A-bomb survivor speaks in Omaha, seat of Strat Com center for U.S. nuclear war

Kaz Suyeishi, president of the American Society of Hiroshima-NagasakiA-bomb Survivors, will speak in Omaha's First United Methodist Church at 7020 Cass Street in the Mead Hall, accessed from the west side of the building at 6:30 on August 29th from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. There will also be exhibits of thirty posters and other documents showing the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in August of 1945. These posters will frame Ms. Suyeishi's
presentations. Her Nebraska sponsors are the church, Nebraskans for Peace, and the Prairie Peace Park. Her international sponsors are the City of Hiroshima and the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

Ms. Suyeishi was a teenager when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She had been a Pasadena native who went back with her family to Hiroshima as an infant and returned to California to study fashion after the war. For her, until the bomb dropped, Aug. 6, 1945 was a fine day, and she remembers watching the Enola Gay B-29 bomber as it dropped its lethal payload. She often gives rather full pictures of what she saw in the wake of bombing of Hiroshima and what the effects were on her, her family, and the city. Suyeishi suffered months of nausea, weight loss and radiation sickness directly after the blast,
but survived and, unlike many victims of radiation sickness, did not get cancer. Her father suffered third-degree burns on most of his body. Others of her acquaintance expereinced much more serious effects. Suyeishi generally avoids antiwar and anti-nuclear rallies and demonstrations, preferring to share her experiences at schools, churches and community centers. She argues that people should forgive and forget and stop arguing about who started the war and who dropped the bomb. Her concern is that the bomb never be used again.

Suyeishi was a major consultant in the production of the 1990 TV movie, Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes and she has been a leader in getting Japanese doctors experienced in dealing with radiationsickness to come to America to treat survivors of Hiroshima living in this country.