Departures of note

Saburo Yamashita was born on January 1, 1930. Orphaned in early childhood, he was adopted into the Yamashita family in Miyauchi village in Hiroshima's Saeki district. At the age of 15, while mobilized as a student worker at a factory in Hiroshima, he was exposed to the atomic bombing of the city. After the war he worked as a prefectural official and as a farmer before entering politics, serving successively on the Miyauchi village, Hatsukaichi town, and Hatsukaichi city assemblies, including a term as assembly president. He was first elected mayor of Hatsukaichi in 1991 and served four terms, during which the city absorbed surrounding towns and villages and attracted the Japanese Red Cross Hiroshima College of Nursing. Throughout his career he gave testimony about his atomic bomb experience, speaking at schools and public gatherings as the 'A-bombed mayor.' In 2005 he traveled to United Nations headquarters in New York during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and gave testimony as vice-chair of the Japan Association of Mayors for a Nuclear-Free World, and he also opposed the expansion of the US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. He received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, in 2008 and later served as head of the Hiroshima Prefectural Social Welfare Council.