hibakusha means A survivor of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 93 out of 100.
hibakusha is pronounced /ˈhɪbəˌkuːʃə/.
Why “hibakusha” is a great word
HIBAKUSHA — [Noun] A survivor of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Borrowed from Japanese 被爆者, from 被 (hi-, "to suffer") + 爆 (baku, "bomb, explosion") + 者 (sha, "person"), literally meaning "bomb-affected person"; attested in the mid-20th century. Unlike "survivor," a generic term for enduring peril, or "casualty," which denotes the killed or injured, *hibakusha* is a specific legal and historical identity. It is the shadow permanently burned onto stone steps, the keloid scar mapping a sudden noon, the invisible sickness carried in the blood—a word that marks a person not by what they did, but by what the world did to them, an embodied memory of a morning that divided all of human time.
Etymology
Attested in the mid-20th century, borrowed from Japanese 被爆者 (hibakusha, literally “bomb-affected person”).
noun
- A survivor of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.“The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons took effect in January after years of civil effort joined by atomic bombing survivors, or hibakusha.”