Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese atomic bomb survivor Hiroshima and the historical figure who is best known for being embraced by the then American President Barack Obama during his historic visit to this city ten years ago, has died. He was 88 years old.
Born in 1937, Mori was 8 years old when he survived the US attack on August 6, 1945. He was one and a half kilometers away from the explosion. Almost 30 years later, he learned a little-known fact – that American prisoners of war held in Japan were among those killed by the atomic bomb dropped on their country.
Working as a full-time company employee, Mori researched US and Japanese official documents and tracked down 12 American POWs. He wrote letters to their bereaved families in the US who did not know how their loved ones had died.
The US atomic attack on Hiroshima quickly destroyed the city and killed tens of thousands. The death toll at the end of that year was 140,000. The second bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed another 70,000.
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Mori wrote a book, “The Secret of 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 version of his book said on their website that Mori died on Sunday. Japanese media reported that he died in a hospital in Hiroshima.
His research eventually led to US confirmation of the death of 12 American service members caught in the bombings.
“The research I spent more than 40 years on was about people from an enemy country. It was about people,” Mori said later.
Obama, who became the first US leader to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park in 2016, mentioned in his speech “a dozen Americans took prisoners” as among the victims. He saw Mori in search of American families, believing that their loss was equal to his own, and later lied.
Mori seemed overwhelmed with emotion when he shook hands with her.
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“The president showed that he was going to hug me, we hugged,” Mori told reporters afterwards.
“I heard a scream”
Mori was thrown into the river by the force of the explosion on August 6, 1945.
“I came out of the water and saw a woman moving towards me,” Mori told AFP before meeting Obama at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 2016.
“Blood was all over his body, his internal organs were hanging from his stomach,” he recalled.
“When he caught them, he asked me where he could find a hospital, I cried and ran away, leaving him alone,” he said.
“The people who were still alive were lying here and there. I escaped and stomped on their faces and heads. I heard screams in the destroyed house. But I ran away as a child who no longer had the power to help.”
