Kazuko

Sixth Grade in World War II Hiroshima

By: Kazuko Blake, Sandra Y. Vega (As told to)

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Hardcover | 1 October 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover
162 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97 x 1.42

Hardcover

$62.38

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Kazuko is the memoir of a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor. It is the story of a young Japanese girl's experience living through the world's first atomic bomb and its aftermath.

Kazuko Blake, now in her 90s, is one of few remaining survivors of that event. The atomic bomb was dropped while she was in 6th grade, and she remembers the events clearly. Here she describes the relatively carefree days before the war, the increased tempo of war through her elementary school days, and August 6, 1945, the day the bomb fell. The chaos and disruption are palpable as she describes the following days of uncertainty and confusion during evacuation, surrender, and occupation of her home country. In time, she met some of those victors, and she concludes her story with impressions of them and her eventual move to the country of her former enemy. It was a time of great change for Japan, and she shares her observations of it in this engaging memoir.

Industry Reviews

"In this gripping new memoir, Kazuko Blake tells the story of her early life, before, during, and after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Her vivid recollection of experiencing the blast alone in her sixth-grade classroom makes readers feel like we are right there with her, squeezed under a desk, with thumbs in our ears, three fingers over our eyes, pinkies holding our nose, and breathing through our mouth, just as her teachers had trained her to do. Blake spent most of her adult life in the United States, raising kids in Texas. Questions about her past from grandchildren and others, and a fateful 2019 visit to Hiroshima, her first visit to Japan since leaving in 1957, prompted her to record her history. This story, from the perspective of someone external to the better-known narratives of twentieth-century history in Japan, provides a fresh take on the critical events of 1945 and the decades before and after the war."

Lori Watt, Associate Professor of History and Global Studies, Washington University in St. Louis. Author of When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. (Harvard University Press, 2009)

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