Masako Kawasaki was born in Japan in 1937. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, and her father had a factory that helped polish machinery for the military. Her two youngest half-brothers were evacuated to the countryside before the bombing of Hiroshima, but she was with her aunt, her older sister, and one of her younger half-brothers in the city when the bomb was dropped; her father was also in the countryside because he was sick but was planning to return to the factory on the morning of August 6, 1945, and her step-mother had already died before the end of the war. Her older brother was killed in the bombing, her father died at the end of August, and her older sister and grandmother died in 1950; her younger brother's face was badly burned, and she herself developed swollen lumps and anemia. She talks about how her husband, a Sansei born in the U.S., and his family returned to Japan on the last boat available before they were forced into an internment camp; they went to Kure, so he was not caught in the bombing. She talks about going to school after the war, and then going to Tokyo for college. She tells the story of how she met her husband in Japan and got married in 1963; they moved to the U.S. shortly afterward. She discusses her involvement with hibakusha support groups starting in the early 1970s and her experiences with the biennial medical checkups provided by doctors from Hiroshima.
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