#OneWeekTillHiroshima
(A reprint of a Facebook series…)
Two years ago, I made a week-long Facebook series that chronicled my thoughts on the 73rd anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima. As I transfer much of my personal writing to the Medium platform, I wanted to archive this series here. Some thoughts have matured and become more nuanced in two years. (For more of that, see my previous piece https://medium.com/@jamesgyamakawa/solidarity-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-dbf583b973a3)
Otherwise, read on…
Day 1 of
#OneWeekTillHiroshima
I am hāfu, literally “half” in Japanese.
The other half is clearly “white” euro-american. (Irish, French and German on my mom’s side)
When considering that fate has led me into anti-racism activism, I wonder how much each half-of-me informs the other and what I choose to do.
Yesterday, I posted a link detailing the intersection of Japanese-American and African-American history. A good friend texted me excitedly after seeing the link that one of the black activists in a picture with a Japanese activist was her husband’s father. I showed my wife this, and we were both amazed at how these things work out.
It’s heartening to know that there is a history of Japanese Americans doing the right thing. Thinking in particular of Yuri Kochiyama (here’s that Blue Scholars song ⬇️)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcm7VbFCXno
But I know that between the whole issue of Asian-Americans being used and using the “model-minority” myth against black Americans and Japan’s own history of racist beliefs and actions as an Imperial colonizing power for quite a long time: just ask the Koreans
https://www.google.com/…/comfort-women-japan-military-broth…
Or the Chinese, the Filipinos, not to mention the Ainu and Okinawans.
⬇️ article on the Shakespeare production of “Ainu Othello” ⬇️
https://mainichi.jp/eng…/articles/20180606/…/00m/0et/019000c
I haven’t always known about the history of Racism in Japan, but I recall going on picnics with a Filipino family growing up, and distinctly recall my friends Alex and Dennis’ mom remarking how the Japanese had invaded.
I was in middle school, so I was just like, “Uhm, okaaaay…”
But in similar ways to how “white” people in America are willfully blind to how “race” has been constructed around them, and how they are the beneficiaries of centuries of exploitation of black and brown people, apparently the Japanese also have a problem.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/…/…/face-reality-racism-japan/…
I guess this whole thing COULD take on the feel of a “woe-is-me” lament on how I can’t claim any part of me that isn’t racist somehow, but like anything involving race and ethnicity, it’s “complicated”.
The Japanese, in America and beyond were both victims of racism AND complicit. Atrocities committed against non-Japanese in Asia during imperial times and the victims of internment in America. Both sympathetic to the struggles of black America and somehow complicit in their dehumanization.
I guess that leaves me in the same position as I was in before, with a choice.
I am who I am, but I choose what I do with it.
It is 7 Days until the bomb drops on #Hiroshima…
Day 2 of #OneWeekTillHiroshima
One of my favorite authors is Shusaku Endo, as described in his Wikipedia entry as writing from the “rare perspective of a Japanese Roman Catholic”.
I went to Saint Joan of Ark Catholic School for 5 years. I still have a healthy respect for nuns in general. Don’t mess with them, for real.
Of the four books of his that I’ve read English translations for (Silence, The Samurai, Deep River, and Wonderful Fool) obviously Silence is his masterpiece, though I have a particular fondness for all of them for different reasons.
The Samurai is my favorite, mostly because I have a particular inclination for historical novels. It tells the story of an Edo period samurai official sent as an emissary to Europe, and who along the way is convinced of the necessity of converting to Christianity to make his mission a success, which he does out of pragmatism if nothing else.
When he eventually returns and finds that an official ban has been placed on Christianity being practiced (the main theme of “silence”), he is persecuted and eventually led to his death, even though his conversion was not meant in sincerity, he begins to understand the appeal of the faith.
