Hiroshima and the Atom Bomb

1945

2013

Ok, so this blog entry has been the most difficult for me to write because I have so many random thoughts about EVERYTHING!  I decided to frontload some basic pictures from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum with simple captions first, and let the pictures tell the story of my experience, THEN write my thoughts about them.

I didn't realize that Hiroshima actually housed a huge military presence. It's a port city and has thus historically been a place for the mobilization of forces before expeditions to Korea and China, for example, or for many of the WWII Pacific endeavors. This map shows military posts in the city Green means it was there before 1894 (pre-Sino Japanese War), purple means it was built sometime between then and WWII.

I had no idea that there whole military maneuvers carried out to practice the dropping the A-bomb. Every yellow mark on this map represents a spot where a "dummy a-bomb" was dropped in the two months before the real bomb. Apparently the dummies killed almost 2000 on their own. 

Model of Hiroshima before the bomb

Model of Hiroshima after the bomb

A shirt burned most of the way through from the bomb

A lunchbox with its contents charred from bomb.

The heat burned through the black ink writing that had been on this cloth since black absorbs more heat

Metal that bubbled up from the heat of the bomb.

This radioactive "black rain" was sometimes consumed by survivors, desperately thirsty after becoming sickened by radiation. Drinking could kill them or make them sicker, giving them diarrhea for months.

And now for the lengthy discussion:

Victims for Peace?

Memorials and museums can be very tricky sometimes, because inevitably there will be some sort of perspective involved, and then it becomes an issue of whose perspective is it, how “accurate” is its recounting of events, what does it deliberately leave out, what does it fail to consider, and why has it undertaken the task of memorialization to begin with. Places that I can think of that have had to deal with these thorny questions are the Vietnam Memorial, Auschwitz (sp?), the Nanjing Massacre Museum, the 9/11 Memorial—the list goes on. For the subject of the atomic bomb and Hiroshima, recall the controversy over the manner in which the Smithsonian should display a restored Enola Gay (US plane that dropped the bomb) to mark the 50^th anniversary of the bomb. What’s the story there? The US won the war, so is this an artifact of victory and veteran pride? Or a symbol of the human tragedy that resulted from the bomb? What the Enola Gay means to Americans might be quite different from what it means to Japanese. In any case, some people threw a fit at the idea of suggesting that the United States did wrong to drop the bomb. There’s some good info related to the controversy here: http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/

In Hiroshima, we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to yes, learn about the bomb and city, etc, but also to consider some of these questions. For me, I also came into it wondering how I could raise questions for my students about war and ethics and technology. How does technology bring new moral dilemmas or responsibilities into play? Does technology that removes the personal nature of killing facilitate state violence and war? Is there a moral code to waging war? Should there be one? Is it even meaningful to speak of “conventions of war” as long as we still wage war? (and also, has anyone ever really given a crap about the Geneva Convention?) I’ve been wanting to do something with nuclear deterrence and drone warfare for a while now, but have been looking for a way to tie in more “mainstream” standardized test material into it. I don’t know how much standardized test material I got out of this, actually, but I do know that I came out of this city with so many more questions than when I entered it—if I can somehow do the same for my students, then I’ll have accomplished my goal!

So one big question I have is, who’s a better proponent of peace than a victim of terrible violence? Japan today has kind of a dual symbolism. It’s often touted as the only pacifist country in the world, the only country without its own army, a country that has low crime rates, a country that having experienced the horrors of the bomb now advocates peace. On the flip side, we also have this image of the Japanese war criminal who rapes women and kills children indiscriminately, and the looming Japanese empire out to conquer all of the Pacific, and the picture of Pearl Harbor being bombed to smithereens to a theatrical Hollywood soundtrack. To some extent these identities are laid out for us chronologically, so that we have a vague idea that evil has somehow evolved into good. It’s really difficult for us to look at both visions of Japan at the same time because they don’t go very well together.

I bring up this dual persona only because this is really one of the most obvious issues the museum had to struggle with from the beginning. Victim or villain, either side is a caricature, and any museum worth its name would want to attempt a more balanced approach. Here’s how the museum dealt with that: The building is divided into two parts—the first half covers the history of Hiroshima as a military outpost and port city and goes through the early stages of WWII, including Japanese aggression—albeit slightly glossed over—then the 2^nd half of the museum covers the science of the bomb and both the immediate and long-term effects. You can probably tell from this description which section the pictures above fit into. Now here’s where it gets interesting. The 2^nd half of the museum begins with the visitor walking through a long corridor built to look like the inside of a damaged brick building. The walls behind the brick are painted with a landscape of razed and smoking trees and buildings backlight by a fiery glow. This is obviously meant to duplicate the experience of a survivor moments after the bomb exploded and to evoke the loneliness and despair of a city completely annihilated. As you turn the corner, you’re greeted by the sight of mannequins, faces raw, skin melting, clothes half-burned away. It’s very effective and very emotional, I will say that.

