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The
hibakusha--survivors of the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki--are the only individuals in history
to have directly experienced the horror of an atomic
bombing. Their number includes not only Japanese but
Koreans, Chinese and others who were in those cities.
"I Have a Mission"
By Margie Hunt, U.S.A.
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Until recently, Margie Hunt, a pioneer SGI-USA member, was
silent about her memories of Hiroshima, even to her son. In
the past, she acknowledged that she was from Hiroshima and
was there on that summer day of August 6, 1945. She would
not, however, elaborate on what she saw or the effects of
that day on her life.
A teenager at the time, she had decided to take a day off
from her factory job to spend the day in her father's
engineering office to daydream. She saw a dark yellowish
color in the sky and wondered why searchlights were roaming
the sky so early in the day. A split second later, windows
exploded and walls collapsed. She hid under her father's
desk.
As she and her father made their way home, she remembers
people walking aimlessly through the streets, some naked,
their burned skin hanging in strips. Later, in a hospital
where her sister was being treated, Margie remembers people
pleading to die.
On her first day out of the house after the bombing, Margie
noticed the ground was littered with what looked like
fluorescent flowers. As she walked among them, she realized
that these "flowers" were pieces of bodies and bones of
human beings, glowing from radiation.
The war left Margie with an iron determination to chart her
own path in life, first rejecting her father's offer to set
her up in a dressmaking shop. Instead, she emigrated to the
American South in 1955. She plastered over her feelings and
became, in her words, "cold and distant."
In 1965, she started practicing Nichiren Buddhism. She had
embraced her Buddhist practice on an intellectual level. But
it wasn't until 2006, when she met Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi
Akiba, that she could release her feelings about her wartime
experiences.
After meeting and talking with him, she cried for the first
time. "For 60 years, I said nothing," she admits. "Now, I
feel I have a mission to share what I experienced during the
war. Lots of people don't know about what happened--it's my
promise to tell them, and I will work hard, wherever I can."
It is impossible to express, she says, how precious is this
life, and her Buddhist practice which has brought her to
this point. Margie has made this line from a poem by SGI
President Ikeda her inspiration: "Break down the wall of
your heart. If you achieve self-reformation, then everything
will change around you."
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