Tokyo — Hiroshima Japanese atomic bomb survivor and historian Shigeki Mori, best known for the big hug he gave then US President Barack Obama during his historic visit to the city a decade ago, has died. He is 88 years old.
Born in 1937, Mori was 8 years old when he survived the August 6, 1945, US attack just 2½ kilometers (1½ miles) away. Nearly 30 years later, he learned a little-known fact – that American prisoners of war held in Japan were among those killed by an atomic bomb dropped by their own country.
Working as a full-time company employee, Mori researched US and Japanese official records and located 12 American POWs. He wrote letters to his grieving families in the US who did not know how their loved ones had died.
The US nuclear attack on Hiroshima immediately destroyed the city and killed tens of thousands of people. By the end of that year the death toll was 140,000. The second bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed 70,000 people.
Mori wrote the book “The Secret of the American POWs Killed by the Atomic Bomb” which was published in Japanese in 2008. The book won him the prestigious Kikuchi Kan Award and was later translated into English.
The editors of the English translation of his book said on their website that Mori died Sunday in a Hiroshima hospital.
His research eventually led to US confirmation of the deaths of 12 American service members captured in the bombing.
“The research I’ve done for more than 40 years is not about people in enemy countries. It’s about human beings,” Mori later said.
Obama, who became the first US leader to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park in 2016, mentioned in his speech that “a dozen Americans are being held captive” among the victims. He recognized Mori for seeking out the families of the Americans, believing their loss equal to his own, and then embraced them.
(tags to translate)General News
