Masako's Story

On August 6 1945 when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima the Furuta family was living one mile away from the hypocenter. Five year old Kikuko her mother Masako and her two brothers barely escaped with their lives. However their soldier father was not so fortunate. Masako never talked about her family's experiences on that day and the grim days following the bombing. Then one day Masako started to talk about what happened—breaking a silence of nearly fifty years. Written by Kikuko (Furuta) Otake now a retired assistant professor of Japanese in the United States Masako's story is a collection of prose-poetry based on the true story of her family's tragedy. It is written with an Objectivist lineation similar in its understated power to Charles Reznikoff's Testimony. Kikuko Otake's Masako's Story is a powerful addition to the literature of the Atomic Bomb and yet more evidence that we should all work together to stop the Nuclear madness.