U of I students to present on work with atomic bomb survivor on Oct. 23

MOSCOW, Idaho — Five University of Idaho undergraduate students will present on their experience working with atomic bomb survivor Keiko Ogura at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 23, in the Idaho Water Center in downtown Boise. The public event, “Passing the Torch of Peace: Remembering Hiroshima,” is hosted by U of I’s Habib Institute for Asian Studies.

At the event, the students will read and present a children's story by Ogura, offer reflections on their experiences with the project, with Ogura and of visiting Hiroshima, and they will take questions from the audience. Azusa Tojo, instructor of Japanese at U of I, and Jeff Kyong-McClain, director of the Habib Institute for Asian Studies and associate professor of history at U of I, will also provide comment.

The five U of  I students — Rachel Bonner, Maddison Buchholz, Andrea Golden, Devin Michaelis and Kai Ohmes, all students of Japanese language — met Ogura when she visited Moscow to speak at September 2022’s “Remembering Hiroshima” event at U of I. Moved by her story, the five students, along with others in their third-year Japanese class, proceeded to translate Ogura’s children’s story. The story, along with the English translation, will be published in Japan as a kamishibai, a traditional method to tell children’s stories using large boards with pictures on one side and text on the other. In August this year, the students traveled to Hiroshima to meet Ogura again and to present the kamishibai with her at Orizuru Tower, Hiroshima University and Daisho-in Temple. Their work on the translation and their trip to Hiroshima was widely reported in Japanese media.

“Keiko Ogura is passionate about relating her experience of Aug. 6, 1945, and its aftermath in order to spur people on to consider how to prevent such horrors from happening again,” Kyong-McClain said. “She speaks of ‘passing the torch of peace’ to the next generation, and I think that these students are accepting that torch.”

The Habib Institute for Asian Studies is a multidisciplinary center at U of I, which, through the promotion of a diverse range of Asia-related programming on and off campus, provides U of I students, faculty and staff, as well as all citizens of Idaho, opportunities to prepare for the global 21st century.

The event will be held in the Legacy Pointe room of the Idaho Water Center, 322 E. Front St.

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