About Us

Contributors and Advisors

Primary Contributors

We gratefully acknowledge that the AtomicBombMuseum.org website was made possible by generous assistance from the directors and several staff members at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki. These institutions have for decades played leading roles in the discovery and public disclosure of the facts about the atomic bombings. For more information, please visit their websites at:

Hiroshima Peace Museum

Nagasaki Peace Museum

David L. Swain

David L. Swain, who wrote the basic script for much of this web site, lived in Tokyo, Japan, for 40 years, working with Christian programs for university students and professors (1953-74), then as communications secretary for the United Church of Christ in Japan (1975-92). He served twice as editor of the Japan Christian Quarterly (1976-81; 1989-91).

These assignments afforded opportunities for basic study of Japan’s urban development and its science and technology history, and thus for translation, e.g. Social Change and the City in Japan (549 pp., 1968), and for editing, e.g., Science and Society in Modern Japan (335 pp., 1974). After many years study with physicist Masayoshi Sugimoto, they collaborated in publishing Science and Culture in Traditional Japan (498 pp., 1978).

Most important for this Web site, he collaborated with Keio University professor Eisei Ishikawa, M.D., in translating the first full accounting of the 1945 atomic bombings: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the physical, medical, and social effects of the atomic bombings (706 pp., 1981), for which they received the 1981 Translation Culture Award. They also translated a shorter popular version, The Impact of the A-bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki (218 pp., 1985). The primary advisor to these two translation projects was Yasuhiko Yamamoto from Hiroshima (now Deputy Director, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum), with several persons from Nagasaki assisting.

These two volumes were produced by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damages Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, appointed by the two A-bombed cities’ mayors. The Committee included 37 specialists in three groups: physical sciences (5), medical sciences (19), and the social sciences and humanities (13).

Other opportunities to contribute to A-bomb literature included the co-translation, with Toshi Yonezawa, of Nobel-prize winner Kenzaburo Oe’s Hiroshima Notes (1981). Now retired and living in western North Carolina, Swain recently edited Hitoshi Takayama’s Hiroshima In Memoriam and Today (see below).

Steven Leeper

Steven Leeper is the Executive Director of Global Peacemakers Association, a non-profit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to promoting the culture of peace. He is also US representative of Mayors for Peace, a U.N. non-governmental organization with over 1300 city members in 114 countries and regions worldwide. Steven is vice-president of Transnet, a translation and consulting company based in Hiroshima since 1986. As a consultant to Japanese companies operating in the United States, his work has focused on improving communication and teamwork among Japanese and American staff. Steven won 2nd prize in the Japanese-English category in the Babel Translation Contest in 1988, and was editor of Japan Related, a monthly periodical for Americans working in Japanese companies.

Hitoshi Takayama

Hitoshi Takayama is the compiler-editor of Hiroshima in Memoriam and Today: A Testament of Peace for the World (3rd ed. 2000). Now 74, Takayama was 15 years old and training to work at the Nippon Express automobile garage in Hiroshima when the A-bomb exploded. In 1969, Takayama used his own funds to publish a 49-page English-language book entitled Hiroshima in Memoriam. This book has since grown with the cooperation of many concerned citizens of Hiroshima to a third edition (278 pages) and the memoirs of 29 A-bomb survivors, plus essays by important world leaders.

Mitsuo Matsushige

Some of the first post-bombing photos in Hiroshima were taken by Mitsuo Matsushige; many of them are included in photo albums published yearly by the Hiroshima news company, Chugoku Shimbunsha, with the title The Meaning of Survival (herein we used the 1982 edition). The Chugoku volumes include A-bomb-related photos by various other photographers as well.

Yosuke Yamahata

Nagasaki’s earliest photos were taken by Yosuke Yamahata, included in his collection, Nagasaki Journey: The photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, August 10, 1945 (Pomegranate Artbooks, San Francisco, 1995). Five of them are included herein.

Robert Del Tredici

Robert Del Tredici is an artist, book illustrator, and photographer who has been documenting the nuclear age since 1979. His first book of photographs and interviews, The People of Three Mile Island (1980), focused on commercial nuclear power and led to his next publication, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), which covers the U.S. nuclear weapons industry. His next three books — Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom, Linking Legacies, and From Cleanup to Stewardship, (U.S. Department of Energy, 1995, 1997, 1999 respectively) — detail the cleanup of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. His photographs have been shown internationally, with exhibitions in Stockholm, Berlin, Hiroshima, Essen, London, Washington, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Medellin. In 1987, he founded the Atomic Photographers Guild, with 24 members worldwide.

Content Advisors

We are pleased to express our gratitude to the following people who have provided and continue to provide guidance and support to AtomicBombMuseum.org.

Tom Crouch, chairman of the Department of Aeronautics, National Air and Space Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor, the City of Hiroshima; President, Mayors for Peace

Mitsuo Okamoto, Professor Emeritus, Department of International Politics, Faculty of Law, Hiroshima Shudo University; active nationwide and internationally as a peace educator.

Shinji Shinabe, Director, Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation

Yasuhiko Yamamoto, Deputy Director, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Osamu Ishioka, Secretary-General, Hiroshima Institute for Peace Education

Akira Tashiro, senior staff writer, The Chugoku Shimbun

Hiroumi Katayama, senior editor (retired), Iwanami Shoten Publishers (Tokyo)

Dr. Takeshi Ohkita (deceased), Nagoya National Hospital, Nagoya

Ryosuke Yasue, (deceased), former senior editor, Iwanami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo

Minoru Omuta (deceased), former senior staff writer, The Chugoku Shimbun