Hideko
Tamura Snider, survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, will be coming to
campus to give a lecture coinciding with the Nuclear Age exhibit at the Valley
Library. The lecture called “Surviving Hiroshima, Blooming Peace” will be on
Thursday, October 22 at 7 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center.
Hideko
Tamura Snider is a “hibakusha,” a survivor of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima
at the end of World War II. Though she survived with injuries, her mother and
many thousands of others did not survive. Since 1979, Hideko has been appearing
before professional organizations, university classes and community groups
across the United States and in her native Japan, telling her story and encouraging
people of all cultures and nations to examine the consequences of the use of
nuclear weapons and to work toward peace and nuclear nonproliferation.
In this
talk, she will speak on the physical, psychological and spiritual effects of
the bomb, from the immediate aftermath to more permanent consequences, and will
discuss the challenge of peace and of lessons that we have learned from
Hiroshima since the war.
After
the publication in 1996 of her memoir, One Sunny Day, Tamura Snider
founded One Sunny Day Initiatives, which educates the public about the
consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and plants seeds of peace, hope and
reconciliation among people
of the world through educational presentations and
cultural exchange programs.
She
is also the author of the children’s book, When a Peace Tree Blooms, and the 2015 Hiroshima Ambassador
for Peace. Tamura Snider’s lecture on October 22 is free and open to the
public.
The
lecture by Tamura Snider is sponsored by the Special Collections and Archives
Research Center at OSU’s Valley Library, the Environmental Arts and Humanities
Initiative, the Citizenship and Crisis Initiative, the OSU Holocaust Memorial
Program, the School of Language, Culture and Society, and the School of
History, Philosophy and Religion.
The
exhibit at the Valley Library, “The Nuclear Age: Seventy Years of Peril and
Hope,” is on view through March 1, 2016 in the exhibit gallery at the Archives
Research Center Reading Room on the library’s fifth floor.