BOISE, Idaho — Five University of Idaho (UI) students presented a year-long project Monday at the Idaho Water Center - a new firsthand account of world history.
The event, named "Passing the Torch of Peace" by the UI Habib Institute for Asian Studies, displayed the first English translation of Keiko Ogura's firsthand account of surviving the 1945 nuclear bombing as a nine-year-old. She originally wrote her story in Japanese as a kamishibia; a kamishibia is a traditional Japanese storytelling method with large picture boards accompanied by text on the opposite side.
Ogura spoke at UI in September of 2022 to speak at the school's "Remembering Hiroshima" event; UI Japanese language students developed a relationship with Ogura leading to the translation project.
"We only see half of the story. We only see the part from the American side. We don't see what actually happened to each individual person in Hiroshima, and the death that they witnessed at the hands of what we did," UI student Maddison Buchholz said. "We’re hoping for it to get officially published at some point. So that way, we can spread it to more areas of the country."
The UI students traveled to Hiroshima to visit Ogura in August of 2023. There, they shared the translated kamishibia with her.
"She's just super excited to be able to have an English translation of this to share it. She was very enthusiastic about that," UI student Andrea Golden said. "With current events, it's really easy to look at war and other things like this from a very objective perspective. But in reality, everybody is human."
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