08/06/2025
Today is the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. At the age of 8, Takashi Thomas Tanemori lost most of his family in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. His mother and his 14-month-old sister were never found. His eldest sister and father succumbed to radiation poisoning less than a month after the blast. Their deaths left Tanemori, his two older sisters, and his younger brother orphaned.
The bombing left Tanemori an orphan and a troubled youth. His maternal grandmother took him and his siblings in, but Tanemori grew up rebellious and faced stigma as an orphan. “They say orphans don’t have a ‘proper upbringing. ' I had a tough time,” he said. After junior high school, Tanemori left for Kobe, Japan, but had to leave his job there when his colleagues accused him of stealing money from the cash register. With no way to clear his name, he felt su***de was the only way out, but he survived. “I felt rejected. I couldn’t even die,” he said. Following that, he decided to rededicate his life to revenge.
Tanemori left for the United States in 1956. Hearing it was the “land of opportunity,” he did not expect to wind up in a migrant labor camp in Delano, California. Poor and hungry, he accepted a moldy Hostess Snowball from the canteen, which sent him to the hospital. While Tanemori was hospitalized for food poisoning, the doctors learned he was a survivor of the atomic bomb and concluded that he was suffering from radiation sickness. He then spent the next three months as a test subject for the doctors and received frequent spinal taps and electroshock therapy.
Tanemori realized what happened and tried to protest. “I couldn’t speak English, so I started resisting, physically, using my arms to tell them to stop,” he said. “The nurses, six-feet-tall, 250 pounds each, said they were concerned for their safety. Me. I was five-foot-three and 150 pounds!” Perceived as violent, Tanemori was committed into a psychiatric institution for another six months. While institutionalized, Tanemori met Mary Furr, a nurse at the hospital who helped melt his “cold frozen heart” and sponsored his release.
“I wanted to give back to Mary, but she was already married, she had a car, she had a house. What could I do for her? I thought the best I could do is become someone like Mary,” he said. Tanemori, wanting to emulate his “savior’s” life in any way, learned she was a Baptist. Although he was unsure what that would entail, in the 1960s he went to Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna, Minnesota, and then to Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis to become a Baptist minister.
I read his autobiography this week, entitled "Hiroshima: Bridge to Forgiveness." I was glad “Tommy” accepted Christ as his Savior, but was saddened for some of the prejudices he experienced. He was Japanese, he spoke broken English, and it was only a quarter century after Pearl Harbor. When he arrived at Pillsbury, he had $300 he had earned in California. When he turned in the money, he thought that covered the entire school year, but it was only the first semester’s tuition, room, and board. When he found out in January that he needed to pay for the second semester, he looked for a job but was turned away by everyone. The day before the bill was due, he received an unexpected special delivery letter with a check for the exact amount he needed from some California friends he thought had forgotten him.
A kind female student was in his same classes, took shorthand of the lectures, and typed out notes so he could study because the lectures came too rapidly for him to translate in his mind. He eventually married a Chinese woman, and while attending Central Seminary, he worked for the Dayton's department store as a custodian. I recognized many of the names he mentioned at both Pillsbury and Central. Ray Pope let him preach one weekend at the church in St. Peter.
He said returning to Furr in California after his graduation from college brought tears of joy to her. He became a naturalized citizen in 1974 and worked as a minister for 15 years. However, while he preached God’s love by day, he felt immense loneliness at night. “I cried, ‘Daddy, I came here to avenge you,’” he said. “’And I wasn’t doing what I came here to do.’”
Tanemori came to the United States seeking revenge, but had a change of heart Aug. 5, 1985. On his way to an anti-war rally in San Francisco, he saw a mushroom cloud in the sky that reminded him of the bombing, but he also heard his father’s voice: “Have I not taught you the code of the samurai? The greatest way to avenge is to forgive.”
Tanemori said his father told him to forgive the Americans at his deathbed, but at age 8, he couldn’t understand how he could or why he should. That day, 40 years later, he finally understood why when he thought of his own children. “Just like how they missed killing me. If I exact my revenge, someone is going to come after (my children),” Tanemori said. “Would grandpa approve of that?”
When a congregation member said Tanemori’s Japanese heritage made it difficult for his all-white congregation to follow him, Tanemori said he decided to quit. He went on to open a Japanese restaurant in Turlock, California, in 1979, but the venture also failed after he suffered a heart attack in 1984. To compound his health issues, Tanemori was further burdened in 1987 after learning he was losing his sight because of the atomic bombing.
Despite adversity, Tanemori continued to work as a public speaker and a representative of the California Department of Agriculture. Tanemori requires a guide dog because of his blindness, but he remains upbeat. I saw some news stories about him about five years ago. I’m not sure if he is still alive, but I found no record of an obituary for him.
What a wonderful testimony to God’s saving grace and to the power of forgiveness. Do you remember Tommy?
Hiroshima bombing survivor Takashi Tanemori reflects on his life experiences that shaped his outlook on the world and our future.If you would like to learn m...
