Original Autogramm Kiyoshi Kikkawa (1911-1986) Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Victim No. 1 /// Autograph signiert signed signee…

Postkarte von der Hiroshima Bombenexplosion, umseitig von Kiyoshi Kikkawa mit schwarzer Tusche signiert /// Autogramm Autograph signiert signed signee /// " Kiyoshi Kikkawa (d. 1986) was famous in Japan for organizing atomic bomb survivors into the group, and sometimes called "Atomic Bomb Victim no. 1 (Genbaku Ichigo), " based on the comment of America journalists who interviewed with him. It is fairly easy to find his information in Japanese (the dedicated page of wikipedia in Japanese is also found), since he had published a memoir in 1981 (linked to the official site of the publisher in Japanese, though out of print now, and some documentaries on his life as well as his wife had also been made. The following site has a trailer film to one of such documentaries directed by NHK (public broadcasting channel) in 1997. While only narrated in Japanese, you can see his picture and keloid in the trailer +++ Kikkawa and his wife was exposed to the explosion on Aug. 06, 1945, about 1, 500 meter distant from the ground zero, and he would suffer from the keloid due to the exposure for his life (this page of Hiroshima Peace museum shows his picture in the hospital together with his wife, with a quote from his memoir. What essentially distinguished Kikkawa from other hibakusha is that he didn't hesitate to narrate his experience of being exposed with journalists, especially non-Japanese ones. For the majority of the victims, the fact of being exposed to the atomic bomb was a kind of stigma at first, and many of them chose rather to hide the fact itself as well as not to narrate their experience so that they could avoid the prejudice against hibakusha. On the other hand, Kikkawa and his wife dare not to hide the fact of being exposed, and say yes to be interviewed with journalists to narrate their experience. They also opened the souvenir shop (the picture in the linked Japanese newspaper article is its reconstruction) for foreign tourists in Hiroshima as early as in 1950s, so he were probably one of the best known victims of Atomic bomb especially out of Japan at that time. Alongside the souvenir shop, Kikkawa and his wife also organized groups of atomic bomb victims at that early phase" /// Standort Wimregal PKis-Box97-U001