| NOTA |
(★)(Translated by Jean Dan and Ruth Sieben-Morgen)(Five years after the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, a Professor of Education at Hiroshima University organized a project to preserve for the record the stories of those who had been on the receiving side of that catastrophic explosion. Knowing that the youngest witness would be the most impartial, Professor Osada collected more than 2,000 compositions written by grade school, high school and university students of Hiroshima. One hundred and five of the most representative make up the book, ´GENBAKU NO KO (Children of the A-Bomb)´, which has been a best-seller in Japan since its publication in 1951. ／Translated into English, these first-hand accounts bring to the rest of the world the searing memories, still painfully clear six years later, of the fourth grader who tells us, ´I was only four then, so I didn´t know what it was all about´ ; of the high school boy who still hears the voices calling for help under the collapsed and flaming roofs ; of the child who did not understand until three years later that all that was left of Mother was in that small, white-wrapped box. ／Of all the literature on the subject of the A-bomb, this is the least propaganda-ridden. The children have no axe to grind. They have simply told their stories. ／Educators will be interested in this record, not only as samples of children´s writing, but also because of the high esteem in which the children obviously hold their schools and teachers. ／What the children have written is also psychological and sociological documentation, for here is a record of the impact of catastrophe and how it was survived mentally, physically and historically. ／This is a book written by children which is in no sense a children´s book. For once they have made themselves heard, and from, of all places, a battlefield, on which they were caught without arms or armor. ◆Dr. Arata Osada, born in Nagano in 1887, is a graduate of Kyoto University, Class of 1915. From that same year he started teaching Education at Hiroshima Teacher´s College and later lectured at Hiroshima University. In August 1945, he experienced the sudden explosion of the atomic bomb, and for a while suffered from radiation sickness. Since that time he has devoted himself to the cause of world education for peace, and to a movement in aid of children orphaned or injured by the A-bomb. He was president of Hiroshima University from 1945 to 1951. He is also past president of Japanese Society for the Study of Education ; he is currently professor Emeritus at the University and also President of the Japanese Association for Protection of Children.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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