A-Bomb Survivor’s Child Inspired to Speak By Father’s Pain, Vows to Carry on Dream of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

By Yoshiki Okamoto​ / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

1:00 JST, August 8, 2025

HIROSHIMA — Hiroshima was filled with prayers for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombing on Wednesday as the city marked the 80th anniversary of the tragedy. With survivors now far advanced in age and little time remaining to pass on their experiences, many people are working to carry on their efforts toward the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons.

Sugiko Shibata, 62, is a second-generation hibakusha, or a child of an atomic bomb survivor. A resident of Tottori, she began sharing her late father’s experiences of the atomic bombing in February this year.

Burdened by guilt throughout his life that he could not save a friend in the bombing, Shibata’s father Shuichi Idani dedicated his life to the abolition of nuclear weapons. His daughter learned about his feelings — what he called the “thick scars on my heart” — through the diary he left behind, and this became the catalyst for her actions.

Shibata attended the city’s peace memorial ceremony on Wednesday holding her father’s memorial tablet. She pledged to her father that she would carry on his work and continue to advocate for a world without nuclear weapons.

Idani passed away at the age of 88 in 2017. Eighty years ago, he traveled from Tottori to Hiroshima to take an entrance exam for the Imperial Japanese Army’s accounting school.

He was staying at a ryokan inn about 1 kilometer from the hypocenter when the bomb exploded, and he was trapped under the collapsed building.

Idani managed to crawl out and escaped without serious injury, but he suffered from nausea and diarrhea.

After the war, Idani ran a costume rental business while also devoting himself to speaking about his experiences, traveling both domestically and internationally. Even after his home was destroyed by fire in 2000, he did not stop his activities.

When Shibata was young, she thought her father was “amazing for fighting for peace,” but her interest gradually waned. After the fire, she had mixed emotions, wondering, “Why did he do this when our family was going through such a difficult time?”

Father’s essay

In 2021, Shibata met with the family of Morio Kawashima, a friend of her father’s who was killed in the bombing at the age of 16. Kawashima was staying at the same inn to take the same exam.

Shibata was told by the family that Idani had visited them before his death to apologize, saying, “I couldn’t save Morio-kun.” Moved by this part of her father’s past, which she had never known about, she felt a desire to “face what happened to him and try to understand it more deeply.”

There were a dozen magazines of civic groups at her parents’ home, and among them was an article her father had written about his experience of the atomic bomb. Shibata read it for the first time.

“The wooden framework of the collapsed building had become like the bars of a jail cell, and I couldn’t do anything to help K-kun, who was screaming, ‘Help me!’ inside. The guilt of abandoning him to the raging fire and fleeing, the ‘thick scars on my heart,’ torments me.”

“K-kun” was Kawashima. Shibata realized that her father was not able to help him and had been carrying that burden ever since.

“Perhaps his efforts to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons were also a way to prepare himself mentally to apologize to the bereaved family [of his friend],” Shibata thought. The feeling of unease she had toward her father disappeared.

‘Nonnuclear’ on memorial tablet

As Shibata read the article, she began to think that “one day, I want to share my father’s story in public.”

Last year, Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) won the Nobel Peace Prize. “There is meaning in continuing to share the experiences [of hibakusha],” she thought, and her desire to carry on his story grew even stronger.

In February this year, Shibata was asked to speak at an event in Tottori City celebrating the Nobel Peace Prize, and she accepted without hesitation.

After speaking about her father for the first time in front of about 100 people, she said, “I was able to understand my father better as a survivor who desired a world without nuclear weapons.” She has since spoken on two more occasions.

On her father’s memorial tablet is inscribed the word “nonnuclear.”

“I will continue to advocate for the peaceful world that atomic bomb survivors have spoken of,” Shibata said.