Kazuko Aoki's father arrived in California as a "schoolboy" around 1900 at the age of 17; he came back to Japan to get married and then returned to the U.S. Kazuko's older sister and older brother were born in the U.S., but she was born in 1931 after her parents returned to Hiroshima. She recalls that her family was able to obtain western foods such as cheese, milk, steak, and butter in Japan before the war; her mother also used to put vanishing cream and talcum powder on her older sister, whose friends would notice the odor. After the war started, Kazuko's father was critical of the war and insisted that Japan would lose; his friends in the neighborhood, including the chief of police, urged him not to speak out for fear that he would be arrested by the military police. She was 14 years old and working at a factory about three kilometers from ground zero when the bomb was dropped, while her mother and father were at home. She talks about her experiences right after the bombing, including seeing the "black rain." Her father had gone into the city to look for her, exposing him to more radiation; he later developed esophageal cancer. She herself developed a tumor on her thyroid in her 30s due to the radiation, which was found by a doctor from Hiroshima, not America; her American family doctor dismissed her concerns about radiation from the bomb as being too far in the past to matter. After the war, owing to his ability to speak English, her father helped the occupation forces in confiscating weapons like swords from the population, which enabled him to be able to get medicines from the military to help treat the rash that she had started to develop. She talks about her husband, who was in an internment camp during the war, and their move to Hawaii in 1959; he would often meet with his fellow former inmates and talk about their days in the camp. She talks about her experiences working in hospice care and going to the biennial health checkups by doctors from Hiroshima.
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