She spoke as part of the “Hibakusha Stories” effort to promote nuclear disarmament by having survivors (“hibakusha”) of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts share their stories.

Thurlow, 79, said she was at school when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. She recalls a blinding flash of light and the sensation of floating in the air.

“I don’t remember what happened, but when I regained consciousness in total darkness and silence, I found myself pinned under the collapsed building,” Thurlow remembered. “I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t, so I knew I was faced with death.”

Thurlow related a litany of horrors – the dead splayed out on the ruined earth, the living burned beyond recognition, shuffling ghostlike through the devastated city.

She told students at the Flatbush Avenue school that she went back to her house so she could collect something to remember it by. Thurlow dug with her bare hands in the still-hot rubble to recover a small ornament. She has since donated the keepsake to a museum in Canada, where she resides.

Thurlow was joined by Hiroko Sakaguchi, whose mother was exposed to radiation from the Nagasaki bombing. When she was a child, Sakaguchi watched her mother die slowly of rectal and lung cancer.

Sakaguchi, 62, speaking through an interpreter, said cousins and other relatives died from illnesses such as leukemia as a result of radiation. She said she fears she may one day be diagnosed with cancer.

Nuclear power is just as risky as nuclear weapons, she said, pointing to the May tragedy at the Fukushima reactor in Japan.

“You have to create a world without nuclear weapons, without nuclear power,” Sakaguchi told the student.

Students got an opportunity to ask the women questions.

“How did you have the courage to keep on living?” senior Kerline Louis asked Thurlow.

“I wanted to live,” Thurlow replied, adding that social work and activism have motivated her.

Students said the women’s stories touched them deeply.

“We have the power to stop nuclear weapons,” said Hala Hussein, 17. “If we work alone, we can’t do it, but if we put our hands together and work as one hand, we can do it.”

Read more: [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/hiroshima-survivor-talks-brooklyn-students-article-1.989444#ixzz1h0rziK7W](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/hiroshima-survivor-talks-brooklyn-students-article-1.989444#ixzz1h0rziK7W)