Worries and hopes regarding the dangers of radiation in Japan

Hiroshima survivors fear new nuclear fallout

The cities flattened by last week's earthquake look eerily similar to the decimated buildings Shigeko Sasamori saw after an atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown in 1945.

The floodwaters from the tsunami -- the waves of debris and bodies -- remind her of the rivers in Hiroshima, Japan, swamped with corpses.

And the struggle to contain radioactive emissions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant makes Sasamori, 78, wonder if the crisis there will plague a new generation in Japan.

"Radiation is the most horrible thing, and it's more horrible to me because humans make it," she said from her home near Los Angeles. "We don't have to make that."

Sasamori is a hibakusha, or heat radiation survivor -- a name given to those who lived through the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War II.

For them, radiation is an invisible enemy that has haunted them, claimed their loved ones, altered their bodies and threatened their lives.

Imagine

Japanese man is a double A-bomb survivor: He was in Hiroshima on business trip before returning home to Nagasaki

My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die.--Tsutomu Yamaguchi, 93

For a short look at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the following MSNBC video does a decent job, although I would really recommend John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, a classic, for an in-depth account. For children, the story of Sadako Sasaki in Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes may be useful. It is certainly moving.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy