Setsuko Turlow, an 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, was a survivor of the world's first atomic bombing in Hiroshima. She receives the prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons on Sunday.
Recalling the horrific memory of that day in her speech, Turlow said, "I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building. I began to hear my classmates' faint cries: 'Mother, help me. God, help me.'"
"As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that building were burned alive. I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation."she continued.
Parts of her story are too sickening to listen to.
A view of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. /Reuters Photo
A view of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. /Reuters Photo
She described in her speech: "Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air."
But this is still not the end of the nightmare. The radiation poisoning haunts the victims for decades.
"In the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of radiation. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors." she added.
At the end of her speech, she called on the world to resist nuclear weapons, which endanger everyone we love and everything we hold dear.