Her name is Taruko Yahata. Presently age 85. At an age when people are usually bedridden, he has done an exceptional job. Know what? Five years ago when he was 80 years old, he started learning English.
But why this exceptional initiative? You will be more surprised to know that. Not to win a dream, he learned English to share the horrors of war with the world.
Those who survived the atomic bombings of Japan are locally known as ‘hibakusha’. Yahata is one of them. America dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Yahata, who was 8 years old at the time, survived the attack.
What is the purpose behind learning English, said Yahata.
He said that since 2013, he had gone to different countries to tell about the terrible attack on his hometown Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. But in Japanese he could not convey the true expression of the audience. Yahata started learning English at the age of 80 from this hardship. Be successful. In 2021, he gave his first full speech in English.
How is Yahata practicing English? He first tells his story to an English teacher. The teacher wrote his story in English. Yahata later practiced and recorded and listened to it at home. Thus at one stage the whole speech came under his control.
Yahata addressed a group of British tourists at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on May 9. Dennis Hickson, an audience member, said Yahata’s English skills may be limited. But the way his speech moves the audience is undeniable. He describes the horror as if it happened today. Many people cried after hearing his speech.
Yahata said, that morning (August 6, 1945), a flash of intense bluish-white light covered the entire sky. At the same time, he fell on the ground with a strong shock and lost consciousness. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radioactivity of the bomb endangered the lives of the survivors. Source: Reuters
