In recognition of the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stefan Hiratsuka, Diefenbunker Collections Coordinator, shares his grandmother’s story as a survivor of the tragic events.
“There’s a bright flash, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything you’ve seen before…â€
This line echoes through my daily life, reverberating down the Diefenbunker’s Blast Tunnel. It’s from Duck and Cover (1951), produced by the United States Federal Civil Defense Administration, meant to prepare citizens for nuclear war. The words are meant to warn. Meant to haunt.
But repetition can dull even the most terrifying things. The words become background noise: mundane, routine.
Still, they describe something very real. Something my grandmother, Haruko Hiratsuka (née Ogawa), endured.
August 6, 1945
Grandma was nine years old, a month away from her tenth birthday, when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. By that point in the war, firebombings on urban centres were common. Like many Japanese children, she had been evacuated to the hills north of the city. Her grandmother’s country estate offered a temporary refuge. Families did what they could, though many had no such place to flee.
That morning, she was playing in the yard with her younger brother before school, when she saw the flash. A light brighter than anything she’d ever seen. The shockwave soon followed.
For the rest of her life, lightning storms and fireworks would take her back to that terrifying moment.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a 15-kiloton atomic bomb detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The device, nicknamed Little Boy, exploded about 600 metres above the Shima Hospital, unleashing a blinding flash, a wave of intense heat, and a powerful shockwave. In seconds, tens of thousands were killed, buildings were flattened, and the city was engulfed in flames. Above it all, a towering, mushroom-shaped cloud began to rise.
The aftermath
In the hours that followed, as the looming cloud dissolved into a smoky haze, survivors staggered through flattened streets, burned and disoriented, as black rain began to fall. News was scarce, but those outside the blast zone began making their way toward the city, desperate to find loved ones.
Another survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, 13 at the time, was in the city, and described the immediate aftermath:
“Although it was supposed to be 8 o’clock in the morning, by the time I came out, it was dark like twilight, perhaps because of all the particles in the air, soot and smoke rising in the mushroom cloud. Now, I began to see some moving dark objects coming close to me. It was a procession of ghosts. I say ‘ghosts’ because they did not look like human beings. Their hair was standing up, while their faces were burned, blackened and swollen. They were shuffling slowly. Their skin and flesh were hanging from their bones. And some were carrying their eyeballs out of their eyes. And as they collapsed their bellies burst open and intestines spread out.â€
Grandma and her best friend from school, descended into the city, searching through the ruins for family and friends. She never said what she saw that day. But it stayed with her.
The sight of heavily bleached or badly heat-damaged hair on young people could trigger a visceral response. I didn’t understand why until much later, when I learned that one of the effects of an atomic explosion on the human body was the burning and chemical alteration of hair. It was often left fried and bleached, faded, ghostlike. A transformation both literal and symbolic, seen in those who had been too close to the blast.
Her father, my great-grandfather, a doctor, did what he could to help the injured, but in the wake of the devastation with no supplies and facilities, there was little he could do to save them from physical wounds, infections, and radiation poisoning.
The days and months that followed brought no relief. I remember her once saying, “Crickets are tasty, but the legs get stuck in your teeth.†That’s how I learned about starvation, through the quiet resilience of someone I loved so deeply, surviving in the aftermath of the bomb.
In Japan, survivors of the bombings were known as Hibakusha, a word that literally means “bomb-affected person.†Though it sounds neutral, the title came with deep social stigma. Many Hibakusha were viewed with fear, suspected of being contagious, or considered genetically damaged. Grandma was told her womb was poisoned. That she would never give birth to anything but monstrosities. She cried for days after my father was born, tears of joy and happiness.
But she never let the bomb define her. Grandma was not a victim. She was a survivor. She was a builder of family, community, and culture.
Legacy
After immigrating to Canada in 1963 when my father was three years old, she became a pillar of the Japanese-Canadian community, eventually settling in Edmonton, Alberta. She raised her children with compassion and strength. She supported new immigrants as they built lives of dignity and belonging, anchored in both heritage and hope, while forging a new Canadian identity for themselves. When I remember her, I don’t think of Hiroshima. I think of her quiet strength. Her smile. Her satisfaction at every meal, surrounded by her family, healthy, happy, and well-fed. She was tiny, physically, but her presence wrapped you in warmth.
From 1945 to now
In the Diefenbunker’s collections, we hold two ceramic tiles salvaged from Hiroshima, fragments from that day. Their surfaces are blackened, blistered, and bubbled; disfigured not by time, but by the bomb’s flash. I think of many things when I see them. They bring me back to that morning in 1945, to that incredible force, created by humanity and then unleashed upon it in a single, irreversible moment. I think of the act that marked the true beginning of the Cold War, and ultimately led to the construction of the bunker where I now work.
Working in a nuclear shelter means living every day with the remnants and revenants of the very thing she lived through. In museums, our most important work lies in tracing the threads: from stories to objects, from objects to people, and from people back to the stories that shape our shared past. For many Canadians, the threat of atomic warfare was hypothetical. For Grandma, it was history. Personal history.
The cancer that eventually took Grandma’s life, non‑Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was a fate shared by many Hibakusha. Her friend, who had entered the ruins with her under that black rain, would pass away from Parkinsonism — possibly related to the same exposure. Their story is echoed in that of Sadako Sasaki, who developed leukemia as a child from the bomb’s radiation and folded origami cranes in hopes of reaching 1,000, following the Japanese legend that grants a wish to those who succeed. She never said her wish aloud, but every survivor understood it: not just to live, but to live in a world without war, where no other child would suffer as she had.
I often wonder how different things might have been if they had known more at that time about the dangers of radiation. If they’d had somewhere — anywhere — safe to go. If it would even have made a difference. Maybe even something as simple as a warning tape, like the one that still plays each day as I walk through the Diefenbunker’s Blast Tunnel, might have.
Grandma never asked for pity, though. She chose forgiveness. She chose joy. She chose love.
She always believed that regular people on both sides of the war were far more similar than the political rhetoric had made them believe. That we can achieve so much more working together and loving each other than we could ever accomplish with acts of violence and bombs.
Eighty years later, as the world remembers that morning in Hiroshima, I find myself wondering how she would mark today, whether with prayer, a moment of silence, or simply the quiet joy of seeing her family safe, thriving, happy, and well-fed.
For me, I would commemorate the day by giving her a long hug, to show her how deeply she was loved, and to reassure her that things turned out okay. I wish more than anything that I could.
—— In memory of Grandma. Never again. ——