Samantha Howden sat in a room in Hiroshima, Japan, and listened intently to every word the 84-year-old man spoke.
“Even more than what he was saying, it was the things he didn’t say,” says Howden, a rising senior economics major at LSA. “His eyes said a lot as he was talking, looking off into the distance.”
The speaker was Soh Horie-san. Eighty years ago, on August 6, 1945, he was running an errand, walking on a hillside path with his older sister. A bright light flashed, followed by what he described as “an overwhelming blast of wind” and a thunderous boom. His sister covered his nearly-five-year-old body with hers, shielding him from the worst of the debris and black rain.
The U.S. Army Air Forces had just dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb, destroying the city and killing some 70,000 people instantly.
Howden, nine other U-M students, and Barger Leadership Institute Director Ram Mahalingam were in Japan for a three-week course in May called ALA 370: “Mindfulness and Peace Global Leadership.” They studied at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Hikone, Japan, with excursions to Hiroshima and other locations.
Read the full article on LSA Magazine.
