Hibakusha Series

FC Gifu manager Kazuo Imanishi shows his keloids at the club ground in Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture, Oct. 29, 2009. (Mainichi)

On Nov. 13, Barack Obama came to Japan for the first time since he was elected president of the United States. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have called for him to visit, and have also launched a bid to host the Olympic Games as "a chance for the people of the world to visit the A-bombed areas." Manager of J.League team FC Gifu Kazuo Imanishi, 68, says that following Obama's anti-nuclear speech in Prague earlier this year he now wants to tell his story as an A-bomb victim. The latest fall series on hibakusha begins with the story of this one-time famous professional footballer.

"His courage has earned an award," Imanishi thinks as he reads the newspaper in his Gifu home on Oct. 10. The story is on Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the critics who says he has done nothing to earn it. Imanishi disagrees. "The prize has spread hope for nuclear abolition, and probably helped the push to actually make it happen."

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, Imanishi was leaning out of the second floor window of his house in Hiroshima, arguing with the girl over the street. The sky lit up. His house was destroyed in an instant. When he came to, he was lying in the rubble. His mother pulled him out, and they fled to an air raid shelter on a nearby mountain. He never found out what happened to the girl.

The next day, they headed for a relation's house on the outskirts of Hiroshima. Those trying to escape, those bleeding, voices calling out for water ... Blood was spilling from his own left side. The strange smell of charred skin and hair wafted over the parade ground. "It was hell." A few days later, maggots hatched in the burns on his left arm and leg. A health teacher at a local school treated them with merbromin and plucked them out with tweezers. As he recalls how the teacher told him to be strong, the memory of the pain comes flooding back.

Keloids developed on his left side. "It wasn't my fault, but they were embarrassing somehow." He loved sports, but hated swimming lessons. After starting soccer in high school, he trained his leg relentlessly after practice to prevent the keloids on his leg from stiffening.

He achieved success as a soccer player after that. But even now, he doesn't like starting conversations with people. "Maybe if the bomb hadn't fallen, I'd be more assertive, and have lived a different life." He's never spoken of his experience as an A-bomb victim before.

But after Obama's Prague speech, he took a fresh look at things. "I have lots of chances to speak on the meaning of peace, as an A-bomb victim and someone regularly appearing in public. I want to make the best of it."

In July, at the invitation of a fellow A-bomb victim who was at Nagasaki, he attended a meeting of the Gifu A-bomb Victims Association. At the meeting, he realized that they were all getting older, and it renewed his sense of purpose. On Aug. 6, he attended a memorial service at his old school in Hiroshima, Funairi High School. He visits every year, but this time he had a sense of strong emotion. "I could present the Prague speech" to the 676 students and teachers who died, he said.

During an NHK interview, Obama said: "The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency."

"If the president visited an A-bombed area, the chances for nuclear abolition would shoot up," Imanishi thinks.

"If all those given courage by the president work together we have a chance of carrying out nuclear abolition."

Profile: Kazuo Imanishi was about 2 kilometers away from the hypocenter of the Hiroshima blast. Played for Toyo Kogyo, went on to win four successive Japan Soccer League championships. Became a manager, led Hiroshima Sanfrecce to J. League victory in 1994. Moved to FC Gifu in February 2007.

(By Epo Ishiyama, Gifu Bureau. This is the first part of a six-part series on Hibakusha)