J.M. Ventura
“A dragonfly flitted in front of me and stopped on a fence. I stood up, took my cap in my hands, and was about to catch the dragonfly when…”
An American’s experience in Hiroshima is different from that of citizens from other countries. Our name is written, quite literally, on everything there. When we read the writing on the peace museum’s walls we are reading a story of ourselves, or people very much like us. The characters of this story are quite familiar and we can easily discern in them the same slovenly ethnocentrism that ails us today.
A recent trip to Hiroshima impressed upon me just how little of the story I actually knew. The image of that misshapen mushroom cloud, billowing out in noisome orange waves, defines for me the entire Second World War. When I think of “the bomb”, it’s those men standing above the twisted metal tower following the Trinity test, mouths agape, some of them rueful, some unabashedly giddy, as in the case of the egg-like General Groves. The incendiary bombing is just an insidious crescendo that climaxes in nuclear destruction. These images I carry relate how I read the story of the atomic bombing and, importantly, it’s the power of this weapon that receives most of my attention.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum forcibly confronts the understanding of this weapon in terms of its power. The raw images in its collection expose the profound human misery caused by humans with nuclear weapons. These images, like sharp barbs, pierced my heretofore apathy and highlighted the contrast in our ways of thinking; it drove home to me how differently Eastern and Western minds perceive this event. Received opinion has it that the use of the two nuclear bombs - first uranium-laden “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, then Plutonium-filled “Fat Man” on Nagasaki - by the American government actually saved lives. Our national memory of the first use of the atom bomb against humans, or our “heroic narrative,” as John Dower puts it, is significantly out of sync with the views of most people. The story of Hiroshima we tell reveals a story of technological and moral supremacy, but not one of human tragedy. The images we fail to recognize are often the most horrific and certainly the most difficult to consider.
How do others estimate the use of the bomb? Their language is very revealing. The survivors of Hiroshima signify the weapon in terms related to their experience. Attached to their memories of the bomb is a hauntingly visceral experience and, unlike our own scientifically sterile terminology, that experience is prominent in the words they use to describe the bomb. The word in Japanese is Pikadon. Those who found themselves in Hiroshima during the closing acts of the Pacific War - the students in the military supply factories, the senior citizens mobilized to clear firebreaks intended to reduce the damage from air raids, the women as they strung up the family’s wash - would have witnessed something undeniably fantastic. First, the flash, pika, with the strength of a small sun overhead, followed by an earth-shaking roar, don, as the bomb exploded - a deafening thunder followed by utter silence.
The fragmented, confused moments that follow – for their story does not end after the mushroom cloud dissolved, or a week later when the Emperor declared Japan a surrendered nation – rattles even the most staid opinions of that morning: the vicious firestorm, a conflagration that consumed 90% of Hiroshima’s buildings; everywhere the miniaturized roasting corpses; infants in the arms of dying mothers; wives struggling to rescue trapped family members; mothers gripping their dead children; a group of schoolboys huddling together, awaiting death, some in tattered school uniforms, others with nothing but their wax-like skin peeling off their bodies; the burnt off crumbling granite faces; a man holding his eyeball, expelled by the sudden change in atmospheric pressure; the scorched imprint of a man sitting on cement steps, the man instantly vaporized leaving behind only his nuclear shadow; the scent of burning bodies; later, the blood, pus, urine, feces, flies and maggots. These are the images I have averted my gaze to.
It’s difficult after being confronted by these images to determine what is more surprising, the resolve of the attack’s survivors, or the depth and direction of their compassion. Hiroshima’s open wound would begin healing almost immediately after its destruction. With the open funeral pyres of their fellow citizens still burning, the survivors - hikakusha - dazed, dejected, defenseless, began the remarkable process of turning their scorched land and bodies into vibrant symbols of peace. This spirit is astonishing to the point of disbelief. Embodied in the Hiroshima survivors is the resolve to never allow another human being to endure the suffering felt “that day.”
Historians are still baffled by the amicable relationship that emerged between the people of Japan and America following the war. The common pejorative used by the Japanese during the war was something equivalent to “white devil.” To us, the “Japs” were slant-eyed barbarians, capable of the most gruesome of atrocities. In attempt to induce more enthusiastic participation in the war, governments took sweeping control of daily life. Using newspaper, radio, and other mass media, they rallied nations behind the righteousness of their causes while inciting hatred of the enemy by accusing them of inhuman injustices. We demonized them and, in turn, were made into monsters ourselves. We were convinced they would fight to the bitter end, down to the last bloodstained bamboo spear. We both found, and were equally astonished that the Japanese and American people desired peace. Nothing exemplifies that striking change of attitude better than the people of Hiroshima. Their fight for peace transcended national boundaries and ideologies. Their arguments are in defense of one humanity.
Of course, neither Auschwitz nor the genocide of Nan king was simply libelous propaganda. Those atrocities were real; to forget them would mean the failure to learn one of World War II’s most precious lessons. Our heroic parlance speaks of “casualties”, but in real terms they are citizens. The Jewish Pole in a Nazi concentration camp, the Chinese fisherman in Nan king at the time of Japan’s occupation, the Japanese lawyer burned alive by indiscriminate fire bombings over Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe: these are innocent victims. Who do we blame for their deaths? Is it as simple as asking who fired the shot, whose hands held the bayonet, who watched the “prisoners” inhale the poison gas? Hiroshima’s phoenix spirit has an answer for us, by no means simple or easily accomplished, but the only answer yet to be tested.
The people of Hiroshima turned their anger directly towards the cause of their great suffering, the cause as they collectively viewed it. Surprisingly this didn’t mean undermining America’s sincere attempt to help rebuild an independent Japan, but became a deep-rooted aversion to militarism. Blame was laid on their own reckless military leaders. Most sympathized with the emperor, and argued that war-mad admirals had duped him and stifled his voice. They adopted a sincere desire for peace, and united to eschew forever the suffering caused by war.
This doesn’t mean the Peace Movement that emerged after the bombing let America off the hook, however. In fact, America is the target of some of its harshest criticisms. These aren’t cheap shots of residual anger, but are based on the logical view that America, in harboring vast nuclear arsenals and continuing to develop nuclear weapons, is an enemy of true world peace. The existence of a nuclear weapon is a tangible threat to our own existence, in the eyes of Hiroshima survivors. When, they ask in unison, has forcing an ideology upon another country by violent means ever been successful?
Equable peace will only have a chance after it is first considered a goal. Victory at all costs will win us only that. The complete eradication of nuclear weapons is still beyond comprehension to most people and therefore beyond everyone’s grasp. “And leave ourselves defenseless?” we scream. “These weapons are a deterrent to war.”
The fallacy behind this argument is obvious, painfully so, to the people of Hiroshima. Far from preventing nuclear war, the possession of nuclear weapons actually foments nuclear arms competition and leads to nuclear proliferation. The impetus of the atomic bombing convinced the people of Hiroshima that “the human race and nuclear weapons cannot coexist indefinitely.” As long as nuclear weapons exist the danger of nuclear warfare exists as well.
The use of the atom bomb brought an end to a bitter and agonizing war. But, the cost of that victory was our collective naïve idealism. The peace we discovered through the use of the bomb was equally expensive and precarious. As a people, we have begun to accept that the ends justify the means. Its use may have hastened victory – by days or weeks perhaps – but it has lost our principal moral position. By failing to distinguish between our enemy and enemy civilians we may have defeated any chance of true peace. Failing to question the concept of war with vengeance, war at any cost, we have unleashed limitless, uncontrollable war, for which we have since found ourselves the victims of.
