Sixty-three years have past, but Hideko Tamura still remembers the way her cousin Hideyuki would climb high atop the roof their home in Hiroshima and watch the B-29 planes fly over head during air raids. She can still imagine him looking up in awe at the hundreds of planes flying over head each day.

She also vividly remembers the devastation of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945 when an atomic bomb was dropped on the city.

Like many other young children living in Hiroshima in 1945, Tamura had been evacuated to the countryside, finding refugee in temples. She was tucked safely away when the bomb hit. Far from the devastation, Tamura later bore witness to the overwhelming devastation and loss caused by the bomb.

She learned her cousin had survived the initial blast and had run alongside a classmate to escape what they thought were planes carrying more bombs. According to the classmate, Hideyuki was burned extensively and at one point, he fell and couldn’t go on any more. He told his friend he could not go on but to continue to run and save himself. He was like a brother to Tamura.

“I was proud that even though his entire body was burned and he had no clothes left on his body as was described to me by his friend, he tried to walk and what more can you do as a human being. He didn’t just give up and say this is just too bad,” Tamura described at a recent Bellevue Community College speaking engagement. “When he fell he was noble enough at age 12 to say, ‘You go on, I can not do it anymore’.”

Like many other Hiroshima survivors, Tamura stayed silent, but never forgot the devastation caused by the aftermath of the bomb.

She is now ready to share her story.

In her newest book, One Sunny Day, Tamura describes vivid accounts of the bombing and depicts her struggle to find meaning in the reality of war and the dawn of the atomic age.

She was recently invited to share her story at Bellevue Community College for a lecture titled, “The Consequences of Nuclear Use and the Role of Hope: A Personal Testimony.” The production was spearheaded by fourth-year-university-student Takumi Torii from Japan. Majoring in sociology and journalism, Torii is attending BCC for a one-year program in the International Business Program.

As a member of UNICEF at BCC, Torii organized a paper crane workshop, poster exhibit and the lecture presentation given by Hiroshima survivor Tamura. His aim is to bring collective healing among cultures and generations.

Tamura gave a moving account of the days and years following the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Born in Tokyo, Tamura moved with her family to Hiroshima after her father was drafted into the military. In a day marked in history, Tamura lost her mother, relatives, classmates, her young cousin Hideyuki and best friend Miyoshi. She was only 10years old.

Now, sixty-three years have passed and Tamura has found the courage to share her testimony of what happened on that day.

Moments after the explosion, she recalls a sea of injured and dazed neighbors and friends emerging from the burning city. She searched desperately for her mother amongst the confusion and devastation. The trauma left her with what she referred to as severe “psychic numbing” for years.

“After the bomb, we were all under a black cloud with a defying sound and a boulder of radiation like a waterfall,” she described for the audience. “Followed was raging of the earth and you couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch dark. Everything was shaking and breaking and the thought was this is the end of the world.”

Her father later shared with her his recollection of stopping civilians from stoning a very young wounded prisoner of war shortly after the bomb explosion. As a commanding military officer, he ordered burials, out of respect for Western tradition, for prisoners of war who died that day.

“The heat from the bomb that burned all the children’s clothes was twice the heat that melts iron and went higher. After the bomb you could see from one end (of the city) to the other, it was ashes and completely flat,” she explained, adding, “I think people forget it wasn’t just the Japanese who perished. There was a large population of Korean people in the city and at least half of that population died. There were prisoners of war – Americans and other nationalities.”

Since her retirement from the University of Chicago Hospitals as a clinical social worker in the Radiation Oncology Department in 2003, Tamura began serving on the Multicultural Commission for the city of Medford, Ore. She took roughly 40 Americans to Japan to sing songs of peace for the 61st anniversary of Hiroshima’s bombing. During the trip, Tamura and others visited the Peace Park by the Memorial Mound, where the 70,000 unidentified ashes rest. Her daughter sang an ode she wrote to her grandmother whom she never met.

The museum in Hiroshima was built fairly early on after the bombing, but Tamura was hesitant to visit and didn’t return until 1998.

Upon visiting, the first thing she saw in the Rotunda was a black and white image of a B-29 plane moving across a screen and she realized it was an image of a plane bringing the bomb.

“I instinctively put my hand over it as if I could stop it. Of course the image went past my hand and I heard myself say, ‘Oh my God’. I wish it had stopped and hadn’t made it. Our lives would have been so different,” she described. “For a moment I would have had the possibility of having the laughter and happy faces of my family. Especially my mother who didn’t make it.”

Tamura continues to share her story in hopes of aspiring change and preventing the history of Hiroshima’s bombing from being repeated.

“This was the destruction caused by bombs dropped in cities in Japan 63 years ago. You multiply that by quantum leaps and the lethalness as the bombs stand,” Tamura said with a shaky voice, “They are capable of extinguishing the world. Killing the world 10 times over.”

Today, Tamura continues her work through her educational organization called OSD (One Sunny Day) Initiatives. The organization provides ways to connect people for purposes of reconciliation and collective healing.

“It use to make me ill to speak of it. And that was the reason I wrote a book so I wouldn’t have to talk about it. But I can not remain silent to see people being unaware of how destructive these weapons are,” she explained.

The OSD is working with the Hiroshima Peace Museum in presenting its photo exhibition in all 50 states in the U.S. by the end of this year.

For more information on the OSD or to purchase One Sunny Day, visit http://osdinititiatives.com/index.html.

Lindsay Larin can be reached at llarin@bellevuereporter.com or at 425-453-4602.