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park visitors on Wednesday heard gunshots and radio clicks that might have come from the missing ranger.Christensen had been a ranger for four seasons and was an experienced mountaineer who also worked as a ski patroller at the nearby Winter Park resort. Park officials said he was carrying a radio and a backpack equipped with various gear, though he hadn’t planned to spend the night in the backcountry when he left.will try to modify two key provisions of the law. One requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal approval before changing voting rules. The other requires election officials to provide voting material in the native language of immigrant voters who don’t speak English.Activists also used the rally to protest Georgia’s recently passed voter identification law', which critics call the most restrictive in the country.the collision, she said.Graham said the speed limit for trains in the area is 69 mph, and the train was likely going about that speed.The remaining passengers and crew members boarded another train bound for Los Angeles, Graham said.In the North Carolina collision, there were no serious injuries among the 180 passengers and crew on the train. The dump truck’s two occupants were killed.■ SURVIVORS / FROM 1Awithout injury.“That big tree saved my life,” she said. “I had no burns. I have no scars.”She points to a black-and-w'hite photo in a Japanese book that was taken after the blast. She uses it to tell the story that she has rarely shared in the past 60 years. Her English is good considering it’s not her first language, but her accent remains thick — a permanent remnant of her past, just like her memories of the war fought on her homeland.More than 140,000 people died in the blast or from cancer and other ailments linked to it.Stevens’ father, who was helping to fix a neighbor’s boat and wearing shorts on that day, received bad burns on his legs. Sixteen days after the blast, Stevens’ 15-year-old cousin died. They believe it was from the radiation.“He got pimples on his face,” she said. “He lost his hair. His gums rotted and then he died.” Food was scarce. The fish, which was plentiful and a staple in the Japanese diet, all burned and floated belly up on the rivers.“Some people ate that fish,” Stevens said. “My mother said w’e couldn’t eat the fish because it was burned like my father.” Everyone was desperate forwater. Stevens’ family had water. She shared it, despite her father’s protests. She felt fortunate that she wasn’t hurt and felt compelled to help others.“I didn’t care what my fatherday clearly, although she was only 8 years old at the time. Her story is similar to the one Stevens tells.“I don’t want to remember, but I cannot forget,” Howard said.A beautiful summer day was interrupted by an air raid siren.“They warned us to hide. Enemy planes were coming,” she said.In Nagasaki, they ran for shelter in tunnels in the mountainside and w’aited for the second siren signaling all was clear. Instead, they heard an airplane.“Three minutes later, it was like lightning hit you,” Howard said “Everything vibrated. It was like the wind blew. It was so strong.”The blue sky filled with smoke.“It looked like it was going to rain,” Howard said. “Everybody wanted to know what’s going on. ... We didn’t expect anything like this. We didn’t know. Everybody wondered what kind of bomb theydropped.”Howard, her mother and baby brother survived. Her father, who was at work on top of a train about two miles away, didn’t return until really late on Aug. 9, 1945. He later died of leukemia.“Everything was just ash,” Howard said. “The mountain saved me.”People were burned and needed help. No one had food and water.“It was so hot,” she said. “We walked all night. We put my mother in a wagon. My father pulled. I pushed. We would go a little bit and take a rest.”On Aug. 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, largely because of the bombs, which helped U.S. forces avoid an invasion of Japan. Howard’s family returned to their home in Nagasaki in September because school was going to start. That was when Howard had her first encounter with Americans.“They had red faces, blue eyes and blond hair,” she said. “The first time I saw the American people, I was so scared.”Americans were the enemy. The military police carried guns. Japanese civilians didn’t know what to expect from them.“If I saw Americans coming, I would run and hide in a closet,” Howard said.But she quickly learned that the Marines and sailors were not dangerous. They brought food. They handed out sugar, salt, canned peaches, bacon and rice. Howard said they didn’t know how to prepare some of the food, even the rice, which was a long-grain variety and not like the rice that was a staple in Japan.It was the Marines who gave her chocolate, chewing gum and sugar cubes, although her mother said they couldn’t eat the sugar cubes because she worried it was poison, Howard said.The Marines also introducedBoth Howard and Stevens ended up marrying Marines and have been in Jacksonville since the 1960s. They met each other through various organizations that they were involved in, drawn by their cultural similarities and not because they are atomic bomb survivors.The atomic bomb is an inescapable part of their pasts, yet they hold no grudges against the United States. It seems natural to both of them that they would end up marrying American servicemen.Stevens adores her husband. She said her family was very happy about her marriage.“If I died and came back again, I would marry him again,” Stevens said and laughed.Howard waited 15 years before she told her husband she survived the atomic bomb.“He never asked. I never told him,” she said, indicating it just wasn’t something that she talked about. Now we can open our mouths.”While Howard is adamant that a weapon like the A-bomb should never be used again on any country, she is not sorry that Japan surrendered to the Americans during World Warn.“I’m glad we lost because we had nothing,” she said.Stevens remains grateful for her life. She returned to Hiroshima for the first time in the 1980s and was determined to find that tree that saved her life. She wanted to take a pic-
Newspaper Details
Jacksonville Daily News
Jacksonville, North Carolina, US
Sun, Aug 07, 2005
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Mae M.
USA 20 May 2018
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