Nobel Peace Nobel will have Hiroshima survivor who immigrated to Brazil
At Facto News, a day before the ceremony in Oslo, she said she was two years old when the bomb exploded. “On August 6, 1945, I was at the door playing with my older brother and my mother. Everyone says it was a beautiful day with blue sky,” he said.
The survivor’s family home was 18 kilometers from the explosion epicenter. But for the next moment, its street was taken by “a black rain, a hot wind.” “My health was very bad. My parents thought I would die. I spent days and days with diarrhea and the food would not stop on my body,” he said.
Today 82 years old, Watanabe says that in the following years, the city’s life was “very sad”. “There was no food, everything was contaminated,” he said. “We didn’t think about what had happened. We had to think about surviving, working every day,” he said.
Another aspect, she said, was the impossibility of leaving the region. “They didn’t want us, they didn’t want us to leave there. There was a lot of discrimination against those in Hiroshima that day, it was very horrible. We survived, but it wasn’t our fault. We were victims,” he said.
The Japanese decided, 24 years old, to migrate to Brazil. “I always thought that when I grow up, I’m going to live in another country. One day I saw a sign with the ad and my heart hit very hard at that moment. I decided I wanted to go. I went to study to know which country was that. But I wanted to get out of there, “he said.
Watanabe’s family resisted allowing her to make the trip. But with her boyfriend having already left for Brazil, she would follow him some time later. “I decided to marry her and, in 1967, would immigrate. It was 45 days of ship alone to the port of Santos, where my husband was waiting for me. There began my life in Brazil,” he said.