I was unsurprised to learn that the museum originally only contained this 2^nd half, adding that first half only after it received complaints that it ignored Japan’s military aggression. Can you imagine starting your museum experience with that corridor walk? Whatever came after, it would be very difficult to return to an analytical frame of mind. That section actually reminded me of the Nanjing Massacre Museum in Nanjing, China, which was BLACK, very dim and somber inside, and filled with mannequin scenes meant to make you feel horrified and dismayed. I think it’d be pretty difficult to walk out of that museum not feeling just a little angry towards Japan. In contrast, I’d have to say the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum did a respectable job of both evoking an emotional response AND conveying important scientific and historical context. Although a fellow teacher said she felt a little bit uncomfortable at times as an American, I didn’t actually get that sense at all. If anything, I felt that military aggression by BOTH the United States and Japan were downplayed. The firebombing of Tokyo, for instance, was scarcely mentioned. Forget about the Nanjing Massacre or the Bataan Death March.

I almost felt that the message being pushed was, “It doesn’t matter what happened before, what’s most important now is peace.” A subtle evasion of both casting blame and accepting blame by taking on the burden of a more righteous mission: world peace. Right away you’ll notice the name of the museum—the museum has an agenda and is very straightforward about it. It exists to promote the banning of nuclear weapons and to promote world peace. That’s the mission of the museum, and it’s visible in various aspects of its exhibitions. For instance, there are several walls that display hundreds of letters written by the mayors of Hiroshima to every country that has tested nuclear weapons on every known incidence of said testing (hint: most of them are to the United States and the Soviet Union. The most recent one is to Obama). There’s also a place for signing petitions to convene nuclear disarmament talks, etc.

 

Now, you can’t really take on the mantle of World Peace Promoter without also accepting a certain authority imparted by victimhood. Obviously I have zero problem with anyone promoting world peace and the banning of nuclear weapons, but I think the peace persona that Japan has taken on sometimes makes it way too easy to disguise the role the Japan and the Self-Defense Forces currently plays in American militarism.  Just a thought.

I want to discuss the surrounding environs of the memorial museum now. This museum and the park that surround it are located very near the epicenter of the atomic bomb dropped on city in 1945. Its main landmark is the Peace Dome (of note is that it’s actually called the “atomic bomb dome” in Japanese), the hollowed out, blasted remains of a building that is one of the few original structures left. 

The park is beautiful, excellently maintained, and contains numerous memorial statuary of its own, installed over the years for various reasons. There is, for instance, one devoted to the many schoolchildren who died. Before the bomb, children 8-12 had already been evacuated, while children older than that were put into workteams to demolish rows of houses to create firebreaks in the event of firebombing. A number of these teams were at work when the bomb hit. Rob problematized this memorial for us by raising the provocative question—they’re children, but of course they were being put to work for the war effort, so to what extent does that make or not make them combatants? A great question to add to my class discussions of the moral obligations of war.

Strings of paper cranes left at one of the memorials. These are everywhere in Hiroshima, and I think have come to represent the spirit of peace after the bomb, especially after Sadako's iconic story.  Apparently, Sadako's relatives have just donated one of the last 5 cranes she folded to Pearl Harbor. 

Peace Bell memorial. On the bell is carved a map of the world with no lines between the countries. 

Children's Peace Monument. This monument was unveiled on Children's Day (a national holiday in Japan) and commemorates Sadako and all other children who died as a result of the bomb. Sadako was a girl who died from radiation-induced leukemia a few years after the bomb. She folded over 1000 cranes according to the Japanese traditional belief that doing so grants you a wish. Children today visit this monument. The cranes they fold to wish for world peace are housed in the structures you see just behind the statues (now there are too many to house, however).

One of the more interesting side memorials I’ll point out is the memorial to Korean residents of Hiroshima who died in the bombing (some moved there for economic opportunities, some were forcibly brought by the Japanese military for labor). The memorial was originally erected outside of the park by the local Korean community, and not moved into the park until 1999 (shortly after it became possible for Koreans to attain Japanese citizenship without having to take Japanese names). Why should this memorial have been excluded from the sacred inner space to be begin with? I don’t know, but I’d guess it has something to do with the desire to maintain Japanese exclusivity over the rights to claim victimhood from the only atomic bomb ever used in war. We’d discussed already how the bomb, once only significant to Hiroshima, over time took on national symbolic significance. Japan as a nation eventually became the victim of the bomb, and this ideological shift must have been part and parcel of the Peace Movement in Japan in the later half of the 20^th century. You can’t really separate Japanese pacifism from its faultless victimhood, which I mentioned already. I think that persona I mentioned earlier, the “peaceful” one, is really something that helped construct post-war Japanese national identity. That might be one reason why Japan didn’t want to acknowledge other victims of the bomb—doing so might make Japanese victimhood less Japanese, if you know what I mean. I also think acknowledging those other victims, some of whom would not have perished had the Japanese military not forced them to move there, recall events that bring that peace-loving identity into question.

The turtle is a Korean motif indicating passage to heaven. There's a bowl of water in front of the turtle. We noticed that water is a common theme in many of the memorials, and there was some discussion whether this had to do with water being a purifying thing in Shinto, or whether it was referencing the thirst experienced by the many victims of the bomb. 

