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Japanese atomic bomb survivor who hugged Obama in Hiroshima dies at 88

PressNewsAgency
By PressNewsAgency

Shigeaki Mori, the Japanese atomic bomb survivor whose hug with then US president Barack Obama at a 2016 remembrance event in Hiroshima went viral globally, has died at the age of 88, just days after warning that the world seems on the brink of another nuclear catastrophe.

Tributes have been coming in since Mori died in Hiroshima on Saturday, with many pointing out that as well as being a survivor of the world’s first atomic weapon, he was also a keen amateur historian who attracted attention in the US for his dogged research into 12 US aircrew who were imprisoned in the industrial city and were among the tens of thousands killed in the blast on August 6, 1945.

It was this 40-year project that brought Mori to the attention of American filmmaker Barry Frechette, who put him at the centre of his award-winning 2016 documentary Paper Lanterns.

That, in turn, brought him to the attention of the US government, according to Emi Doi, a Tokyo-based journalist who has interviewed Mori and Frechette about the documentary.

“No US president had ever gone to Hiroshima to mark the anniversary of the attack before Obama, and even he was not expected to go there during his trip to Japan,” Doi said.

“A few days before the annual memorial, Mori told me himself that he did not expect to attend and that he was going to watch it on television,” she said. “But I was watching it, and suddenly I saw him sitting there. I am sure that Mori’s story moved the heart of Ambassador [Caroline] Kennedy and Obama, and they arranged for him to be there.”

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