I Have Private Audience with Pope Francis, Encouraged to Continue Fight Against Leprosy (2)

During my private audience at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, on January 26, 2023, His Holiness Pope Francis, who visited the western Japanese city of Nagasaki in 2019, showed me a photograph taken after the atomic bombing of the city in August 1945. It shows a young boy waiting in line at a crematorium, carrying his dead sibling on his back.

"War is a tragedy," the pope said. "War must never happen again."

I almost burst into tears when I saw the photo, which reminded me of my own childhood experience.

On March 10, 1945, when I was six years old, I miraculously survived the U.S. firebombing raid on Tokyo during World War II. I took hold of the hands of my ailing mother, who had a high fever, and we somehow escaped the bombs as they rained down. The three-hour raid killed about 108,000 people and destroyed my school and countless other buildings in downtown Tokyo. I will never forget finding the bodies of our neighbors and attaching nametags to them. I felt like I had experienced a living hell.

I told His Holiness that it is the responsibility of survivors to work for the benefit of people of the world, adding this was the starting point of my life-long devotion to humanitarian work.

At the end of our meeting, I asked him to pose for a photograph next to a banner reading "Don't Forget Hansen's Disease", a campaign that I initiated in 2021 to ensure that leprosy is not overlooked even amid the coronavirus pandemic. “Of course,” he said.

I told the pope: "This one photograph will help persons affected by leprosy all over the world." He said: “I salute your activities.”

It is clear how much warmth and love Pope Francis has for the oppressed. He has given me great strength and filled me with courage in my work against leprosy and the stigma and discrimination it causes.

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