Oral history interview with Kae Sakamoto, 2015 August 6.

Kae Sakamoto was born and raised in Hiroshima. Her mother and her mother's parents as well as her father's parents are all hibakusha. She graduated from the School of Medicine at Hiroshima University and worked at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) for 30 years, after which she started offering medical examinations to survivors. She also participated in the biennial medical checkups in San Francisco and Seattle. She thinks that the U.S. hibakusha were especially grateful for the checkups, as it allowed them to speak about their medical conditions in Japanese with doctors from Hiroshima. She says that when she was working with patients at RERF, she was not informed if they were hibakusha or not in order to prevent bias, but some patients would start revealing their status as hibakusha as the anniversay approached. Sakamoto mentions that as a scientist she believes the evidence that says that the children of hibakusha should not have adverse effects from the radiation and that due to her mother's distance from ground zero she should be fine as well. She talks about the need to preserve the data obtained during the course of the research on hibakusha. She expresses sadness that so many people died before the current system for medical expenses was in place and that the many people who were evacuated to the countryside while their entire families died in the bombing are excluded from the system.

Recorded 2015 August 6