She lives and works in tempe. Where she is the founder and artistic director of essential theater. She has taught nonfiction classes at her estate universities studio and directed creative writing programs for incarcerated youth and at a federal prison for women outside of phoenix. She has also raised her family here. As a matter of fact her daughter was once a junior staffer in our kids section. She was the darling of the kids not only for her love of looks but also for her personal winning smile much like her mothers. So you can see susan and her family have been one of our regular patrons and readers for many years now and one of our dearest friends. So for many years we have known about the book she has been working on diligently, quietly. The topic is so big and important yet sensitive and heavy hearted and off that it had not been properly dealt with until now upon the 70th Year Anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on sunday. The story had been untold. In nagasaki life after nuclear war Susan Southard takes readers from the bombing to today five survivors all of whom were teenagers at the time of the bombing. The book was the finalists for the award fostered by Nieman Foundation and the Columbia University school of journalism. This fayyad e. Very important book is now out with reviewers rightly recognizing its tremendous importance and merit. We are so very moved by the publication at last of his tremendous work and by its reception. Take a look at the reviews. We have just quoted a few of them on the table of looks and we are so very fortunate and happy to welcome our dear friend , Susan Southard to this stage. [applause] i dont know if those of you who dont know me well heard giggles in the audience when she mentioned, i dont know if that how you worded it but people have been waiting for the book to come out. A 12 year process and im very grateful for anyone i know who did not doubt me or didnt say out loud that they doubted me. First of all i thank you so much for that either blanchard action and for allowing me to have the book event here at changing hands which has been an integral part of my life for the last 25 years. Its an honor. And good evening to all of you. I see many friends, colleagues and i family here tonight and there are many of you i dont know and i look forward to getting to know you as well if we have time. Before i began begin, there are a few people here tonight that i would like to acknowledge. First my family who have come across the country to commemorate this day with me, my parents gary and Susan Southard, my brother. Where are you . My brother and his partner will wendy owen. My younger brother Jonathan Southard who surprised me two hours ago by showing up at my house from l. A. , yes and my absolutely beautiful daughter, forgive me for being, for saying that out loud, some very yvette, even though company done my first trip to nagasaki in 2003 when she was 10 years old and grew up with this book. Over the past 12 years i hired a Wonderful Team of seven native japanese speakers to help me translate Historical Documents correspondence and hours and hours of survivor interviews. Three of the leaders are sure tonight. I would also like to express my thanks. [applause] there are others who couldnt be here tonight and in particular i would like to express my deep gratitude for the late who worked side eyesight with me for eight years helping me translate the survivors words into the most nuanced english we could find. Excellent administrative support for the book and you can tell me where you are, charlene brown, jeannie callahan, lorraine who is not here tonight and my daughter eva. Ken blackburn, where are you . Thank you for reading the manuscript at various stages of development and providing valuable feedback and finally robin this is robin lavoie everyone an extraordinary historical researcher thinker colleague and friend whose deep intelligence and dedication helped me create and shape this book into its final form. [applause] im going to read several excerpts from a book to give you a whims of the layered story of postnuclear survival and after the reading there will be time for questions. A whims of the layered story of the first segment i will read, everybody hear me first of all . The first segment i will read begins with the exact moment of nagasaki from a specially modified b29 bomber six miles from the city. By this time in the story readers have been introduced already to the five survivors whose stories are woven throughout the book. All of them were teenagers at the time of the bombing. A the material here is important and also difficult to hope you will be able to barrett. Its about eight minutes long. The fiveton plutonium bomb plunged towards the city. 47 seconds later a powerful implosion forced the plutonium core to compress from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a tennis ball generating a nearly instantaneous Chain Reaction of Nuclear Fission with colossal force and energy the bomb detonated a third of a mile above and is 30,000 residents and workers. At 11 02 a. M. A brilliant flash lit up the sky visible from as far away as the Naval Hospital more than 10 miles over the mountains followed by a thunderous explosion equal to the power of 21,000 tons of tnt. The entire city convulsed. As first the center of the explosion reach temperatures higher than at the center of the sun and the velocity of its shockwave exceeded the speed up sound. A tenth of a millisecond later all of materials that made up the bomb converted into an ionized gas and electromagnetic waves were released into the air. The thermal heat of the bonna guided a fireball with an internal temperature of over 500 40000 degrees fahrenheit. Within one second the blazing fireball expanded from 52 feet to its maximum size of 750 feet in diameter. Within three seconds the ground below reach an estimated 5400 to 72 and degrees fahrenheit. Directly beneath the bomb infrared heat rays instantly carbonized human and animal flesh and vaporized internal organs. The atomic cloud billowed two miles overhead includes the sun. The vertical blast pressure crashed much of the valley. Horizontal blast tore through the region at 2. 