It was my first year in Japan—1990—and I knew I wanted to be in Hiroshima on August 6. That date was the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing, and as an American I wanted to make my own amends by joining the memorial observance held every year at the Peace Memorial Museum. Arriving on a sweltering morning, I walked among the thousands of survivors (hibakusha), family members and peace advocates, feeling very self-conscious. How would I be viewed by those who had suffered so much at my country’s hands? I remember attracting very little notice, however, as people were there for their own reasons—for the moment of silence (at 8:15 a.m., the time when the bomb struck), the casting of lighted lanterns on the water, the museum exhibits, the speeches.
In 2010, a few months before I left Japan to return to the US, I visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, which was devastated three days after Hiroshima. I took these pictures then, both showing paper cranes, a now-international symbol of peace.
This year, as Hiroshima prepared for the 70th anniversary of the bombing, a BBC reporter approached Jamal Maddox, an Princeton University student, who had toured the museum and talked with a survivor. The reporter asked him this question: Has this experience changed your opinion of the US decision to use the bomb? The student thought for awhile and then answered: "I think we as a society need to revisit this point in history and ask ourselves how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities. I think that's what's really necessary if we are going to really make sense of what happened on that day."
To make sense of what happened....Today as I read stories on the commemoration, I came across this National Public Radio story: “70 years after atomic bombs Japan still struggles with wartime past”. I wondered why it seems the losers of wars tend to struggle with the past, while the winners tend to leave it all behind, except among pockets of remembrance—veterans’ groups, historians, those with a strong connection to the suffering.
Like nearly all children growing up in post-war America, I absorbed the standard rationale for the dropping of the atomic bombs: the bombings were tragic but unavoidable because they shortened the war. Japan formally surrendered the same month. But I also absorbed the seeds of doubt. I remember my father, always skeptical of the actions of politicians but an admirer of President Truman (who authorized the bombing) saying, “But he should never have dropped that bomb”. Clearly Dad remembered the news reports of the time, of the bombing itself and the effects of a new disease: radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands died in the blasts and in the following years.
Yet, like my family, most Americans were probably happy to put the war behind them and get on with building new lives. As a child and teenager, I don’t think I thought much about WWII; it seemed like ancient history—as did all events occurring before my birth. College didn’t help much with my understanding of WW2, as we were then embroiled in a new war in Vietnam. Later, as I came to appreciate history and the importance of remembering the past, I learned more about the the US role in WWII, about the heroism (such as liberation of concentration camps in Germany) and also the acts that would be considered war crimes had we lost the war.
A few years after my Hiroshima visit, I saw how remembering depends very much on who is doing it. For the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2, the prestigious Smithsonian Institution created an exhibit of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Veterans groups and historians clashed over differing interpretations of the war and the bombings. The show was taken down and a less controversial exhibit ensued, but in early 1995 that one also closed after more protests about self-censorship and the lack of context.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum really impressed me. First of all, I had never been in a museum exploring the context of war as well as functioning as a memorial. This one focused on Japan’s imperialist actions leading up to the war as well as what happened to the country during the war. There were state-of-the-art videos as well as simple, yet powerfully touching, paintings done by child victims. The museum has expanded in the past 20 years and there is more to see and reflect on. Did I think then as I do now, that a part of healing is remembering, sharing stories, taking responsibility for one’s actions?
Today in Japan the average age of the bombing survivors is 80, and people are looking at ways to keep alive their stories and their strong beliefs in peace. A Washington Post story describes the Memory Keepers (denshosha). Through this 3-year-old project, younger people volunteer to learn the stories of a survivor, agreeing to share those stories at events where they can. This year in Hiroshima there was the unveiling of a large public art project, a composite of the work of a thousand young artists. A 5-minute video of this year’s memorial celebration from NHK World News shows the result and is worth a view.
While the mainstream American view of the bombings (“tragic but necessary”) lives on,
historians have challenged it. One of them is Greg Herken, an emeritus professor of US diplomatic history at the University of California. He cites—and then explains—what he calls “five myths about the bombing”: 1. The bomb ended the war. 2. The bomb saved half a million American lives. 3. The only alternative was an invasion of Japan. 4. The Japanese were warned beforehand. 5. The bomb was a “master card” in the early cold war against Russia. Read Herken’s analysis here.
Herken's arguments make sense to me, though I have no illusions they'll go mainstream anytime soon. Nevertheless, I believe that we—meaning winners as well as losers—would still do well to “struggle with our war past”, to use memory as part of healing and taking responsibility, and of answering young Jamal Maddox’s challenge: to reflect on “how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities.” That’s a moral dilemma that speaks to the future and the present as well as the past.
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