Shigeaki Mori, Historian and Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivor, Passes Away

Shigeaki Mori (88), a historian and atomic bomb survivor who met former United States President Barack Obama in 2016 during his visit to Hiroshima, passed away over the weekend at a hospital in the city, according to a family statement on Tuesday (17 March).

Mori was widely known for his decades-long efforts researching and identifying 12 American prisoners of war who died in the atomic bombing that devastated Hiroshima in the final stages of the Second World War. He himself survived the blast at the age of eight.

His name gained worldwide attention through an emotional moment when he embraced Obama, the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his commitment to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.

Mori authored a book titled “The Secret History of the American POWs Killed by the Atomic Bomb”, published in 2008, based on official American and Japanese documents concerning the dozen American soldiers who died as a result of the atomic bomb.

His research into American prisoners of war, conducted whilst he worked at a company, earned him the Kikuchi Kan Award, one of Japan’s most prestigious cultural awards, in 2016.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States on 6 August 1945 and of Nagasaki three days later is estimated to have killed approximately 210,000 people by the end of that year.

Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki bombing, which also ended the Second World War.