Sakae Ito; Hiroshima Survivor, Antinuclear Activist

Sakae Ito, 88, a leading antinuclear activist who was a victim of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Ito was about a mile from the center of the bomb blast in the southwestern Japanese city Aug. 6, 1945. She suffered severe burns in the blast, which killed about 140,000 people. She joined Japan’s antinuclear movement in 1951 and a few years later co-founded the Japanese Confederation of A-bomb and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations, a group that campaigns for the abolition of nuclear weapons and support for bombing victims. Ito visited the United States and former Soviet Union several times to talk about her experiences as a bomb survivor and to advocate a society free from nuclear peril. On Wednesday in Hiroshima of bladder cancer.