Akiko Watanabe was 5 years old when the bombing of Hiroshima occurred. Her grandfather pulled her out of the rubble, as the house had collapsed around her. She escaped to Gion with her pregnant mother and 2-year-old sister. Her older brother, who was a first-year elementary school student, her grandmother, her grandfather, and her father also survived. Members of her mother's family had gone to Hawaii in the past and had a connection to the US; some of them were forced to go to an internment camp during the war. She talks about how these family members also sent items such as clothes and shoes back to Japan after the war. She came to the US for the first time in 1959 to study through her father's relatives, and then came back again in 1962. She describes medical issues that may be related to radiation exposure, and talks about volunteering to help during the biannual visits of Japanese doctors to conduct medical examinations of hibakusha living in the US.
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