“All our homes were made of wood, so fire would spread from one house to the next. We were making breaks between homes,” said Matsubara, now seventy-one, as she told her story at Emory’s Woodruff Library. “My best friend suddenly shouted, and I could hear the sound of a plane. I looked up and high in the sky, there was white smoke trailing behind the plane. Then there was a flash and explosion beyond description. I went unconscious, and bright morning turned into night.”

The first atomic bomb to be used on a populated area had been dropped by an American B-29 and exploded over the city at 8:15 a.m. with the force of fifteen thousand tons of TNT. A mushroom cloud billowed into the air, spreading skyward.

This unprecedented show of military might–the end result of the highly secretive and costly “Manhattan Project” initiated to defeat the Germans and their allies during World War II–has become a lasting symbol of the horrors of war. By December 1945, about 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima from the bombing or the resulting radiation; thousands more died in the years following from related illnesses and cancers.

Today, the destruction of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki, serves as a powerful inspiration for working toward peace.

“You can’t respond to violence with violence and get anywhere. We must cut the chains of retaliation as fast as we can,” said Minoru Hataguchi, director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. “The survivors try to forgive in order to show the world that the only way to eliminate hatred is love.”

This fall, the Woodruff Library hosted the Peace Museum’s traveling exhibition, “Searching for Peace: The Experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” which tells the story of the bombings through poems and drawings by survivors, panel photographs of the destruction and the victims, and charred, melted artifacts from the cities. Hataguchi and Matsubara spoke at the University in September as part of the opening ceremony of the exhibit, which was sponsored by Emory’s East Asian Studies program and the Institute of Comparative and International Studies.

Hataguchi’s father was among those killed in the Hiroshima bombing. “All I have of him is the pocket watch and belt buckle he was wearing,” says Hataguchi, whose mother was two months pregnant with him at the time. “My father never knew of my existence. Until I was twenty, I really hated the U.S. But I realized you can’t be happy if you hold hatred inside of you.”

Matsubara, who has spent her life speaking around the world as a survivor, captures the aftermath of the bombing in her vivid artwork, which depicts burned and wounded children crying for help and bodies floating in pools of water.

“When I woke, both my hands were swollen and my skin was peeling off. I had burns on my face, too. I wanted to go home. The only clothes left on me were underwear,” Matsubara said. “Someone called my name, but they were burned so badly I couldn’t recognize them.”

Matsubara’s father, who later died of cancer, was a firefighter who was called into the city to help. Matsubara, on the verge of death from radiation poisoning, stayed with a neighbor who had taken shelter in a cave. Seven months later, she returned to school, with scars covering her face and arms.

“For many years, I was discriminated against by my own society. I couldn’t get a job, no one wanted to marry me,” she said. “No one would even sit by me on the train, for fear that I was contaminated.”

In 1953, Matsubara had plastic surgery that corrected the worst of the scars. She also has had surgery for cancer.

“The past continues to haunt me. We survivors have not escaped the war, nor will we ever,” she told the hushed crowd. “But I must tell my story so that atomic bombs will never be used again. Human beings have to learn the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The survivors are dying. We must now pass the torch of hope and peace to you.”–M.J.L.