In Dan Carlin — Hardcore History’s podcast episode “Supernova in the East” (thanks Dan O’Hare for turning me onto this one) he goes into a 4 hour long historical monologue about why Japan is Japanese in historical terms, and I have to say makes some pretty insightful observations. Probably the best being that what other cultures do, Japan can take and make distinctly “Japanese”. He uses the word “intense” a lot when describing Japanese culture, and I can dig that. Especially because he starts it all with a discussion surrounding Hiroo Onoda, whose book “no surrender” sits on my bookshelf.
https://www.amazon.com/No-Surrender-My-Thirty-…/…/1557506639
He also talks about something that I hadn’t considered before recent months, that although Japan became a colonial power, it was also a successful resistor of being colonized in return (it took useful Ideas for its own use, but refuted being a victory for the “white” colonial empires of the day.)
This resistance is seen, in a way, in the general Japanese resistance to Christianity. I can’t recall what the official ban on westerners and particularly Christian missionaries was called, but the Japanese Christians who went into hiding were known as “Kakure Kirishitan”, lit. “hidden Christians”…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakure_Kirishitan
An inquisitor in Endo’s novel “Silence” tells the main character Father Rodriguez that Christianity, and along with it Western Culture, could never take root in Japan, because it is a “mudswamp”. Throw Christian seed on Japanese soil, and it becomes Japanese. Throw western ideas on Japanese people, they become Japanese.
So Japan, rather than being colonized, becomes the colonizer.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” based on the book by JG Ballard.
It takes place during the Japanese occupation of China, and tells the story of a young British boy separated from his parents in the chaos of the war and his coming of age.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WvjqLDTllxQ
For one, I can’t listen to the welsh lullaby “Suo Gan” without tearing up a little (okay, a lot). But the movies theme of “loss of innocence”, and the connection with wanting to understand the connections between my European-American and Japanese heritage collide here. Plus, while it shows atrocities committed by the Japanese, it also rehumanizes them as being victims of war and dehumanization, and in a sense of colonialism in general (would Japan have embarked on this path of empire had it not been for the threat of western powers?) And though the decision to use the atomic bomb (twice) on civilians in Japan was as complicated a decision as any (as a warning to Russia, as a method of saving American lives) but part of me can’t help but see it as both morbid curiosity as to the effects of the bomb on people and place, but also as an act of vengeance, to punish Japan (for pushing back against white colonial powers)
Just a feeling.
One of the scenes that has stuck with me is when the main character Jamie (yeah, that too) witnesses the flash of the Atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima… from China. I’m not sure if that’s even possible but cinematically it’s powerful imagery. He thinks (for a brief time) that it’s the soul of another character going up to heaven.
From an early age, I’ve been connecting “the bomb” with my father-culture. Obviously Japan is more than Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), but it’s inextricably tied to my understanding of it.
And yes, it remains complicated.
So I wait… and it is 6 days until the bomb is dropped on #Hiroshima.
Day 3 of #OneWeekTillHiroshima
I have never seen the original 1954 “Godzilla”. Apparently it is nothing like the dozens of movies that followed… (and sorry, Godzilla playing basketball with Charles Barkley isn’t an apt metaphor for nuclear war 😂)
https://m.ranker.com/…/godzilla-nuclear-w…/christopher-myers
I have found a university website that has the original along with subtitles in English (Subs > Dubs)
https://mediaspace.wisc.edu/me…/Gojira+%281954%29/0_77dat3bv
I’m looking forward to it, after I finish my latest round of old Shaw Brothers Kung Fu cinema watching. (Priorities)
Nuclear war and film has always been something I’ve been interested in. Growing up in the 80’s, I was mostly oblivious to how close we came to annihilation. I was only 3 years old when Stanislav Petrov saved all of our collective asses… not to mention that Able Archer happened the same year.
https://www.npr.org/…/stanislav-petrov-the-man-who-saved-th…
https://www.google.com/…/…/02/nato-war-game-nuclear-disaster
But looking back, nuclear war in film has always been terrifying to me.
Probably my first experience with this was the movie Wargames… you remember the one with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy hacking into NORAD’s computer system and almost causing the end of the world?
John Woods character Stephen Falken describing how he built his house just miles from a military base so that when (not if) nuclear war came, he would be killed instantaneously rather than potentially survive.
If you have a chance, download the game Defcon Everybody Dies. It’s basically Wargames for PC. Simple in design, complex in strategy, brutal in message.
