Oral history interview with Itsuko Uota, 2012 June 13.

Itsuko Uota was born in Seattle in 1927. She returned to Hiroshima with her mother and four siblings in 1932 to receive a Japanese education. Her mother was back in the U.S. when the war broke out, separating the parents from the children; her parents were also sent to separate internment camps. She talks about her life in Japan before and during the war. She was four kilometers from ground zero working in a factory when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Her younger sister was in the center of town and was killed; she spent three weeks trying to find her. She was able to rejoin her parents in Seattle in 1947. She recalls going to school to learn English with students from many other countries. Afterward, she went to the University of Washington, but stopped after two and a half years when she met her husband at a collage dance party; she talks about her experiences at school, including her friends and her studies. She didn't talk about being a hibakusha before she was married, but when her oldest son died of leukemia, she wondered if it had to do with the bomb. She talks about going for her first medical checkup with a doctor from Hiroshima in Los Angeles in 1971 and getting her genbaku techō. She also describes her family life.

Recorded 2012 June 13