(Image: heyevent.com)

This Thursday marks 70 years since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the U.S. struck Nagasaki with another.

Seattle’s commemoration of the thousands of lives lost in those events will start Wednesday on the steps of the Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park with a full-sized sculptural replica of the uranium bomb, known as Little Boy.

Created by Yukiyo Kawano, a Portland based artist and third-generation hibakusah (nuclear bomb survivor), the sculpture is made from her grandmother’s translucent kimonos, sewn together with strands of her own hair.

“Seventy years later, I re-traced the hand stitching of Grandmother, with a seam ripper between my fingers, feeling a gentle sadness, a wistfulness, reflecting on the ephemera of things”.

Kawano will be in attendance to discuss her piece. Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility is sponsoring the event. On Thursday, the sculpture will move to the Seattle Public Theater at Green Lake for Seattle’s annual event to honor the victim’s of the bombing. From Hiroshima to Hope will end with candle-lit lanterns floated over the lake at dusk.