Shigeko Sasamori died peacefully at home on Sunday December 15, 2024, in Los Angeles. She was 92 years old. This GoFundMe campaign is being established to help Shigeko’s family adjust through this process.

Shigeko was 13 in Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. Hearing the sound of a plane, she looked up to see a B-29 flying overhead — seconds later she was knocked unconscious by the blast. When she came to, so badly burned that she was unrecognizable, she was lying in a make-shift shelter of a partially destroyed elementary school. Shigeko repeated her name and address over and over for days without any water, food or medical attention, until she was finally found by her father. Years later she would travel to the United States in 1955 as part of a group of young women known as the Hiroshima Maidens. While in New York, she underwent numerous reconstructive plastic surgery operations and met her adoptive father, Dr. Norman Cousins.

To learn more about Shigeko, please see the feature obituary that was published this month in the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/world/asia/shigeko-sasamori-dead.html

Sharing her atomic bomb testimony in small groups, in auditoria and at the United Nations, Shigeko’s heart-wrenching experience touched people to their core. She always said, “In war, nobody wins. In war, everybody loses.” Not only was Shigeko a powerful advocate for peace and nuclear abolition, she was equally a tireless optimist who brought fun-love and joy to countless people all over the world.

Please help the Sasamori family as they grieve the loss of the irreplaceable Shigeko Sasamori and make necessary arrangements for her remembrance.