Hiroshima

We arrived in the city after 40 miles of biking and a ferry ride, bone tired and hungry as wolves.

From the moment we arrived, we have been welcomed; nourished; humbled by the horror wrought here; inspired by stories of resilience; and by the sheer force of life that brings back first oleander, then trees; first dogged determination, then... eventually... a kind of joy that isn't giddy, but one that is more appreciation, deep and tempered.

I write sitting in a building that was, quite incomprehensibly, left standing though every person inside--except some guy in the basement--was killed instantly. It was first a kimono factory, then a fuel depot, now it is a tourist rest house, where the kid has a wifi connection to meet with her math teacher on line--normal daily life, for us now. Normal as it was for the 350k people in Hiroshima on that day. By the end of the year 146,000 would be dead, only half of them dying that day and the rest suffering horribly as they passed over the coming few months.

The memorial hall has a fountain in the center to offer water to the many thousands of souls who died begging for water to sooth the pain as the radiation scorched them from the inside out as well, and it was thought that giving them water would make them worse... There were drifts of charred bodies, a river choked with corpses, survivors staggering forward, arms out with the burned flesh hanging in strips. Wounded medical staff nursing people dying faster than they. Fires that burned for days. Inconceivable individual hells.

We got an unexpected and jolting glimpse into this reality in the Kyoto train station, where a survivors group had posted drawings, photos, and excerpts of autobiographical accounts by survivors. N couldn't bear the images or the emotions and beat a hasty retreat.

And I wanted her to leave, I wanted to cover my child's eyes and protect her from the horror. Brian and I walked through the panels, tears rolling down both our faces, and then held each other close for a long, long time.

One field clinic. I won't subject the reader to more. 

So that was where our heads were, coming here. Nuala was thinking we would be reviled--and on reflection, I realize that she wasn't the only one unsure of our reception as Americans.

But the consistent theme of our visit is the seeming dichotomy of tragedy and joy, and some of the warmest welcoming people we have met in Japan (which is saying A LOT).

The Sunday night we arrived, N settled into a bath and Brian and I wandered the streets past shuttered restaurants, trying to sidestep a 7-11 dinner (which, in Japan, is not a terrible prospect, actually).

We found a tiny izakaya (a bar that also serves pub food, skewers of grilled meats and fish, generally more on the tendon and offal side of things--yes!!!) There were only three other patrons and we settled in.

The owner, a gimlet-eyed and delightfully extroverted woman, was bantering with the others, teasing them. She couldn't speak English and we can't speak Japanese, but she pulled us right in, demanding that one shy gent (a pianist for the Hiroshima Opera) translate for her. Before we knew it, she was correcting our chopstick technique, grilling up more skewers, explaining piri-piri, exclaiming at our bike trip and travels to come, tutting and wrinkling her nose about Ichiro--he thinks he's all that, hmphf!--presenting smoked mullet roe and a free glass of sake for Brian (which complements the salty flavor quite nicely, I am told). . . In between her sallies, the pianist shared his love of Hiroshima with us and expressed how glad he was that we would visit his adopted city.

The owner gifted us with chopsticks from her restaurant and, as we left, insisted we take two beautiful ceramic chopstick rests from Fukuoka as parting gifts. I will remember the warm glow of that place fondly.

The view from our apartment onto a rooftop garden. A little gangly at the end of summer, but a delightful surprise all the same. 

The next morning we woke and the city was quiet, with a holiday on, so we meandered and found pastries to bring to Peace Park, a site designed both to remember the past and live as an expression of hope for a peaceful future.

We ate our breakfast to the chanting of an annual Buddhist/Shinto service for the spirits of the dead killed in the attack. It was beautiful, but set a somber note too--the chanting goes right into your chest and holds you there.

The Children's Peace Monument, with Sadako Sasaki at the top. She died of leukemia caused by radiation poisoning years after the bombing, but in her own gesture of willful hope, she followed her vision to make a thousand cranes (a tradition that if you make a thousand origami cranes, you are granted a wish) in the wish to rid the world of atomic weapons. The cranes sent by thousands of school children from around the world are arranged in curtains around the base. Visitors come and ring the peace bell hanging underneath as they would shake the suzu  at a Shinto shrine (to shake off evil and call the attention of the gods), and wish for peace too.  I actually saw one school group h

After that we wandered up to an incongruous-seeming hula performance across the river from the Genbaku Dome. Lilting, familiar, joyful ukulele songs, and considerably more modestly dressed dancers than in Hawaii, happily doing their thing on the bank of the river, with tourists strolling and eating ice cream, enjoying the lovely sunny day. This is a place of life and music, right here at the epicenter of that horror.

Then on to the dome itself, the enduring symbol. Everyone inside killed instantly on the day.

