The U.S. detonation of two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, seems a world and a lifetime away from Squamish.
But it isn’t.
Squamish’s Sachi Rummel survived the bombings as an eight-year-old girl. She was playing in the schoolyard when the bomb “Little Boy” fell, ultimately killing 237,000 people in her hometown of Hiroshima. Her father died from radiation exposure on Aug. 16, one day after Japan surrendered.
This Thursday, Aug. 8 Rummel is at the Squamish Library with her book “Hiroshima: Memoirs of a Survivor,” which she has expanded since it was first published in 2015.
The Chief caught up with her earlier this week, as the 74th-anniversary of the bombings approaches, and she shared her worries over the current global climate.
Currently, there are nine countries with a total of 13,850 nuclear weapons, according to ploughshares.org. The U.S. and Russia have 92 per cent of them.
Rummel worries that many today have become complacent about the dangers of nuclear war and that the impact of the bombs and radiation will be forgotten. If we forget the lessons of the past, we repeat them, she suggested.
“A big worry is that people don’t know, because they have no experience,” she said. “Especially in Canada because it is a safe and peaceful country, so for Canadians, awareness is small.”
She has long made it her mission to talk of what happened to her and her family — to spread a message of peace.
There aren’t many survivors left, she said, noting there are 12 in Canada that she knows of.
“Our talk is very important to tell stories to the younger generation,” she said. “I hope young people carry on to be aware of the nuclear weapons, even in peace.”
Rummel is a Squamish treasure we are lucky to have, to listen and learn from.
“I am sort of planting a peace seed for young people so it will bloom in the future and the world will become more peaceful.”
This isn’t something just for Japanese people in Japan to think about, she said.
“We should spread it all over the world.”
It is easy to get caught up in our Squamish-centred arguments about off-leash dogs and camping zones, but we do ourselves a disservice if we become so myopic and — frankly — spoiled, that we don’t see the bigger picture that Rummel is willing to share.
She’ll be at Squamish Public Library for her free event from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Bring your kids.
