Midwest Book Review
Bookwatch October 2012
Cowper’s Bookshelf
Masako’s Story, Second edition
Kikuko Otake
AuthorHouse
1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200
Bloomington, IN 47403-5161
9781463443375
$19.99
www.authorhouse.com
Now in a revised second edition, Masako’s Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima is anthology of poetry by a survivor who lived only one mile away from where the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Although Masako, her daughter Kikuko, and her two sons managed to survive, her soldier husband was not so fortunate.
For fifty years, Masako never spoke of the horrors she had witnessed; then at last, she began to open up about her experiences.
Kikuko has transformed Masako’s words into unforgettable verse.
Masako’s Story vividly conveys the gut-wrenching impact of indescribable tragedy and horror suffering in the wake of an atomic bomb attack.
“The blood clung to your hair / Pasting it to your skulls and streaking your faces, / So that you, daughter, looked like Oiwa-san. [a Japanese ghost woman] / The white dress you wore was filthy and tattered, / And dyed ghastly red by the blood.// I searched for more bandages, / But there were no more. . . / I could do nothing. . . but watch my children bleed.”
A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this elegy of grief, suffering, and speaking out against the horrors of nuclear weapons.
Masako’s Story is an impassioned call to remember the immense suffering such weapons bring, exhorting that readers never forget the devastation wreaked on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and never allow another use of these weapons of death. Highly recommended.
Masako’s Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima