  We have discovered unknown very valuable old photos of Prof. Hideki Yukawa at
the unveiling ceremony of his bronze statue at an elementary school in Kochi in
1954. The statue was moved to a newly created garden in1982, which in the
subsequent decades accelerated the forgetting of its existence. The forgetting
of the statue by the local people is related by chance to a historic event in
the Marshall Islands. Prof. Yukawa's visit to attend the unveiling ceremony
occurred just after news that Japanese fishermen were heavily injured by atomic
testing at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. At the news conference when
he arrived at Kochi, he was unexpectedly asked about his attitude to the bomb
testing by the US. He was considered to be the foremost top scientist in
nuclear science in Japan at that time, having been awarded the Nobel Prize for
physics in 1949. People in Kochi were very anxious about the test since many
fishermen worked near Bikini Atoll. Contrary to the expectation of local
people, he refused to comment on the matter at the news conference and in
public lectures, which were held several times during his stay in Kochi. After
returning to Kyoto, he issued the famous statement titled Nuclear Era and the
Turning Point of Mankind in an influential national newspaper. This was a time
in Prof. Yukawa's life when he had to reflect and consult his conscience, and
he chose to take a principled stance that became a turning point in his life.
After the visit to Kochi, he devoted himself with his wife to the peace
movement against nuclear weapons. Looking back, it can be observed that the
visit in 1954 to attend the unveiling ceremony of his bronze statue in Kochi
marked the start of that change. The statue can be seen to symbolize not only
his Nobel Prize but also the turning point in his life that led him to support
the peace movement against nuclear weapons.
