HIROSHIMA SURVIVOR TALKS

A WOMAN who survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima is using her talent for ventriloquism to share her childhood wartime experiences with a new generation of schoolchildren. Takako Kotani was only 6 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 near the end of World War II, claiming the lives of her mother and a brother. Now 82 and living in Yachiyo, Japan, Kotani lectures at about 20 schools each year, accompanied by her ventriloquist’s dummy, Atchan.