Hiroshima Hope
The afternoon heat was borderline unbearable. I grew up in Utah, on the edges of a desert, but humidity brought something new to the equation. I was sweating like I had never lost any moisture and I was climbing bus steps. Since I met with up with the Oleander Initiative group a few days earlier, everything has seemed as a dream. Each day was bright, hot, and full. Each night was sweltering with me huddled under the air conditioning vent. It was easy to set aside the foreign nature of Japan when I was on my own wandering, largely silent, through Tokyo, but now with a group there were others to think of and as a person with a naturally good sense of direction, I tried to help. The dream like state was to continue.
This particular morning, we visited a local elementary school and met with students. They did a peace presentation and gave us candy. What I remember most was visiting the hibakusha trees in between the school, an apartment complex, and a road. The tree was massive, but the roots were completely missing on the side facing the bomb’s path. The other side was deeply rooted with huge, grasping branches going out five to ten feet. It was astounding to me that a tree, particularly one this huge, could have withstood an atomic blast. Unfortunately, after just a few minutes it was time to go. I could have stood under that tree for hours.
On the bus to ANT, I had no idea what was next. I knew ANT is a non-profit NGO that helps teach about the bombings. I knew that there would be lunch. I watched the rebuilt Hiroshima Castle pass by my window. At ANT we climbed a few flights of stairs, my giant frame proving to be difficult for the small stairwells. I climbed and entered a smallish room for our group. The room was already buzzing with activity when I sat down next to my new friends in the group. We looked at the candy strewn across the table. Then the smells started rolling in. Around two walls of the room a group of volunteers, mostly elderly women, had cooked and set up a buffet. Curries, rice, vegetables were all lined up, ready to be shared with the guests.
Slowly, everyone got up and were served. I stood in the line, and as an American used to do-it-yourself buffets, was ready to serve myself. However, a smaller elderly woman was spooning servings of Japanese style curry. As I approached her and graciously handed her my plate, she looked my 6’8” frame up and down and quickly gave me a double portion of the curry. I squeezed out a few gracious phrases in broken Japanese/English, smiled, and moved. She smiled back at me with one of the happiest sets of eyes that I have ever seen.
I made my way through the buffet and filled the rest of my plate sitting down with my friends at my table. I was nervous already being in a new country and being a boisterous man by nature, American to boot, I was trying to be cautious and respectful. However, a few of my companions from a variety of countries, thankfully, made me feel like a part of a little family. We ate together like we had always know each other, passing jokes and candy down the rows despite the heat and our fatigue.
It is important to note an important detail here: there was a camera crew from NHK following our group. The day before I got on the plane to Tokyo, I was in Toronto on a layover and I got an email from our group leader. He had organized with NHK to do a mini-documentary about our group and they wanted me to be a part of it. I have a funny reaction to questions like this. First, I just go for it and say of course that I would be pleased to help with this and what do you need me to do. Afterwards I usually start to understand the implications of what I just agreed to do. I would be filmed during this trip visiting the sites of two of the most horrific events in human history. Although it would not settle in for a few days, I felt vaguely uneasy about it, but I would still not back out. They asked and I would help in the ways that I could.
As lunch wound down, the camera crew shifted and started filming. The presentation would be two things. At first it was just the basics about ANT, the group that organized this event, but it quickly shifted. Our group would hear from a hibakusha, or survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. Our translator walked up to the stage with the hibakusha: the little elderly lady who served me a double portion of curry. The cameras started to circle in and despite it being a documentary about the group, I was quickly the only one being filmed other than the hibakusha. I ignored the cameras and focused in on her story.
She was a teenager, not much older than the students that I teach. During the war, she explained, she decided that she wanted to be a nurse. So she started helping at a local hospital in Hiroshima. The hospital was a hulking building made of concrete and steel with walls around three feet thick to help with heat reduction. She was assigned to help with the soldiers who came back from the front. It was difficult work, but she enjoyed it. At the time, Hiroshima was a civilian town with very few military targets, but she, like the rest of the city, was used to military planes, mostly US, flying over their city. It was normal to hear planes flying overhead, but it was difficult to see them as they were usually above the cloud line. However, this morning, on her way inside, she could see the plane as well. She thought nothing of it and continued inside. While she was stepping through the three feet of concrete doorway, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
She was saved by those three feet of concrete, but dozens inside the hospital were not. So, as a young teenager she ran in and started dragging soldiers out from the hospital. Some were screaming from pain due to burns or preexisting wounds, but the higher she went in the hospital the worse it got. A lot of the soldiers cried for water, as one of the side affects of a nuclear blast is a deep desire for hydration. One of the last men she dragged out was so heavy. It must be because I have already carried so many out. Instead once she took him downstairs, she found that he was so heavy because this back had fused to his mattress due to the heat: she had carried the man and his mattress out to safety.
