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A Squamish survivor of Hiroshima tells her story

‘Peace comes from individuals, from family and community’
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Currently a Squamish resident, Sachi Rummel was eight years old and living with her family in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 when the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped. She will tell her story at the Squamish Public Library on Thursday (Aug. 10)

Though it has been more than seven decades, Sachi Rummel’s voice still catches in her throat when she recalls her father’s death from the effects of radiation 10 days after the U.S. dropped a five-ton atomic bomb on Japan.

Currently a Squamish resident, Rummel was eight years old and living with her family in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 when the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped.

About 66,000 residents were killed out of a population of 255,000, not including soldiers and Korean forced labourers who were in the community at the time, according to a 1946 Manhattan Engineer District study.

Rummel’s father died from radiation exposure on Aug. 16, one day after Japan surrendered.

Much of Hiroshima was destroyed by the bomb, including its cemeteries, so city officials dug holes in the ground in parks and even in Rummel’s schoolyard for the bodies, she said.

“They just burned them one by one,” she recalled. “Because so many people were dying, sometimes it smelled bad.”

Her beloved father was cremated in a park near her house. That memory, out of all the terrible memories of the time, stands out in her mind.

In 2015, Rummel wrote the book Hiroshima: Memoirs of a Survivor about her experiences as a nuclear war survivor.

She will give a talk based on her memories on Thursday evening at the Squamish Public Library.

She originally started telling her story to her family when her daughter was small. She wrote the story out in Japanese at first, but then realized it might be more accessible if she also wrote in English.

“Now, not only my family, but the [story] has spread to the community and everywhere, which was unexpected,” she said.

Though she has retold her story numerous times, as time goes by Rummel, 80, said her urge to tell her story has increased rather than diminished.

“It feels more important that I should talk,” she told The Chief. “These days, the world is kind of in chaos.”

Her goal is to spend the rest of her life recalling her experiences as a “grandma storyteller,” she said.

The threat posed by nuclear weapons is as real today as it was seven decades ago, she explained.

“Individually, we have to think. We cannot just pass it off to the politicians,” she said. “I think peace comes from individuals, from family and community.”

Hiroshima: Memoirs of a Survivor runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday (Aug. 10) at the Squamish Public Library. 

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