From Overseas Press

My Japanese grandparents' silence over the A-bomb

By Yoko Kubota (Agencies)
Updated: 2010-08-06 16:50

An issue that had always inspired dread in me took on a human face-my family's face.

But it also inspired a new respect and admiration for my grandparents, and their generation, for moving on with their lives and rebuilding Hiroshima. They refused, like millions of others around the world who have been struck by disaster, to be stuck in the past.

My grandparents have came and visited me in the United States, where I lived for over a decade and which I came to think of as my second home, and my grandmother said she holds no hatred against the country that destroyed her city.

Even after hearing her story, I, too, harbour no anger.

"We were in a war, so it could not be helped that people hated them (the United States) then," she said.

"But now, the most important thing is that such a thing never happens again."

The hibakusha are ageing, and I often wonder how many stories go untold or become forgotten. Now I am back in this city as a reporter, doing what I can do by sharing my grandparents' story and the spirit of Hiroshima.