On this very rainy Wednesday, we took the bullet train from Kyoto to Hiroshima. After so many years of exposure to the documenatries, images, and reflections on the detonation that killed over 140,000, I was still unprepared for the impact of the site and city. In the intervening years, Hiroshima has rebuilt and regrown into a vibrant metropolis. In the hustle of 5th avenue-type stores and the rush of shinkansen bullet trains, it would be easy to flit past the innocuous looking park with one ruined civic building. The full impact of where you are however comes when you see the overlay photo of the site: Nearly everything is flat. Burned. There are no corpses in the picture because this close to the detonation, temperatures briefly reached 1 million degrees celcius. The bodies, the buildings, the bridges, were vaporized. A little further away, the heat was so intense as to melt 1 inch thick ceramic roof tiles and fuse stacks of porcelain cups and saucers together. It is a little overwhelming.
The hardest part of the trip today was in the museum which deliberately pulls no punches about the effect of the blast. Without casting aspersions and with a very balanced understanding of the geo-political situations that were weighed in the decision, the displays of children’s photographs being held by burnt and dying parents searching for their sons or daughters are simply harrowing. Stopping half way through the museum I had to turn off the audio and just weep for the loss.
While Hiroshima is by far the emblem and icon of modern destruction, the horrors depicted here and the human cost are no different in any place where warfare prevails. So called “smart bombs” and “predator drones” mutilate and burn just as badly. Nuclear weapons are the peak of our “warring madness” but we have devised so many ways to kill, it boggles the mind we survive at all. In one section of the museum, pictures of many heads of state are shown laying wreaths at the memorial. Did they go through the artifacts and films of the surviors before hand? It ought to be required for anyone commanding an army to see victims up close and personal. No number or statistic will ever equal the impact of an 11 yr old son searching for the bones of his relatives as radioactive rain falls on his burns. If you are going to lay a wreath for peace, you should know the deep and irreversible consequence of war, the misery and human suffering that inevitably follows.
I know (and many of the museum displays describe) the complex reasons for dropping the bomb. Many, if not most of the Japanese I spoke with, agreed that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably helped end a fruitless war and may have saved hundred’s of thousands from dying if the US had made a land invasion. That was certainly Truman’s position. Japan was a fascist military state at that time and many civilians were essentially enslaved to support the war effort. Many of them were tremendously relieved to have the military surrender power. Breaking the back of the Japanese war machine, however, only accelerated the building of one in the US. Which prompted the Soviet Union to escalate their efforts, etc, etc, as nation after nation jumped on the nuclear bandwagon.
The real lesson here is that people of every faith and no faith must work tirelessly, relentlessly, even desparately for the day when nations shall not know the need to incinerate each other’s children, or orphan another generation. The memorials filled with thousands of paper cranes remind us that peace takes work: long work, delicate work, hard work. While one can feel helpless in the face of such horror, their is hope and there are things that are making a differnence. Every mayor of Hiroshima since the war has sent a telegram of protest every time any nation anywhere in the world tests a nuclear weapon. When national governments were loathe to join disarmament agreements, they solicited local mayors and cities to join in condemnations, and to proclaim themselves “Mayors for Peace” or “Nuclear Free Zones.” And they have agreed not to cover up the devastation here, but to keep part of it open and raw in order that we never forget the horrible cost of having had to go to war. It isn’t about whose fault it is. It’s about how not to have fault in the first place.
In this park is a 6′ tall peace bell. I rang that today thinking of my church family so far away, and of our own peace bell that we ring each Sunday. Our bell will never sound the same to me after today. I will forever hear the hope of millions ringing through the prayers that we offer when we ring it. I will forever remember those who have seen destruction and dedicated themselves to rebirth and reconciliation. I will remember the cranes of a small girl, and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, a small group of commited people can fill once barren battlefields with a green park, growing peace as tall as the trees. As with sites of war, so with human hearts, I hope and pray.
With peace, for peace, in peace,
–Rev. Kent, Kyoto, Japan
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