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RTÉ News
06-07-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
Taoiseach 'deeply moved' by story of Hiroshima survivor in Japan
When the US warplane dropped a 4,400kg atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and 43 seconds later it detonated 600 metres above the city, eight-year-old Teruko Yahata was playing in her garden on what was a sunny August morning in 1945. The first indication of the enormity of what had just happened, she told Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Friday, was that the sky was suddenly and dramatically illuminated, in what she described as a blinding "bluish-white" light. The second indication was the rising black/grey nuclear cloud, which Ms Yahata said was "as if the heavens had become a huge flower". Then the force of the blast raced through her district, more than two kilometres from the point of detonation, and knocked her to the ground, causing her to lose consciousness. The atomic bomb dropped by the B-29 warplane, Enola Gay, triggered a powerful shockwave that levelled almost every structure within a radius of 1.5km. The intense heat it generated in-turn set off a firestorm that engulfed district after district. It is estimated that 70,000 people were obliterated immediately by the blast, with another 70,000 dying from 'radiation sickness' over the following months. More than half of the city's population was wiped out. Hiroshima had become the first city in the world to be targeted by a nuclear weapon and, to my amazement, Ms Yahata was steadily relating her incredible eye-witness testimony nearly eight decades later. I had spotted an unassuming, bespectacled woman, wearing a white cardigan and a pearl necklace over her dark dress, slipping into the office of Hiroshima Mayor, Kazumi Matsui, while Mr Martin was speaking with Japanese journalists. I'm not sure whether it was her purposeful stride that caught my attention, or the fact that she then carefully laid out a map of Hiroshima on a table. Either way, something made me enquire about this quiet and stylish woman at the back of the room. An official whispered to me: "She's one of the hibakusha" - a collective term which translates as "bomb-affected-people". Ms Yahata was introduced to the Taoiseach, and she first pointed out on her map where the epicentre, or more correctly hypocenter, of the blast was located, and how that related to her suburb. She had a strong voice and was speaking in English - a language she had mastered at the age of 83, so that she could dispense with translators and reach a wider audience directly. This small detail gave me a big insight into the petite, strong-willed woman sitting in front of us. Ms Yahata said she regained consciousness quickly after the atomic blast on 6 August 1945, and heard her mother's voice calling out for her. Like her city, Ms Yahata's childhood had just been blown to smithereens by the blast, and she'd now been catapulted into a nightmarish nuclear world. She told us that when she saw her mother: "I noticed that there were fragments of glass sticking out of her back, and her white dress was now stained bloody red." She witnessed her father carrying her great-grandmother on his back as he escaped their house. "There was so much smoke in there, that I could barely see the inside of the house. It had been turned upside down, and the shattered glass from the sliding doors was everywhere," she said. Ms Yahata remembered her mother praying as they left their ruined family home: "It was silent outside, and virtually all of the houses surrounding ours were destroyed." There was also fear, if not terror. "We thought that there was sure to be a second and, perhaps, a third bombing." Given that threat, and the intense destruction all around them, Ms Yahata's family decided to flee to the mountains where they had friends. But hunger stalked the land there, as the structures of society as they'd known it, were gone. Her direct testimony of eking out a life in a nuclear winter had a powerful impact on everyone in the room, including the Taoiseach. Mr Martin recounted afterwards how he'd been horrified as Ms Yahata described the hellish scenes she'd witnessed, including encountering people suffering from radiation burns with "skin peeling-off their arms". The Taoiseach said he had been deeply moved when Ms Yahata spoke of how her family, and so many others, faced starvation in those dark months after the bombing. He said she told him how, even to this day, she attaches huge significance to a bowl of rice - as she's never forgotten being given one by a stranger when she was starving as a child. Mr Martin said the purpose of his visit to Hiroshima had been to express sympathy to the victims, such as Ms Yahata, but also to reaffirm Ireland's strong and long-standing commitment to disarmament and denuclearisation. Against the backdrop of the bombing of Iran by Israel and the US, with the stated aim of destroying its capacity to make nuclear weapons, Mr Martin described the world today as "a very dangerous place." "If Iran… was ever to secure a nuclear weapon, then the prospect of proliferation for the nuclear weapons within the Middle East, for example, would grow very significantly," he contended. The Taoiseach suggested that there was a paradox about humanity, given its ability to exhibit both "incredible ingenuity" and "profound stupidity" as evidenced by its ever increasing capacity to develop weapons which could destroy the planet. "I was at the AI [Artificial Intelligence] summit in Paris… one person spoke about the application of AI to warfare, which would really be on a different level altogether, in terms of the destruction that could be wreaked on humankind." While in Hiroshima, the Taoiseach spent most of his time in the company of the city's Mayor, Kazumi Matsui. In blistering midday sunshine, they laid a wreath and stood together at the cenotaph for the victims, a sculptured arc designed to provide shelter for the souls of those killed by the bomb. In the near distance, we could see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, commonly called the A-Bomb Dome. This iconic building was left ruined by the nuclear strike but somehow is still standing - quite a feat given it was just 160m from the hypocentre of the explosion. The Taoiseach said he learned a lot from Mayor Matsui - not just about what happened in August 1945, but also how the population recovered from the collective trauma. "I think the mayor made a very good point when he said to me… that you have to break the cycle of hate. "And that's the key issue, that the people of Japan had a huge hate visited upon them. You must learn to stop hating, and if you can do that, then you can build peace," he said. But undoubtedly the most memorable person of all those introduced to the Taoiseach in Hiroshima was Teruko Yahata. "The thought that came through, [while] speaking to her, was the resilience of humankind. It's quite extraordinary that she survived," she said. The Taoiseach is among many impressed by Teruko Yahata. In 2013 she was appointed by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Ambassador for Denuclearisation - an official recognition of her tireless campaign work. Yet, while she has spoken to any and every nationality about her incredible story, it turns out there was a special reason why Ms Yahata really wanted to talk to Ireland's Taoiseach. Mr Martin told us after their meeting: "As it transpires, her daughter married an Irishman living in the United Kingdom, and she has a grandson, Conor. She said [he was] named after a great Irish King… so the world is indeed a small place." It clearly is a small place, just as it is a vulnerable place, as Ms Yahata has testified for 80 years.