I used to have fears of nightmares similar to the sequence in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (you know the one)
Or what about Miracle Mile in 1988, with Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQCj-Z1JWtc
Probably the scariest one I remember is the TV movie “The Day After”, which apparently was enough to get Ronald Raegan depressed as hell.
https://medium.com/…/this-tv-movie-about-nuclear-war-depres…
The movie “Threads” is similarly depressing, but from a British perspective and with a sort of docudrama feel that makes it all the more chilling…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s_s8CrRN76M
Other lesser known ones are equally thought-provoking… “Countdown to Looking Glass” (about a newsroom covering the leadup to WWIII) and “Special Bulletin” (newsroom covering scientists threatening nuclear terrorism)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=knSSUEdLcvg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZQsVNZ3SE
Or the HBO movie “By Dawn’s Early Light”, or the 1964 drama “Fail
Safe”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k4mkSCVZ0Ec
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HCsYaR3K89M
I think it’s too easy to ignore the terrifying-ness of nuclear weapons. As Gojira/Godzilla shows, it’s not just a bigger bomb. Tomorrow I think I’ll focus on depictions of the effects of “radiation sickness” (it’s seen in some of the movies above, though I neglected to include the haunting “Testament” in that list)
Have you heard of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru? You will tomorrow. Along with the single most haunting example of post-apocalyptic fiction I can recall.
The fact is, what Japan experienced in cataclysmic microcosm in 1945, the whole world could have easily experienced. And the fact remains that these weapons still exist. (Do you really trust Donald Trump with nuclear weapons? Do you trust the people around him?)
America is still the only country to have used these weapons in war. That’s a dubious preeminence to have, one we should not be proud of. In fact, we should be ashamed.
I’m in a weird place with this. The country of my birth did this to the country of my father. How am I supposed to feel about that?
I don’t know.
It is 5 days till the bomb drops on #Hiroshima.
Day 4 of #OneWeekTillHiroshima
Do you remember this animated film in the 1980’s called “The Snowman”?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE9KpobX9J8
It was based off a book by British artist/author Raymond Briggs. Probably best know for the above-mentioned snowman, he’s a masterful illustrator. But one of his works connects to where we are going this week leading up to Hiroshima.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Wind-Blows-Raymond…/…/0140094199
The graphic novel “When The Wind Blows” follows the last few days of Jim and Hilda Bloggs, characters Raymond Briggs had introduced in an earlier work called “Gentleman Jim”. The characters were based off of his parents.
And he kills them off.
It doesn’t happen quickly. The couple survives (initially) a nuclear war in Britain. Only to succumb to the effects of radiation sickness days later. It’s… brutal. While they try to keep a stiff-upper lip and hold onto some sense of optimism, their hair falls out, they suffer bouts of nausea and vomiting and bleeding, the color drains from their skin (and even their very surroundings). And as they grow weaker and weaker, we know what’s going to happen.
It was later made into an animated film with David Bowie singing the theme song. Both book and film are masterful, but I suggest reading it first.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/…/when-wind-blows-raymond-briggs-jim…
The scariest thing about nuclear war to me isn’t the bomb itself, it’s what happens AFTER the bomb. Yes, the weapons themselves when they explode are insanely destructive, almost unimaginably so… but the radioactive fallout that occurs post-detonation is where the horror really resides. This invisible radiation can go on killing you even if you survive the initial blast, even if you are nowhere near where the weapon went off. Whatever dirt, dust, particles of people and buildings that the explosion takes up into the air will eventually come down as radioactive rain/snow/ash.
That’s what happened to the “downwinders”
https://www.npr.org/…/the-downwinders-from-atomic-testing-g…
That’s what happened to the people of the Marshall Islands
https://www.google.com/…/02/bikini-atoll-nuclear-test-60-ye…
And that’s what happened to the crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru
Castle Bravo was one of a series of bomb tests that took place in the Marshall Islands (specifically Bikini Atoll, and yes, that’s where Spongebob Squarepants lives apparently).
While not the largest bomb ever to go off (that distinction goes to the Soviet’s Tsar Bomba) it was still the largest U.S. nuclear explosion ever committed.
