WRITTEN MONUMENT(English)

WRITTEN MONUMENT is a book of memoirs written by A-bomb survivors living in Funairi Mutsumien, an A-bomb survivors victims home, and was published in 1981 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Home and the 35th anniversary of the A-bombing. This book will provide the readers with opportunities to know about survivors’ lives after the A-bombing as well as the situation at the time of the A-bombing.

We would like to express special thanks to the members of the translation class of the World Friendship Center for translation into English and to Miki Minamoto and Kyoko Hiura and the members of Hiroshima Speaks Out for the input of Japanese. We also thank Hiroshima Municipal Government for allowing us to post this book on our web site. Since the contexts of the memoirs sometimes have something to do with the privacy of the writers and their family, we have changed their names. The ages of the survivors given in this book refer to their age when they wrote their memoir.

We wish these memoirs written by commoners in Hiroshima would catch many people’s eyes around the world and enable them to know cruelty which war brings and to think what would happen if nuclear weapons were used.

WRITTEN MONUMENT –Testimony of the A-bombed Elderly People – (first issue published on July 20, 1981) is a collection of the A-bomb victims’ stories, which was compiled to mark the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the “Mutsumien”, Hiroshima A-bomb Nursing Home and the 35th of the A-bombing.

Twenty-eight stories were selected out of 72 pieces, either from the notes written by the residents themselves or the ones orally given and taken notes by the staff in the Home.

It is not overstating that the “Written Monument”is a monument by words which the A-bomb surviving generation can pass on to the younger generation of how they, the A-bomb witnesses, survived through the post war years and came to choose the nursing home, Mutsumien, as their home in their final years.

“HIROSHIMA SPEAKS OUT!” has decided to make these notes into CD-R and distribute widely, attaching a factual record of the A-bombing, survivors’ drawings as well as the A-bomb-related homepage links, since we wish many people would read them.

Taking the “Written Monument” deep in our heart as “reviving testimonies of the A-bomb survivors“ (Yoshiaki Nakamura writes in the epilogue), we’d like to look to a peaceful century free from nuclear disasters, by sharing the acknowledgement of “nuclear” threat focused on human misery with the people in the world.

The age given is the survivor’s age at the time the note was written, and we used assumed names due to the privacy reasons.
To all those concerned who gave us permission when we make the WRITTEN MONUMENT into CD-ROM in Japanese as well as English, we’d like to express our sincere appreciation. Also, we are very grateful to the World Friendship Center Translators’ group for the English translation, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Hiroshima Council of the A-bomb Counter-disaster Measures for the pictures and other materials, and the late photographer, Mr. Yoshito Matsushige for his cooperation.