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| Recently, an E-mail arrived from Prof. Sunghee Lee, English Department of Changshin College Masan, South Korea. He was moved by the Terao Memoir and decided to use it in his textbook for the English course students. He also kindly sent a message to the site as follows: |
I think that Mr. Takeharu Terao left a message that every body should always remember. His attitude on the day of atomic bombing showed how humane he was. When I think of him wandering around the deteriorated town to look for his relatives, friends, and his school, with his face almost totally covered with bands, I think he might have felt more pain in the fact that all his acquaintances were gone, than the fact that he was the one who needed help for his wounds. He forgot what he needed for himself. Instead, he showed what love he had for others in the time of crisis.
I feel that he might not have been happy about his being alive when he found a lot of corpses around him. He might have felt that the scenes of all the corpses around him were more terrible than the possibility that he could have died like others. That is why he should check it if there were any one who was alive. He regretted later that he wandered about so much, probably because he could not find any one to talk to about how painful it was to find only himself alive when all his beloved ones were dead and missing.
He felt agony that he could not do anything to get the situation better. He knew that complaint, quarrel, fights, and disharmony would not get the situation better. He knew that only forgiveness, love, and peace would recover the past wounds. That was why he wrote at the end of his record "I always appreciate the society." Mr. Terao shows the power of the spirit that maintains the Japanese society as well as the world in peace. I find an unquenchable light of life in Mr. Terao's record.
Thank you. Sincerely yours,