Here, with the birds chirping and the odd crane cruising by, a charming older gentleman struck up conversation with me by asking where I am from. He is a HAM radio guy, licensed in Federal Way, WA, funnily enough, and his grandmother was "a victim of the bomb"--a fact he referred to briefly and without rancor. And no wonder, here his story is the norm, not the exception. We talked about Morse code, the art of communication using dots and dashes, the Olympics in 2020, and the current political forces at play between Tokyo's newly elected first female governor, Yuriko Koike, and PM Shinzo Abe (she and HC could compare war stories https://www.google.com/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/36935083?client=safari).

Mr HAM (like every other Japanese person we have met) most delicately did not broach the shamockery of the current electoral cycle in the US. However, he firmly expressed the profound hope that the world would see more female leaders in the future. He was warm and friendly and, in keeping with the leitmotif, expressed pleasure that we were enjoying the city and doing our best to learn from history and not let the lesson fade away.

We parted with bows and I settled in to read the literature on offer, and then we went to the museum to hear a presentation of a survivor's story and plea for nuclear disarmament. He, too, worried that the lived memory would fade and urged us all to share our experience there.

Below is the the Cenotaph, which contains the names of everyone who has died in Hiroshima as a result of the bomb--the list is still growing, albeit at a much slower pace. And the cenotaph is placed so that you can see the eternal flame of peace and the dome beyond.

Every year the document is taken out and the pages exposed to light as volunteers check to make sure that no name is lost due to decay. Every day, volunteers make up new and glorious flower arrangements.

A lot of schools get class pictures here. 

The tone of the official books and plaques still holds the tinny aftertaste of American post-war reconstruction propounds. Maybe it is mixed with a self-recrimination that I interpret--rightly or wrongly--as Buddhist (karma for expansionism). The signage in the memorial hall firmly set the context of Japanese aggression in WWII, and a museum speaker sharing survivor stories noted that Hiroshima was "made by war" as a military/industrial town and implies that it had sown the seeds of its own destruction (as, by extension, did Japan?). While I don't entirely disagree, It seems pretty incredible to have that reflection so... Inward-facing, I guess is the word I am looking for. It is hard to untangle. And definitely controversial in Japan as well. But who am I to say? After seeing that horror, of course you would fight for it never to happen again. I haven't lived it. I wasn't there.

And thinking of this stops me in my tracks, bringing me years back to an argument with my Dad about the Nagasaki bomb drop, in an upscale Santa Fe restaurant. He had been in Washington, D.C. in intelligence, at the end of the war, and I had studied the War history in high school and college. I was adamant that nothing could justify the dropping of the first bomb much less the second.

My Dad, I should say, was a mild man. He enjoyed civil debate, argued his point with logic and wit and very good manners. He was notable for striving to find some point of agreement and could leave a discussion agreeing to disagree with grace and perhaps a bon mot to dispel tension. After Jimmy Carter, we never agreed on candidates (though I did vote swap with him to go for Nader), but the discussions were always good ones.

This night, though--this was one of those exceptions that I can count on one hand. With tightly suppressed emotion, he gave me the smack-down. He didn't have to bang his fist on the table, the words were staccato and unyielding: "I was there. You weren't. It was necessary, period."

I was shocked. He refused to discuss the point further, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks as the retort died on my tongue. I was angry and embarrassed, but at that time I didn't think about what a brew of emotions he was experiencing. We were coming at it from totally different angles: I was making an intellectual argument. He was reliving his own experience, clearly a very painful one.

I wish I understood the layers of his emotional state as much as I am curious about the actual information upon which his conviction was based. Was it regret and horror at the choice? Fury at the memories of lost friends? As I have many times since he died, I wish I had had the skill and patience to ask him more, and listen to his answers with care and compassion.

Now we are here, bearing witness to the vastly different experience of the people of Hiroshima. And yet again, my opinion is a pale shade next to the reality of both victims and survivors ... American propaganda, the measure of whether the drop was justified or not... The passionate call to peace springs from their lived experience, it isn't an academic point for debate.

I reel at the thought that this level of destruction could ever be deemed "necessary." I understand my privilege in bearing witness. And I am terrified at prospect of how easily it could happen again, even without a fucking whack job at the helm.

I wonder what I would say to my Dad now, and how he would respond. Maybe he would point out that it worked.

I do know that he would be appalled at the state of the US electoral cycle and the potential dangers--the more so given his intelligence experience.

If he were around now, would I have the skill and compassion to discuss our differences with the grace and civility that he always showed? Would we find ourselves in agreement beyond shared loathing of a school ground bully? Searching the database of memories, I believe that we might. I believe that we might even vote for the same candidate.

And that, in a funny way, gives me hope.