Hiroshima Discomforts
Trip Start
Unknown
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16
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Trip End
Ongoing
Hiroshima,
Japan
Saturday, February 2, 2008
The weather sucked. It was cold and wet and too close to England. A bright eyed little old lady called H waved enthusiastically from beyond the automated ticket gates. H had spent some time near Oxford where she bettered her English. The softly spoken lady sighed over her 30-year old unmarried daughters. It is hard to meet nice boys when you finish work at midnight she lamented.
H's parents were hibakusha, A-bomb survivors. Their restaurant had been close to the hypocenter and was flattened along with some customers. Her father had been in the suburbs and mother in the red cross building. Though burnt the mother survived. Both parents eventually passed away from cancers H felt were related to radiation exposure.
We toured the Peace Park in pouring rain. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial more famously known as the A Bomb Dome was the closest building to the hypocenter to remain standing. It was only 150m away and has been preserved in its post bomb state as a reminder of the devastation. We photographed the memorial to the unnamed dead, a burial mound containing the bodies of 17,000 unidentified bodies. Apparently there are still a great many missing assumed vapourised. One memorial was festooned with paper cranes. This Children's Peace Memorial was erected in remembrance of Sadako Sasaki who developed leukaemia post radiation exposure. She folded 1004 paper cranes believing that her wish for a cure would come true if she managed 1000. Sadly her faith was not substantiated. Today others fold cranes in her memory and in the name of peace. I did not expect to see a memorial to Korean workers. Many had entered forced labour after the Japanese occupation of Korea and were working in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. The Memorial Cenotaph and Peace Flame all lie in a visual line to the A Bomb Dome. On a bleak day the greyness of the cenotaph merged with the sky. It was a relief to get to the museum out of the driving rain. It would answer some questions and raise yet more for me.
After a long period of self imposed isolation during the Edo period, Japan embraced modernisation which at the time equated to westernisation. It adopted western dress and studied the sciences. Significantly Japan in the early 20th Century identified with Germany and Italy, all 3 being primarily military states. If Hitler was going to try to take over Europe then Japan was not going to be left out and would do the same in the Far East.
Hence Hiroshima in the few years before the bomb was one big military facility. Perhaps the whole of Japan was in similar conditions as housewives were given basic military training and children grew vegetables for the war effort instead of going to school. Naval campaigns against China and Korea were launched from Hiroshima. Around the city buildings were being demolished strategically to create fire breaks.
In Europe, as the science and engineering that grew the bomb matured the tide of war had already turned against Germany. Perhaps GB was not too keen on testing the bomb so close to home. America was looking of a way to end the war quickly to reduce the human and financial cost. With the Russian cold war brewing it also needed a decisive demonstration of its might. There was also more then a little scientific curiosity at the effects of such a weapon deployed in a live situaiton. A great deal of premeditation went into selecting cities. They had to have a 3km urban area for one thing. Topography was important as was the absence of POW camps. Kyoto, Kobe and Nagasaki were all on the potential hit list and America avoided air bombing those cities. In the end it was clear skies on the 6th August 1945 that sealed Hiroshima's fate.
The aftermath of the bombing is documented in more detail by better and more learned individuals than I. There is no denying that the aftermath of the bomb was apocalyptic devastation. The human suffering caused was great. Perhaps this is where the museum disappointed me. The sentimentalisation of victims seemed inappropriate. The use of mannequins made up to look burnt amidst a few scattered bricks could never hope to give a true impresssion of the human cost.
What sat uncomfortably with me was the lack of wider context. Whilst the bomb did kill a great many people in a new and at the time novel way, a great many more than were killed at Hiroshima were slaughered by the Japanese in China and South East Asia. Then H said something that made me heave. She said " I wonder if Japan had won the (second) war against China then perhaps none of this would have happened". That's like wishing Hitler had won the war. The Japanese were not known for their beneficience in WW2. Horror stories are still told about their occupation of Malaysia and China.
The Japanese, H said, did not blame the Americans. I cannot claim to fully understand what she means but in creating the Peace Park, maintaining a steadfast stance against nuclear weapons and having an understanding of the perpetrators perhaps it is the Japanese way to come to terms all that happened in the war.
