‘A-bomb victim No. 1’ dies, aged 74

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 26

‘A-bomb victim No. 1’ dies, aged 74

NZPA-AP Tokyo Kiyoshi Kikkawa, known as “atom bomb victim number one” because of severe bums he suffered in the Hiroshima bomb blast 40 years ago, has died of a stroke, a Hiroshima hospital reported. He was 74. Mr Kikkawa was called “atom bomb victim number one” by American reporters after he allowed them to see radiation scars, or keloids, on his back at a hospital in 1947, the national newspaper “Asahi Shimbun” reported.

“Asahi” said Mr Kikkawa opened a souvenir shop in 1951 near the dome in Hiroshima’s Peace Park and showed his keloids to visitors, appealing for a ban on nuclear weapons.

Mr Kikkawa also sat before a cenotaph for 12 days to protest against

United States atomic bomb tests in April, 1962. It said Mr Kikkawa, had been receiving medical treatment at the hospital since he suffered a stroke at his home in 1977. He was introduced to European audiences by a documentary film last August on the fortieth anniversary of the world’s first atom bomb attack. Mr Kikkawa was on the porch of his house when an American bomber dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima City in western Japan on August 9, 1945. His house was about I.skm from the centre of the explosion, “Asahi” said.

An estimated 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima. Another atom bomb attack three days later killed an estimated 70,000 people in Nagasaki on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu.