University of Denver Fall 2022

A scholar’s family legacy colors his work on peace and sustainability RESEARCH By Matt Meyer

years later, the boy’s father exhumed his body and those of his two siblings to give them a proper burial in a cemetery. The tricycle was donated to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, where it is on display to this day. On a 2019 trip to Hiroshima, University of Denver professor Cullen Hendrix, then a relatively new father, encountered that tricycle and learned the story behind it. “That was the point where academic understanding became inextricably intertwined with my broader expe rience as a person and a father,” Hendrix recalls. “It was a very full and visceral type of experience.” Roughly three years later, in the summer of 2022, Hendrix again journeyed to Hiroshima, this time to serve

Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroshima, Japan. For 3-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani, the day dawned with promise. It was a perfect day to enjoy his beloved hand-me down tricycle. Until, that is, an American B29 rumbled over Hiroshima, Japan, and dropped what would become the first live deployment of an atomic bomb in history. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Estimates put the death toll from the bombings at between 129,000 and 226,000 people, including the toddler who loved his tricycle. In the aftermath of the bombings, Shinichi was found trapped under rubble, barely alive and still gripping the handlebars of the trike. He died later that evening. Forty

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