Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Masao Tomonaga

Professor, Honorary Director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb HospitalJapan

ExpertHibakusha

Dr. Masao Tomonaga is the honorary director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital and a hibakusha, an atomic bomb survivor. He studied internal medicine and hematology at the Nagasaki University Medical School. Throughout his career he has explained and studied the medical consequences of the atomic bombs, including radiation exposure, cancers, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Currently, he runs a retirement home for older hibakusha. He is also the Chairman of the Nagasaki Global Citizen’s Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. He advocates that nuclear weapons “should not be produced any more, should never be used again and ultimately abandoned forever.”

To view a 2019 interview with Tomonaga, conducted by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, please click here.

For more on Masao Tomonaga please click here. 

Masao Tomonaga’s Timeline
1943 Born in Nagasaki, Japan.

1945 Aug 9th Survived the Nagasaki atomic bombing.

2009 Retired from the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute of Nagasaki University.

Related Profiles

David Holloway

David Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb: the Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939-1956, is a professor of History at Stanford University.

Martyl Langsdorf

Chicago, IL

Martyl Suzanne Langsdorf was born on March 16, 1917. Her mother was a painter and her father was a photographer.

Inge-Juliana Sackmann Christy

Inge-Juliana Sackmann Christy is a physicist and author. Sackmann Christy was born in 1942 in Germany.

Yoshiro Yamawaki

Japan

Yoshiro Yamawaki is a hibakusha, an atomic bomb survivor. He was 11 years old when the U.S. dropped the “Fat Man” atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.