Michiko Benevedes was born in 1932 in Nagasaki. She talks about her father's upbringing as the son of a wealthy family; he volunteered to be in the army but came back to Nagasaki shortly after the bombing to look for his family and later died as a result of exposure to radiation in 1965. Her mother died a month after the bombing. She also talks about her contentious relationship with her older sister, who ended up in a wheelchair as a result of the bomb. She describes how she injured her foot on a nail as they were fleeing from the city to her grandmother's house on Gotō Rettō; it was her grandmother who helped heal the wound on her foot. She also describes suffering from radiation sickness, which rendered her infertile and later led to breast cancer. She talks about meeting her husband in Hawaii and getting married in Yokohama; he was an American able to speak some Japanese. They came to San Francisco in 1963. She was sick for two years after arriving, but was able to be treated due to her husband's insurance. She talks about being involved with the Committee of Atomic Bomb Survivors in the United States of America (CABS) for 22 years, serving ten years in a position of leadership under Kanji Kuramoto. She also discusses writing her memoirs.
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