Hell on Earth: Hiroshima Survivor Breaks Silence on What He Saw 79 Years Ago

The Kremlin ’s ongoing obsession with its nuclear arsenal and the scenes of destruction in Ukraine have struck a nerve 5,000 miles away in Japan , where a 92-year-old Hiroshima atomic bombing survivor has finally found the strength to talk about what he had witnessed.

Knewz.com has learned that Mikio Saiki, who kept silent on the matter for close to 79 years, has since been commissioned by his country to share what he experienced on August 6, 1945.

Despite the catastrophic event transpiring nearly a century ago, Saiki remembers even the finest of details.

“I was about to put on my shoes when there was a bright flash. Everything turned white, and then it went pitch black as our house collapsed.”

His father was at a nearby traffic stop when the blast threw him onto a bridge. Due to the burns on his left side, he attempted to jump into a river but saw that it was already full of floating people.

Saiki’s school was less than 800 yards from the explosion’s epicenter, and there, 369 students and teachers succumbed to the atomic blast.

Saiki is alive to tell the story today, but only because he and a few of his peers were told to stay home.

The next day Saiki took a trip to the city center. He recounts seeing “blackened bodies” lining “both sides of the road, stretching down to the base of the [Hijiyama] hill [in the center of Hiroshima].”

“I felt guilty for surviving,” Saiki recalled. “I felt sorry for those who died. I knew I needed to talk about it, but I didn’t want to.”

After Saiki started working for a local TV station he saw the scenes of devastation that so characterize the ongoing war in Ukraine.

For Saiki, the accounts of children losing their homes and parents in Putin ’s so-called special military operation, are an echo of what Hiroshima went through after the blast.

It was only after Saiki entered his nonagenarian years that he decided to break his silence.

“If I miss this opportunity,” he decided, “I will never be able to do it.”

In April 2024 the City of Hiroshima employed him to speak as an eyewitness and he can now be found at the local Atomic Bomb Museum sharing his first-hand experiences of the catastrophic event that took place close to a century ago.

One of his main talking points is the fact that around 140,000 people died because of a single nuclear device. He feels that the world should take this as a lesson.

“We need to show the world the true terror of nuclear weapons ,” Saiki says.

According to the Japan Times , Saiki is slated to take his message abroad and will speak at the University of Hawaii on August 17 with one goal in mind:

“I want to convey the reality of the bombing. I hope people understand that wars must never happen.”

His story has since become his life’s mission but he fears that he does not have much time.

“I worry about how many more years I can continue speaking, but I want to keep sharing for as long as I can.”