The family of Wagga woman Mitsue Stockley has paid tribute to her remarkable life after she died last week at the age of 88.
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Mitsue Stockley was born in Hiroshima in 1932, spending most of her childhood in the shadow of World War II.
At the time of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 1945, she was 11 years old living in Kure about 54 kilometres from the drop site.
She told in a video produced by the Museum of the Riverina that the morning of the bombing was unusually quiet before there was a sudden flash "like when you take a photo at night time" followed by 15 minutes of blindness.
She lost many friends, uncles, aunties and her sister Toshie, who was killed on her way to work, at the time of the bombing.
After the war, her adventurous spirit led her to apply for a job as a typist, despite not being able to type at all.
It was then she met her husband, Wagga man Roy Stockley, a young Australian serving with the occupational forces in Korea, who she married two years later at 21.
Soon after she moved to her new home of Wagga where her first impression was that it looked like a ghost town, but in time she found a home where she raised her two children Wayne and Jeff.
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Her son Wayne Stockley said his mother was always so polite to everyone and treated everyone equally, but it was difficult when she first moved to Wagga.
"People didn't want to walk on the same side of the street. She got abused a lot and was sent threatening letters," he said. "But she was a brave woman and got through it," he said.
Eventually, she became "a well-known local identity, highly-regarded and much-loved", acting as an unofficial cultural ambassador to a number of groups, including the CWA, the Girls Guides, the Workers' Educational Association, the Wagga International Club, and Wagga School of Arts.
"She was a social butterfly. It was her makeup to help people," Mr Stockley said.
Mrs Stockley was also the host of "a popular cooking programme" for a local TV station, so she became a well-known face in the street.
"She would go downtown and stop and talk to everyone," Mr Stockley said. However, he said family and friends were most important to his mother, her entire life.
"She loved my dad pretty bad, he died younger at 61 and she really missed him," he said. "But the grandkids were very special to her. She spoiled them rotten."