5 times the speed up of a category 5 hurricane pulverizing buildings, trees, plants, animals and thousands of men women and children. In every direction people were blown out of their shelters houses factories schools and hospital beds catapulted against the walls are flattened beneath collapsed buildings. Those working in the fields writing straight person standing in line at city resting stations were blown off their feet are hit by plummeting degree. An iron bridge moved 28 inches down stream. As the buildings began to implode patients and staff jumped out of windows of the Nagasaki Medical College hospital and mobilized High School Girls leaping from the third story of theometer school half mile from the blast. The blazing heat melted iron and other metals scorched bricks and concrete buildings ignited clothing disintegrated vegetation and cause severe and fatal flash burned some peoples expose faces and bodies. A mile from the detonation the blast forced nineinch brick walls to crack and glass fragment looked at into peoples arms legs backs and faces often puncturing their muscles and organs are you two miles away thousands of people suffering flesh burns from the heat lay trapped in partially demolished buildings. Distances up to five miles wood and glass winters. Peoples clothing and ripped into their flesh. Window shattered as far as 11 miles away. Larger doses of radiation and any human had ever received penetrated deeply into the bodies of people and animals. The ascending fireball suctioned massive amounts of dust and debris into its turning stem. Deafening roar erupted as buildings throughout the city shattered and crashed to the ground. It all happened in an instant a 13yearold remembered. It barely seen the blinding light have a mile away before a powerful force hit him on his right side and hurled him into the air. The heat was so intense i curled up like dried grilled squid he said in what felt like dream like slowmotion. He was blown backwards 130 feet across a field of roads and irrigation channel then plunge to the ground landing on his back in a rice patty in shallow water. Inside the mitsubishi weapons factory he had been wiping perspiration from her face and concentrating on her work when an enormous blue white flash of light verse into the building followed by an earsplitting explosion. Thinking a torpedo had detonated inside the plant she threw herself onto the ground and covered her head with her arms just as the factory came crashing down on top of her. In a shortsleeve shirt, trousers gators and cap he had been riding his bicycle through the hills in the northwest corner of the valley when a sudden burning wind rushed toward him from behind propelling him into the air slamming him face down on the road. The earth was shaking so hard he said that i hung on as hard as i could say would get blown away again. 15yearold noggin i was standing inside an airplane parts factory protected to some degree type distance of the wooded mountains that stood between her and the bomb. A flash she remembered. She thought a bomb had hit her Building Three she fell to the ground covering her ears and eyes with her thumbs and fingers according to her training as windows crashed around her. She could hear pieces of swirling and colliding in the air outside areas to miles southeast of the blast the young streetcar driver was sitting in the lounge talking with his friends. The train cable flash. The whole city of nagasaki the light was indescribable he said and an unbelievably massive white lit up the whole city create a violent explosion rocked the station. He and his friend died for cover under tables and furniture. He felt like he was floating in the air before being slapped down to the floor. Something heavy landed on his back and he fell unconscious. Beneath the still rising Mushroom Cloud a huge portion of nagasaki had vanished. Tens of thousands throughout the city were dead or injured. On the floor of the terminal she lay beneath a fallen team. He was curled up on the floor of the airplane parts factory. Playing injured in the collapse me to be she factory and gulped and smoke. Yosher that was lying in a muddy rice patty barely conscious his body and face brutally scorched. I selected a short excerpt to give you a sense of what happened early on. Youll hear the name of a young physician whos a secondary character in the book. Within a week of the bombing, thousands of men, women and children across nagasaki and the surrounding region began to experience excuse me, im just going to bring this a little closer. Thank you. Within a week of the bombing, thousands of men, women and children across nagasaki and the surrounding region began to experience inexplicable combinations of symptoms. High fever, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea, headaches, diarrhea, bloody stools, nosebleeds, whole body weakness and fatigue. Their hair fell out in large clumps, their burns and wounds secreted extreme amounts of pus and their gums swelled, became infected and bled. Purple spots appeared on their bodies. At fist about the size of a pinprick, one doctor recalled, but growing within a few days to the size of a grain or excuse me, a grain of rice or a pea. Spots were signs of hemorrhaging beneath the skin. Infections throughout the body were rampant, including the large intestine, esophagus, lungs and uterus. Within a few days of the appearance of initial symptoms, many people lost consciousness, mumbled deliriously and died in extreme pain. Others languished for weeks before either dying or slowly recovering. Even those who had suffered no external injuries fell sick and died. Some relief workers and victim families who had come into the area after the bombing also suffered serious illness. Fear gripped the city. As the pattern of symptoms, illness and death became clear, some people pulled on their hair every morning to see if their time had come. Believing the illness was contagious, many families turned away relatives and guests who were staying with them after the bombing, and some farmers outside nagasaki refused food to hungry refugees from the city. At