15 megatons (it was supposed to be only 6, but you know, even scientists make mistakes)
That’s 1200 Times more powerful than the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs.
If you can ignore the dramatic music (maybe just mute the damn thing) ⬇️
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_9Gi7w19Y
Or this film taken from an observation plane, where all you can hear is the engine.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T2I66dHbSRA
This was a BIG bomb.
Apparently to this day, much of the islands in the area are still uninhabitable (castle bravo wasn’t the first, or only test in this area).
Many residents remain in exile
https://mashable.com/…/25/marshall-islands-nuclear-testing/…
The Castle Bravo test obliterated the coral of the Atoll where the test took place, this coral came down as radioactive fallout.
Which brings us back to the crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (№5 Lucky Dragon Ship)
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/…/general/lucky-dragons-leth…/…
They were officially outside the testing area for Castle Bravo, fishing for Tuna. What they (and the u.s. government didn’t know) was that the bomb was going to be twice as large as they expected.
So while they were fishing, they were covered in the radioactive fallout from Bikini Atoll.
From the linked article:⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
“Lucky Dragon wasn’t damaged by the blast or its shock wave, but several hours later white, radioactive dust from atomized coral that had surged up to the edge of the atmosphere in an enormous plume began raining down on the Lucky Dragon and all aboard.
As Oishi writes: “The top of the cloud spread over us. … Two hours passed. … white particles were falling on us, just like sleet. The white particles penetrated mercilessly — eyes, nose, ears, mouth. We had no sense that it was dangerous.”
While the fallout continued to rain down, the crew spent six hours pulling in the lines before setting course for home. By the same evening, crew members were starting to notice skin burns and other symptoms of radiation — symptoms that only worsened during the two-week voyage to Yaizu.
Later tests of the shi no hai (ashes of death) that fell on the ship found a toxic cocktail of radioactive isotopes, including strontium-90, cesium-137, selenium-141 and uranium-237.
The ship reached Yaizu on March 14. After a Geiger counter detected radiation at a distance of 30 meters, it was towed to a remote section of the port and put under police guard. The 23 crew were quarantined in a hospital outside the city. Their heads were shaved and their irradiated clothing and possessions were buried. In frantic efforts to track down the ship’s catch, Geiger counters were used at Tokyo’s Tsukiji and other fish markets, but at least two of the huge tuna were likely sold and eaten.
Afterward, the Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that 856 Japanese fishing vessels, with upward of 20,000 crew members were exposed to radiation from that test. The price of tuna plunged due to fears over radiation, and some 75 tons caught from March through December 1954 were found to be unfit for consumption and were destroyed.
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Many of the crew survived, but not all. Even surviving radiation sickness can still leave one open to developing cancer later in life. The boats chief radio operator was the first to die from complications resulting from exposure.
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In the summer of 1954, Aikichi Kuboyama, the Lucky Dragon’s chief radio operator, who was, at age 40, the oldest crew member, developed liver complications and went into a coma. On Sept. 23, he died at a Tokyo hospital, leaving a wife and three young daughters.
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Apparently you can still visit the boat, which is displayed in an exhibition hall in Tokyo:
On a plaque outside, is the “jisei” (dying wish) of Aikichi Kuboyama, the radio operator of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru
“Gensuibaku no higaisha wa, watashi wo saigo ni shite hoshii.” (“I pray that I am the last victim of an atomic or hydrogen bomb.”)
This was a decade after the end of the war, and Japan was still suffering the bomb.
It is 4 days till the bomb drops on #Hiroshima.
Day 5 of #OneWeekTillHiroshima
Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most heartbreaking movies, because you already know how it’s going to end.
Taking place in the last months of WWII and shortly afterwards, the story of a young boy named Seita and his little sister Setsuko. After their mother dies in the firebombing of Kobe, and their father, a Japanese sailor, presumed lost at sea, he becomes responsible for taking care of them both. As food becomes ever more difficult to find, the pair slowly starve to death.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible atrocities, but they weren’t the only large casualty events.
