黒い雨- 長谷川希実、太田智子

After researching and knowing more about the atomic bomb, we became interested about the black rain that fell after the explosion that contained radioactive materials that caused diarrhea, hair loss, bleeding, leukemia, and other effects. We researched how can black rain affect humans, animals, buildings, and the environment. We also looked at the differences between black rain in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how it affected the number of people. We decided to create an etching by painting black acrylic paint on crayons. We drew a landscape of Hiroshima, sketching the mushroom cloud including black rain falling. Our hope is to inspire our audience that the bomb was a miserable thing because of the many after-effects including black rain and radiation.

原爆のことを調べたりしているうちに、原爆の後に降ったとされる「黒い雨」に興味を持ちました。「黒い雨」は下痢や、抜け毛、出血、白血病、そしてその他の放射線障害を引き起こす放射性物質を含む雨です。私たちは、黒い雨が人、動物、建物、環境にどのように影響を与えるのかを調べ、広島の黒い雨と長崎の黒い雨の違いや、それが死者数に与えた影響についても調べました。その情報を展示する方法としてクレヨンスクラッチングを起用しました。クレヨンを紙に塗り、その上から黒いアクリル塗料を塗って、尖ったもので黒いアクリル絵の具を削ることによって下のクレヨンが出てくると言う一種の芸術技法です。まだキノコ雲が残っている状態の、黒い雨が降っている、広島の風景を描きました。私たちは、この作品によって、爆弾の悲惨さ、そして黒い雨や放射線を含む多くの影響があると皆様に伝えれたらいいなと、思っています。

Black Rain

Black rain was the rain that fell onto the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the nuclear bombings. For Hiroshima, the bomb was dropped at 8:15. At around 9:00, 45 minutes after, black rain fell (Sutou, 2020).

Black Rain is a mix of ash, radioactive fallout, and water. It not only stains skin, clothes, and buildings, it can be ingested into the human body from contaminated water or food which can result in people getting diarrhea, hair loss, bleeding, leukemia, and other radiation damage. Not only that, there are after-effects like cancer or leukemia. Back then, survivors actually drank the black water because of thirst, ending in having a serious illness. Many people passed away from this.

In Nagasaki, the black rain came far as 29km away from ground zero, as you can realize here, even people away from the bombing area were radiated from the black rain (Sutou, 2020).