Japanese Hibakusha Group Meets with American Woman Who Witnessed Attack on Pearl Harbor

By Takashi Nobira / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

21:00 JST, December 13, 2025

HONOLULU — A delegation from a hibakusha group in Nagasaki Prefecture met with an American woman who witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor as a child, in Honolulu on Dec. 6.

Dorinda Nicholson, 90, used to live near Pearl Harbor. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, she looked up at the sky from the yard of her house and saw Japanese military planes. Then, she heard large explosions and the smell of fire and oil filled the air. She saw black smoke rising in the direction of the harbor.

Nicholson, who was 6 years old, did not understand what had happened. She, her parents and siblings evacuated by car to a hilltop. She vividly remembers a person shouting over the car radio that it was not a drill. The family fled to a sugarcane field, where they stayed for a while. Even after returning home, they did not switch on the light after dark and spent nighttime in darkness because they were worried about air raids.

The Japanese Imperial Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu destroyed and sank eight U.S. battleships and killed more than 2,400 people.

Nicholson subsequently learned that many Americans hated Japanese and were taught the phrase, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Yet she never felt hatred toward Japan and thinks that was because she was familiar with many Japanese people in Hawaii.

After the war, Nicholson worked as a flight attendant, among many other jobs. As an eyewitness to what happened that day, she has published a book about her experiences and given talks at schools to share what she experienced with young people.

For the recent commemorative ceremony for victims of the attack, she traveled to Honolulu from the mainland. She met with the hibakusha group delegation from Nagasaki Prefecture at the hotel she was staying at and told them about her experience.

The delegation from the group, Nagasaki-ken Hibakusha Techo Tomo no Kai (Nagasaki Prefecture hibakusha handbook friends’ association), included a woman who was 6 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, where she was living.

Chiyoko Motomura, now 86, asked Nicholson, “Do you still hold no grudges against Japan?”

Nicholson said she doesn’t hate Japan and that they can understand each other deeply. She also sympathized with hibakusha and said the saddest part of war is that children and civilians are affected.

Motomura lost her aunt in the atomic bombing on Nagasaki and saw the charred bodies of many people near the hypocenter. Eighty years have passed since the end of the war. The two women, who experienced great trauma during their childhood, reaffirmed that it is important to understand each other and have hope, never hating each other. They promised that they will both tell their stories to young people, then they hugged.

The Nagasaki delegation consists of 10 people and includes first- and second-generation hibakusha. Since arriving in the United States on Nov. 27, they have traveled around the country to speak about their experiences with the atomic bombing and met young people.