Teruko Yahata is 85 years old. But she could have died as a girl. She was in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Tens of thousands of people died immediately, and thousands more suffered long-lasting injuries and sickness. Yahata is known as a hibakusha, or a survivor of the atomic bomb. People such as Yahata visit the city’s memorial sites to tell people about what happened nearly 80 years ago. She speaks with those who come to Hiroshima to visit the Peace Memorial Museum, which was built to remember the people who died in the bombing. She remembers the day of the bombing. The sky turned “bluish white,” she said, “I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness.” Starting in 2013, Yahata traveled the world to tell her story. However, she only spoke Japanese. An interpreter, or a person who speaks English and Japanese, would tell her story for her. But in the following years, she started taking English lessons so she could tell the story with her own voice.
