80 years on, NPO working to digitize materials on A-bombings
The organization, No More Hibakusha Project — Inheriting Memories of the A- and H-Bomb Sufferers, has launched a crowdfunding project to seek cooperation in the efforts.
The group, established in 2011, has exhibited atomic bombing-related materials in lectures and online museums. It preserves over 20,000 items, including memoirs and testimonies of bomb victims and records of antinuclear movements, in three separate warehouses.
Stored materials include the original copies of responses to a survey by Nihon Hidankyo, formally called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, asking 3,690 victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings from 1983 to 1984 about their biggest hardships.
The responses contain vivid accounts of their experiences. One survivor talked about the person's own mother being trapped under a collapsed house, and another recounted fleeing and having to kick away people pleading for help.
The nonprofit group aims to digitize the materials and publish them online in light of concerns about their deterioration, but it struggles with staffing and funding.
All five staff members of the organization are unpaid. Only one member, 78-year-old Yoshie Kurihara, is in charge of creating an inventory of items and redacting personal information on them for digitization.
Kurihara relies on cooperation from university student volunteers to organize materials.
"In the 80th year since the end of World War II, the number of people who experienced the bombings has decreased," Kurihara said. "We must preserve the valuable materials."
In addition to digitizing materials, the nonprofit hopes to establish a facility for preserving and displaying the materials.
It kicked off a crowdfunding drive June 23 to partially secure stable funding with donations. The project runs until Aug. 15.
"We hope people will learn from the materials and consider them as something that personally affects them, in order to create a future without any more war," Kurihara said. "We hope to pass on the memories."
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