Instead of getting their history from a book or a film, Smith's students will hear it from the people who lived it — those who survived a world at war. They will learn how it changed the everyday lives of ordinary people.

For Kajiyama, sharing his story isn't so much about dwelling on past suffering. After all these years, the pain has faded and now he looks at the event as a small sacrifice.

"In a sense it was a devastating experience at that moment, but thinking about it, all the sacrifice brought international peace," said Kajiyama, in his office at Brigham Young University-Hawai'i, where he has taught Japanese for 35 years.

He said he agreed to the interview to help students learn, and that the method of learning will be a means to validate their humanity.

Linda Smith

Kalei Ho, 16, is after the personal view of history that eyewitnesses can provide. She wants their insight on how the war affected them and changed history.

"You get to reflect upon your own life and appreciate what these people went through," she said. "They are our history and we should appreciate them and acknowledge them."

During the attack, he received one small burn on his head. But his mother and brother died from the bomb, and many relatives died from cancer later, he said.

Kajiyama was 7 years old on Aug. 6, 1945, when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He said he was at school when the sirens went off and the well-trained student ran for cover in the school building. The bright flash, the thunderous blast and continuous shaking ended with the building still standing but with Kajiyama pinned under a door that had fallen on him. Glass and rubble were everywhere, and a cloud of dust and particles filled the air.

He ran for home, passing hundreds of people in the streets, burned, bleeding and begging for help. His mother wasn't there but a neighbor took him in. Soon he heard his mother calling. He rushed to her.

"I saw a strange woman in baked dirty clothes with grotesquely swollen face and burnt short kinky hair," he recalled. "Severe burns disfigured my beautiful mom into a total stranger of bloated face with red and dark brown blotches and scratches."

His mother lived for a short time but died from lack of treatment, Kajiyama said.

Among those to be interviewed are Holocaust survivors, Japanese internment camp detainees and a bombardier, said history teacher Smith.

Smith said she always wanted to do this type of class, and after 20 years was able to pull it off in her last year of teaching, with a small grant and administrative support.

More participants are needed, and Smith is seeking others including local residents who live in Hawai'i and were here during the war under martial law, or at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack or were students in high school.

The interviews will be recorded but not videotaped, she said.

"The older they are, the more they won't say in front of a video camera because their emotions might come out," Smith said.

Emotions are what Travis Hancock, 16, said he wants to experience during the class. It's something you don't get in a book, he said.

"Hopefully I can learn more and put more of what happened into perspective," he said.

Krystle Corpus, 17, said she wants to learn about why people acted the way they did during the war.

"We learn about prejudice and societal injustice and how we can apply that to ourselves," Corpus said.

Smith's class requires a lot of work and research, but the students say it is more interesting than other courses and provides them with a deeper level of learning.

"Instead of reading a book, you have a bit more understanding and historical empathy," said Mika Bailey, 16, adding that she's realizing for the first time that history is about real people very much like herself.