Francis Mitsuo Tomosawa was born in Hawaii in 1930; his father had been in Hawaii since the end of the 19th century. He talks about growing up in Hawaii and his time in school there. He went to Hiroshima with his mother and brother in 1941 to learn more about Japanese culture, but his father stayed in Hawaii and was spared from having to go to an internment camp during the war due to the large number of Japanese people in Hawaii making this impossible. On August 6, 1941, he was with his classmates about two kilometers from ground zero and was only saved from being killed in the blast by being in the shadow of Mt. Hiji when the bomb was dropped. He describes the aftermath of the bombing, including meeting up with his mother and helping out at a nearby hospital, since his wounds were relatively light. He talks about returning to Hawaii in 1948 and his experiences going to high school, as well as his experiences during the Korean War. He discusses moving to California after the war in 1955 and his experiences of going to college, working, and getting married; he got married in 1958 and graduated from college in 1959. He talks about being called to speak before the U.S. Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy in 1982 in support of the nuclear freeze movement and how this experience and his willingness to speak openly about being a hibakusha helped open the door to his involvement with the Committee for Atomic Bomb Survivors (CABS). He speaks about his experiences with CABS and other hibakusha support associations and their activities, including trying to get the U.S. and Japanese governments to help pay for medical checkups and other medical bills, and discusses the history behind the rift that occurred in CABS that lead to the founding of the North America A-bomb Survivors Association (NABS), the American Society of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-bomb Survivor (ASA), and other groups in Seattle and Canada; he also discusses the situation surrounding support for hibakusha groups in South Korea and Brazil.
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