“Hibaku” rice planted to remember horror of atomic bombing

Choichi Ueno of Kaminokawa, Tochigi Prefecture, checks rice in October. The grain has been grown from seeds collected in Nagasaki after the city was hit by an atomic bomb in 1945. | KYODO (Photo courtesy of japantimes.co.jp) TOKYO—Hibaku rice tasseled again this year in various parts of Japan as a “living witness” to the horror of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 70 years ago. The rice is derived from seeds collected in October 1945 by Kyushu University researchers in areas close to the epicenter of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki just before the end of World War II in August of that year. Hibaku (exposure to radiation) rice looks healthy though greener than usual. But its husks are “almost empty,” Kikuo Sakai, 81, said in early October, pointing to the rice grown in a 100-square-meter plot in his rice paddy in Motomiya, Fukushima Prefecture. (PNA/Kyodo)