Dalya Alberge, The Guardian; Lost memoir of Hiroshima survivor found after decades in US archive
[Kip Currier: This is another testament to the vital roles and responsibilities of information professionals around the globe who preserve precious archival artifacts, like the late Kiyoshi Tanimoto's Hiroshima 8:15 memoir. The memoir was identified in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Tanimoto's poignant work gives a first-hand account in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Penguin Random House will publish this "lost memoir" on August 4, 2026.
Other recent archival finds include:
- a draft of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech discovered in papers housed at the Virginia Theological Seminary's Bishop Payne Library, and
- a 44-page notebook in the National Library of France containing "seven previously unknown compositions" for flute and harp by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.]
"The memoir of a man who survived the horrors of Hiroshima is to be published for the first time this summer after its discovery in a US archive.
The 230-page memoir was written almost 80 years ago by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who witnessed the city’s destruction after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. He will now be portrayed in a feature film by Takehiro Hira, whose acclaimed roles include the detective in the Netflix Japanese-British drama Giri/Haji. Pre-production begins in November, ahead of the shoot in February 2027...
The memoir was found in the Beinecke rare book and manuscript library at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, among the papers of John Hersey, the American Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who died in 1993."
