Japan to pay travel costs for nuclear attack ‘storytellers’

The Japanese government will fund from April the travel costs of storytellers, both within Japan and abroad, who will share the testimonies given by ageing victims of America’s nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The cities, devastated by the 1945 bombings in the final phase of the second world war, began training such storytellers in 2012 and have dispatched them to other areas in Japan with recipient entities covering the costs.

To alleviate the financial burden, the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry has earmarked 30 million yen (US$280,000) in the draft 2018 budget to fund the programme. The government will also conduct English lessons for the messengers before overseas trips.

About 100 people – mostly locals, who have been trained to pass on the experiences of the world’s sole nuclear attacks in war – have been assigned by the two cities to give talks in places such as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

According to the two museums, there were some 180 requests in 2016 for talks by atomic bomb storytellers at universities and schools. Around 30 per cent came from outside Hiroshima or Nagasaki prefectures, including Fukushima and Akita in northeastern Japan.