first, the doctor and other physicians suspected dysentery, cholera or possibly some form of liver disease. Others thought the illness was due to poisonous gas released by the bomb. By august 15th, however, when japanese scientists confirmed that an atomic bomb had been dropped on nagasaki, physicians deduced what appeared to be an epidemic was somehow related to radiation contamination. This discovery was helpful in ruling out contagious diseases and other conditions, but it did nothing to minimize the mystifying, confusing and terrifying truth about the invisible power of the bomb. People died one after another. The doctor likened the situation to black, the black death pandemic that devastated europe in the 1300s. Observing the cremations taking place in his hospital yard, he wondered if his body, too, might soon be burned. Life or death was a matter of chance, of fate, he said, and the dividing line between the man being cremated and the doctor cremating him was slight. A second wave of radiation illnesses and deaths swept through the city in late august and Early September and continued through early october. The doctor and his whole staff came down with nausea, diarrhea and fatigue which, he remembered, made me feel as be i had been beaten all over my body. From the doctors perspective from his burpedout hospital death carved a clear geographical path. The first people who suffered and died from radiationrelated illness were living inside an air raid shelter at the bottom of the hill. The illness then climbed the hill, killing people in relative order according to their distance from the atomic blast. When the next tier of people grew sick, they were carried to the hospital grounds by their neighbors who lived farther up the hill, and the distance between the homes of the sick and his hospital became shorter and shorter. One family, another and then the yamaguchis were attacked by radiation sickness, the doctor remembered. I remember this widening excuse me, i named this widening advance of the disease the concentric circles of death. He watched as his neighbor, mr. Yamaguchi, lost 13 family members from atomic bomb sickness. After each death, mr. Yamaguchi carried the body to the cemetery, dug a grave andalled for the priest. After each ceremony, he returned home to care for the remaining family members, all of whom had fallen ill. They are dying one by one, he told the doctor. Who will send for the priest when i am dying . Who will dig my grave when i am gone . This is just a short note about what was going on in the United States at the same time. Highlevel officials in the United States adamantly and publicly refuted the news reports out of hiroshima and nagasaki that large numbers of people were suffering and dying from radiation exposure. In late august and Early September, for example, general leslie grove, director of the Manhattan Project where the bombs were developed, tried to deflect public discussion about the bombs radiation effects by insisting on the lawfulness of the bombs use and their decisive role in ending the war. The atomic bomb is not an inhuman weapon, he stated in the new york times. I think our best answer to anyone who doubts this is that we did not start the war, and if they dont like the way we ended it, to remember who started it. Later that year general groves testified before the u. S. Senate that deaths from highdose radiation exposure is, quote, without undue suffering and a very pleasant way to die. Okay. Im going to skip ahead ten years now, take you to a new place. Im going to tell you a story, oh, my goodness. The first time i met dole, mrs. Dole, was in 2003 nagasaki, and i was in a Conference Room waiting for her at one end of a very long table, and she entered from the far end. And when i first set eyes on her, she took my breath away. She stood there so tall and erect with a presence unlike anyone id ever met before. I learned later that as a child she was athletic and strongwilled, and she sometimes broke the rules. The photo in my book of doe as a child shows her in street clothes on a day that she should have been wearing her school uniform. She liked to look nice. Youll hear the word [inaudible] in this segment. It means atomic bombaffected person a word created to identify the victims and survivors of the atomic bombs. Doe was 15 at the time of the bomb. She was the one inside the mitsubishi weapons factory that imploded on top of her and thousands of men, women and student workers. To catch you up on her story, she barely escaped the factory ruins before she fell unconscious on an embankment. She had a big, wide gash on the back of her head running from one ear to the other. In the first few months after the bombing, purposing spots appeared on her body, she ran a high fever, her gums were inflamed, and she lost all of her hair. Her doctor told her parents that she was dying, and it was time to let her go. But doe made it. Most of her symptoms disappeared, and her injuries, for the most part, healed. But year after year her hair would not grow back. Doe hid inside her house staring at herself in the mirror. Instead of hair, soft, raggedly fuzz grew on her scalp, so thin and transparent that she looked almost bald, but even that would fall out, then grow in and fall out again. Why me, she fumed, why do i have to stay so ugly . I didnt do anything. She asked herself over and over again what she should do with the life she had been given. Eight years after the bombing she finally came to realize that she needed to find a way to transcend her atomic bomb experience and somehow create a new life for herself. Desperate to overcome her shame and reclaim her life, doe put on the black hankerchief her mother made for her and stepped outside her house. She stayed close to home at first, taking short walks only in her immediate neighborhood. Later she heard the people called her the girl with the triangle cloth. Does father decided that she should go to Dressmaking School so she could eventually support herself and have a good life. The commute to school required her to venture farther from home. One day on her way home she saw a fatigued middleaged woman sitting on a straw mat