Irish Times
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
In Hiroshima, Martin voices concerns about ‘drift from international rules-based order'
Taoiseach Micheál Martin ended his four-day trip to Japan on Friday with a visit to Hiroshima, meeting a survivor of the atomic bomb attack by the US on the city 80 years ago. Mr Martin said that Teruko Yahata gave a very moving testimony of her experience as an eight-year-old when the bomb, which killed 140,000 people, fell and she and her family moved to the hills outside the city. 'She spoke about her friends who had died. She spoke about the burning, the shrapnel and gash in her mother's back and so forth. When they were coming back down from the hills, there were rows of people coming back up with burns and skin peeling off their arms and so on. She gave a very comprehensive account and it was very moving to hear that,' he said. Micheál Martin lays a wreath at the Hiroshima memorial Caption: Taoiseach Micheál Martin visits Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Friday 04 July 2025. Photograph: Aimée-Linh McCartney Earlier, the Taoiseach laid a wreath at the cenotaph commemorating those who died in the attack and rang the peace bell nearby. Across the river he saw the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall, a domed building that was almost directly below the explosion and was damaged but not entirely destroyed, although everyone inside was killed. At 8.15am on August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay B29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb from about 9,450m and it detonated about 600m above the city. Few in Hiroshima heard anything as the bomb exploded but they saw a flash in the sky from a giant fireball reaching a heat of millions of degrees, vaporising those directly below. READ MORE A shock wave moved outwards at supersonic speed, destroying or damaging 90 per cent of the buildings in the city and generating a firestorm that raged for hours. The heat from the fireball sucked air upwards, creating an 18-mile column of dust and debris from the collapsing buildings that flattened as it cooled at the higher altitude, forming the cap of the mushroom cloud. How Japan fell in love with Irish culture Listen | 17:56 Taoiseach Micheál Martin wraps up his four-day visit to Japan today with a visit to Hiroshima where he will lay a wreath at the cenotaph commemorating those who died after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city in been a hectic few days with an itinerary that included the opening of Ireland House in Tokyo, which at more than €20 million is the largest capital project overseas since the foundation of the State, as well as a visit to Osaka to visit the Irish pavilion at Expo 2025, an international exposition that is expected to attract more than 28 million Times Beijing-based correspondent Denis Staunton explains why this visit is so timely and why it has focused on an economic relationship that has doubled in size over the past also explains the deep interest in Irish culture that has been building in Japan, from the development of Irish pubs to the thriving branch of by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey. Seventy-thousand people died instantly, including most of the doctors and nurses in the city and a similar number died later from injuries or from the effects of radiation. Radiation sickness caused nausea, vomiting and uncontrollable diarrhoea immediately after the bombing and was later linked to cancer, organ damage, miscarriages and stillbirths. Ireland's former external affairs minister Frank Aiken moved the first resolutions at the United Nations that eventually led to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, and Irish diplomats played a key role in the review of that treaty in 2010. The Taoiseach said Ireland would continue to advocate for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation at the United Nations. 'The worry at the moment is there is a drift from an international rules-based order,' he said. 'Certainly, I think we're at a crucial point in global affairs where like-minded countries have to group together to reassert first of all the primacy of the United Nations and its importance and the rule of law. 'At a very basic level, the world is advancing at an extraordinary rate. We're now on the cusp of the AI revolution which could be as profound as the industrial revolution in the 19th century, people say. And yet mankind keeps on developing the means to destroy itself. 'At the AI summit in Paris, there was a presentation where one person spoke about the application of AI to welfare, which would really be on a different level altogether in terms of the destruction that could be wreaked on humankind. It is very problematic and I think very worrying in terms of where we are today.'
