The Children of Hiroshima

The little boy did not cry or speak. He just stood there and stared at me intensely. With great effort I stood up and tested to see if I could walk with my injured foot. When I did, he came to stand even closer to me and, without saying a word, grabbed my little finger very tightly.

Sadako Teiko Okuda was living in Osaki-shimo, an island off the mainland of Japan, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. Even sixty kilometers from the city, it was clear something horrific had happened. There was a blinding flash and the window next to Sadako smashed, a shard of glass leaving a painful burn on her neck. Soon, news came that her niece and nephew who lived in Hiroshima were missing. There was only one thing she could do - leave the relative safety of the island and set off into the city to find them.

In the seven long days that followed, Sadako roamed the ruins of the city, desperately hoping that she would catch sight of her family and in the meantime coming across dozens of other children who were alone, distraught and in pain. Carrying only water and a little medicine, she did her best to nurse the children and offer what care, compassion and tenderness she could in unimaginable circumstances. And in turn, they helped her to find hope in the very darkest of times.

Told simply and powerfully in daily diary entries, The Children of Hiroshima is an extraordinary and deeply moving human story of loss, innocence and hope.

About the Author

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, in 1914, Okuda was teaching sewing on a small island some 35 miles off Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. Even from that distance, both her sight and hearing on her right side were permanently damaged. From 1960 and until her retirement, she taught home economics at a non-traditional high school in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan.