Hiroshima survivor who helped get the nuclear ban and Nobel Peace Prize

Setsuko Thurlow is perhaps the world's best known Hibakusha -- a survivor of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. When she speaks there is rarely a dry eye in the house. Beyond Nuclear has reprinted her moving testimony, which helped get the UN Ban Treaty and, in turn, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for ICAN. She was 13 and at school when the bombing happened, and was one of the few survivors and when she crawled out of the wreckage, helped by a rescuer, a horrific sight met her eyes.

"Streams of stunned people were slowly shuffling from the city centre toward nearby hills. They were naked or tattered, burned, blackened and swollen. Eyes were swollen shut and some had eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. They were bleeding, ghostly figures like a slow-motion image from an old silent movie. Many held their hands above the level of their hearts to lessen the throbbing pain of their burns. Strips of skin and flesh hung like ribbons from their bones. Often these ghostly figures would collapse in heaps never to rise again."

Read her story. (Photo: Paul Saviano for Hibakusha Stories.)