Imagine living in a densely populated city like Tokyo, with perhaps 100,000 people per square mile. Many houses were still built of stick and paper. Highly flammable tinderboxes which became a raging inferno when fire rained down from American bombers.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/…/deadly-wwii-u-s-firebombin…/…
From the article:
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“On March 10, 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo in the dead of night, dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm. A fifth of Tokyo was left a vast smoldering expanse of charred bodies and rubble.”
— —
“It was a blazing firestorm. I saw a baby catch fire on its mother’s back, and she couldn’t put out the fire. I saw a horse being led by its owner. The horse balked and the cargo on its back caught fire, then its tail, and it burned alive, as the owner just stood there and burned with it,” she said.”
— — -
“Kimura, a 7-year-old, escaped the flames as he was blown into the entrance of a big department store while running toward the Sumida River, where tens of thousands of people died: burned, crushed, drowned or suffocated in the firestorm.”
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Such was the sort of attack that left Seita and Setsuko homeless and orphaned in “Grave of the Fireflies”. The firebombing of Kobe left 8000 dead and almost 3/4 of a million people without homes. 7 square miles of the city was obliterated.
Though not meant specifically as an anti-war film, it functioned as such. It is hard to imagine such death and destruction being necessary, considering that life is so precious.
One particular scene in the film captures the sense of childhood lost that permeates the film. Living in an abandoned bomb shelter, Seita captures and releases a cloud of fireflies at night to provide light and solace to him and Setsuko. In the morning they are found dead, and Setsuko takes to burying them. Their life cut short as the two main characters will soon be.
Hundreds of planes and thousands of bombs were needed to turn Japanese cities into massive charnel houses during the firebombing campaigns of WWII (which also took place on the European front)
It only took one plane and one bomb to erase #Hiroshima.
In two days, that bomb will fall.
https://archive.org/details/GraveOfTheFireflies1988
Day 6 of #OneWeekTillHiroshima
There’s probably always going to be a debate whether it was necessary for the U.S. to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though recent polls show a shift in attitudes as time has passed.
https://www.google.com/…/70-years-after-hiroshima-…/%3famp=1
I understand on an intellectual level that, at the time, what is often considered an atrocity can seem less so. As I mentioned before (I hope I did at least) more civilians were killed during the firebombing raids of previous months than during the atomic raids, and death is still death. For many, atomic weaponry was just the natural escalation in a time of total war.
Justifications for their use include the saving of more civilian lives in the long run by not invading the Japanese home islands (as well as hastening the Pacific war’s end in other parts of east Asia, as well as sparing the lives of Allied soldiers. Other reasoning include the concern that the Japanese warrior culture would not allow them to surrender (though there were elements, including the emperor, who were open to the idea of surrender). Others were that it was meant more as a deterrent to The Soviet Union, demonstrating American technological superiority. (The Russians wouldn’t have their version of the Bomb for a few more years)
https://www.historyextra.com/…/was-the-us-justified-in-dro…/
Opposition to their use included a number of scientists involved in its development.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/…/leo-szilards-fight-stop-bo…
Leo Szilard would go on to say:
“Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?”
Criticism also included high-ranking military officials, including Generals Eisenhower and LeMay, as well as Admirals Nimitz and Halsey.
http://origins.osu.edu/hi…/hiroshima-military-voices-dissent
From that article:⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
Take, for example, Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Moreover, Leahy continued, “in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
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Allegedly from Curtis LeMay
As told through Former secretary of defense Robert McNamara in the documentary “The Fog of War”
“If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
But regardless of the opposition, the bombs were still used. In fact, probably the reason why Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as well as two other potential Japanese target cities) were spared the bombing campaigns of previous months, was that so the devastating effects of the Atomic Bombs could be viewed firsthand on untouched civilian population centers…
Regardless, death is death and violence is violence. Whether bomb or bullet, war or famine.
But seeing accounts and reading survivors testimony of what destruction was wrought by these weapons is probably the most damning criticism of their use. The bomb is both the same AND very, very different.
https://www.nytimes.com/…/hiroshima-justified-bombings-a-su…
That will be tomorrow. When the bomb is finally dropped on #Hiroshima.
