought seven of these grievously damaged instruments back to life, some of them to full performing condition.
The playable pianos are frequently the focus for concerts and other occasions which promote the cause of peace.
Among the performers who know these pianos well is Tokyo-based jazz pianist Jacob Koller, who has played them both at a memorial site and in concert/recordings.
Watch the interview here.
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The Japanese Cherry in War and Peace: Author Naoko Abe in conversation Andrew Green
Japanese journalist and non-fiction writer Naoko Abe is the author of two books in which the significance of the cherry tree to Japanese culture and history is central. Likewise, its significance to the furtherance of reconciliation. A major feature of both volumes is the cherry’s place in the narrative of Japanese militarism and of the Second World War.
In this first part of her interview with Andrew Green, Naoko Abe tells the story of Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram, an extraordinary Englishman who in cultivating cherry trees in his garden in Kent managed to preserve varieties which had become either extremely rare or extinct in Japan. The story begins with the centuries-long importance of cherry trees to Japanese everyday life.
Click here to watch the video.
In this second interview, the focus is on a Japanese lover of cherry trees – Masatoshi Asari. This native of Hokkaido took it upon himself to promote the use of the cherry as a symbol for the promotion of international peace after the Second World War. Naoko Abe features his work in her book, The Martyr and the Red Kimono. ‘The Martyr’? As you can hear, Asari’s story links to a remarkable Franciscan friar from Poland.
Click here to watch the video.
Naoko Abe meets Masatoshi Asari on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, July 2025