At this point in the story, I felt hot. She is staring right at me and I have a camera doing a profile shot of my face. I want to cry so badly, but I am trying to hold it together. Even now I tear up at her bravery and courage that morning when my government dropped a bomb on her. On her community. On her family. I think of Jacob Beser, the only man to be on both flights. I think of the nuclear waste in Utah and how it will be there for as close to forever as I can understand. It is all too much.
After the war, the American GIs moved into Hiroshima, as was the case with most major Japanese cities to this day. Nowadays if you see an American in Hiroshima they are most likely to be a tourist visiting the Sadako Monument or the Peace Museum. In the late 1940s-1960s, most Americans were white, male, and wearing a military uniform. She explained that she was rightfully terrified of all Americans for many years. If one of the GIs came up to her on the street asking for directions, she emptied her pockets of whatever money or anything of value that she had and gave it to them. She lost a lot during that period, but she was also a miracle.
Hiroshima was the first time that in recorded history that a nuclear weapon was dropped on a populated city. Scientists did not fully know what would happen to human beings and hibakusha, even if they had just brief contact with ground zero, were and are monitored. To this day, they are considered a protected class under Japanese law. She was no different; she was monitored and was quickly told that she would not be able to have children. However, she beat the odds and on the stage with her that day were her daughter and granddaughter who helped to organize ANT and the event. All three women embraced and cried explaining their happiness at being able to share the message of peace and love above the darkness and hatred of the bombing.
After the session was over, I wanted to say thank you, but I did not know if I would be accepted. Honestly, I didn’t know how to say thank you for their story. It was all too much. I felt that odd clash of shame and sadness mixed with hope and empathy. Shame for what my country did to this woman and her city. Sadness at the lives lost, but also for the lives that had to change completely after the bombing. Hope that it would not happen again. So, I approached her. Our translator, graciously, offered to translate for me, but I had a difficult time finding the words. Here I was a huge, sweating, crying white American man trying to find words that could bridge the pain and help her understand the shame that I felt for what we did.
In the end, she spoke first. Our translator listened and said to me, “She says, ‘I used to be afraid of Americans, but not anymore.’” With that she hugged me deep and long. Like a grandmother giving you a much needed hug after failing. She pulled me in and buried me in that moment. It was not forgiveness but it was kindness. Once she pulled away, she smiled at me and I said thank you for everything. I honestly can’t remember much after that hug. I remember one of the group’s sponsors joking with me about the cameras and how difficult it must have been. I just remember wanting to find a place to be quiet and still and alone. I wanted to take in that moment for as long as I could.
I still do.
It wasn’t the first time that I felt the entirety of history’s guilt on me, nor the last, but it was the one that taught me the most. We are the descendants of the actions of our country. Those actions whether a nuclear weapon, plague blankets, or police brutality follow us wherever we go. It is a not an accusation or a judgment, at least it shouldn’t be. It is a reminder. A reminder to do better. To fess up when you are insensitive. To call out injustice when you see it. To disavow the behaviors, even done by your government in your name, that disagree with common sense and decency.
Does that mean that you will get it right every time? Absolutely not. You will say or do something that makes someone feel belittled or angry. Intent might not factor into the judgement set against you, but what you do with the anger addressed at you does matter. Can you learn from it? Are you going to add to the feedback loop of institutionalized hatred? Or are you going to address their feelings and try to understand? It is such a difficult thing to do, but it can change the world.
Still to this day, I can’t watch the documentary produced by NHK about that trip. I know from my wife that I feature heavily and that it was a very positive production, but I just cannot relive that moment with too much detail. Every day, every single day, I reflect on that moment and it helps me to be a better, more responsive teacher. That in and of itself is the power of being vulnerable and open to understanding the history of our country in its starkest contrasts.
