Yasuo Grant Fujita was born in Hiroshima in 1940. During the war, his father was in Manchuria and his mother worked out of the home as a beautician. He talks about being at home eating breakfast at the time of the bombing. His house was less than 1 kilometer from ground zero, and he remembers his mother and grandfather helping to pull him from the wreckage. He was the only member of his family who was visibly injured, but his mother and grandfather both died of radiation poisoning within weeks after the bombing. He and his younger brother had to go to an orphanage, and there his brother died of malnutrition. He talks about the orphanage where he stayed for three years, after which his father, who had been imprisoned in Siberia, came to find him. He talks about being examined by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). He explains how he was able to come to the U.S. with his father, stepmother, and stepbrothers in 1956, and how he was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War after graduating from college. He talks about how he was there at the beginning of the establishment of hibakusha support groups in Los Angeles, and he explains how his goals differed from the other members. While they wanted to talk about their health issues and work to get support from the U.S. and Japanese governments, he just wanted Americans to understand the tragedies the atomic bombs inflicted on the survivors. He tells the story of how his future father-in-law, an employee of the ABCC, opposed his daughter's marriage to Grant on the basis of his proximity to ground zero. He talks about his experience raising koi and all of the people he met along the way.
Read