Hibakusha [survivor] Testimonials

Aside from the museum and the park, a big part of my experience in Hiroshima was talking to hibakusha, or survivors of the atom bomb. We spoke to two different survivors. It's one thing to read about a terrible tragedy and the human suffering it causes, or even to see pictures. It's quite another to hear someone talk about their own experiences and emotions. Anyone who has ever heard a Holocaust survivor speak will understand what I mean. As a history teacher, it was also a great opportunity for me to experience oral history, which, like eye-witness testimony, is heavily edited by the speaker after the fact and is not necessarily "accurate." So what makes these testimonies so valuable then? I think it's getting in touch with the human side of tragedy and empathizing. We don't need oral testimony to know what happened, we have plenty of records. The oral testimony though tells us what people remember, what made that lasting impression on them, and it shows us what the people who lived it think is most important.

The first hibakusha we spoke to was Ms. Toshiko Tanaka. I googled her later and found her story here: http://hibakushastories.org/toshiko-tanaka.html .  It's incredibly similar to what I heard from her that night. I guess when you retell a story this important it eventually takes on a practiced manner and becomes almost a performance. In short, Ms. Tanaka was 6 when the bomb hit. She felt the heat blast and suffered from radiation sickness for a few weeks (fevers, coma, burns) and witnessed many deaths and more serious cases. An image that really struck me when she described it was how people's skin looked after--raw, like a peeled tomato. It really stuck out to me that even to this day, she can't look at a tomato at a barbecue without thinking of it. I can't remember exactly when Ms. Tanaka began telling her story, but it was really recently, within a couple of years, I think. In fact, I want to say it was the Fukushima incident that inspired her to speak out (i can't find my notes!). She even began to do some research on radiation on her own and took a trip to visit Chernobyl. That really struck me, that she waited so many years to talk about it but that once something triggered that decision it turned into a kind of mission for her--now she tells her story quite frequently and promotes the banning of nuclear weapons. I could tell that it's difficult to talk about for her--she was very calm and even smiled a couple of times during her talk--it felt very much like a professional curtain that she'd dropped to keep some distance from her topic. Ms. Tanaka is actually an enamel artist, and she discussed that one of the reasons she got into art is because it was an emotional outlet for a lot of the unresolved feelings she had about the bomb. Her art is abstract, but there are definitely many themes relating to war and even the bomb directly. You can check out her art here: http://www.toshikotanaka.com/ 

The second survivor we spoke to was a Mr. Ito (I don't recall his first name, and my notes are packed away at the moment). This one was rough--most of us were tearing up throughout and we all needed a 5 minute break before the Q&A session. Like Ms. Tanaka, he did not speak out for most of his life. What inspired him to do so?--his son's death in the Twin Towers during 9/11. To me it sounds like it was his son's death that initially triggered the desire to speak, and at first he only spoke about 9/11, only adding his own experiences as a boy in Hiroshima later. Perhaps it's because 9/11 is so familiar to New Yorkers and Americans in general that his story touched a much rawer nerve for us. Mr. Ito was 10 years old when the bomb hit, and was in school 10km away from the epicenter. He felt the heat of the bomb and saw the mushroom cloud from the school. The building was fine, but the windows broke. The teacher sent everyone home, and Mr. Ito described seeing military trucks loaded with bodies and injured people on his way home. To me, that was an especially vivid image--imagine that feeling of dread, knowing that something awful has happened and only having the details being unveiled to you piece by piece--like when you see a car accident on a highway and begin driving past ambulances, then a burnt piece of car becomes visible, and so forth. Actually, Mr. Ito ended up returning to school to help with the relief efforts going on there. He described helping the burn victims by putting shaved cucumber and potato wraps on and fanning them. As things deteriorated, he helped pick maggots out of skin and dug large grave pits for the dead. Mr. Ito suffered no serious problems, but of the 361 students at his school, 20 passed away later from sickness. The hardest part to listen to though was when he spoke of the death of his brother, who was at a school somewhat closer to the epicenter. His brother was sick when he returned home, but the doctor couldn't diagnosis him, and he seemed to be recovering about 4-5 hours later anyway. So Mr. Ito went out to play with his brother, and only a little while later, he describes his brother removing his straw hat, and all of his hair sticking to the inside of it. His mother shaved his head and said it felt "soft and mushy." The worst, he said, was the terrible odor of his breath.

Mr. Ito went on to discuss his experience when his son died in 9/11, but I won't go too much into that since it digresses from the topic a bit. I'll just say that he left us with one strong image--that of he and his wife standing together at the Buddhist temple the same way he'd seen his parents do for his brother. He spoke a lot at the end, not necessarily about nuclear disarmament and peace, the way Ms. Tanaka had, but more about human compassion as a way of overcoming personal tragedy. He said, "You can't see people's hearts but you can see how they are kind to each other. You can't see people's thoughts but you can see their considerations towards each other." It does strike a chord that his first tragedy was the result of an American bomb, while his second was the result of a bomb targeting Americans. I think Mr. Ito above all was speaking to the universality of human experiences, even tragic ones.