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June 2, 1932 – July 30, 2007 was a Japanese novelist, peace activist, academic and Time Asian Hero.
Oda won the Lotus Prize in 1981 of the Afro-Asian Writers' Association for his book Hiroshima. This led to a 1990 English translation as well as translations in French, Arabic, Italian, Korean and Russian. It was written about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only in Japan but on the Hopi Indians and Americans who lived near the testing sites.
He won the Kawabata Yasunari Prize for Aboji o Fumu ("Stomping Father"), published in 1998. Oda's novel The Breaking Jewel was published in English in 2003. It was about Japanese forces on a South Pacific island facing an American invasion at the end of World War II.
Oda was also instrumental in the formation of Japanese war memory in the late '60s and early '70s. He was the first of his generation of peace activists to begin to question the then-dominant narrative of Japan as a victim of war aggression, rather than as victimizer, during the Second World War.
Oda died of stomach cancer in July 2007, aged 75.
His memorial service was held on August 4, 2007 at the Aoyama Sogisho funeral hall in Tokyo and was attended by about 800 people, including well-known persons in the political, literary and activist fields in Japan. Afterward, an estimated 500 people held a peace march in Oda's memory, marching through the streets of downtown Tokyo and vowing to carry on Oda's anti-war activist efforts.
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