In honor of those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The first time I seriously participated in the formal memorializing of the Hiroshima Bombing day was in 1991 at the National Institute of Modern Languages (NIML), Islamabad. I had been selected that year to go to Japan for an exchange program with the Japanese Self Defense Forces. Before leaving for Japan, the Pakistan army had sent me to NIML for a course on Japanese language. It was during that time that our Japanese teachers celebrated the memory of Hiroshima victims in a day-long ceremony.
There were quite a few things that I learned that day: The Japanese approach to the Hiroshima bombing was deeply reflective and beyond a statement of victimhood, national pride, or the cult of revenge. Hiroshima, to them, had become a living symbol of the evils of war, especially the atomic war. As a soldier, this peaceful view of what to me seemed, at that time, the greatest human atrocity was quite perplexing. I was hoping to see some rage, some anger, some resentment. I did not see that. All I experienced that day was a display of a deeper understanding of war and a commitment to peace. And this view of war, I must admit, became the turning point in my own views as a professional soldier. The valorization of war and the Military so common in my own country suddenly became open to discussion and reflection.
It is believed that approximately 90,000–166,000 people died in the Bombing of Hiroshima and another 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki. The toll was even greater if one factors in the long-term residual effects of radiation. Suddenly, the world had been change: human beings had acquired the instant means of destroying other human beings; it was kind of killing that had an immediacy, it killed instantly, but also the capacity to kill long after the bombs had been dropped.
That this bombing was sold as just and the only means to end the war is an absurd idea, but that is what those who still keep manufacturing the rationales for the bombing rely on to blame the victims for the bombing. There is no need to waste time on changing their minds. But one can learn from Hiroshima and from japan. In my experience of living in Japan and having trained with their soldiers I gathered one important insight: The Japanese were the only nation that had learned from the war. The war made them rethink their nation and, a US mandated constitution notwithstanding, they defined the issues of nation and national pride differently. In my conversations with a Japanese veteran in the small town where I was training, I learned that this learning about war was not only a state-mandated policy, it had deep popular roots. Mr. Nakamura told me many stories of war, but one that has stayed with me is about the Japanese resilience and will to survive.
“After the war,” he said “very few buildings were left standing between Tokyo and Yokohama; we would scramble all day to find food. But then we put our heads down to build our nation, and thirty years later when we looked up, there was no rubble and rice was abundant.”
Mr. Nakamura, however, would never talk to me about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I never asked him a question about that. He had lost family members in the bombing, which he mentioned once, but was probably not ready to talk about the bombing. Maybe, the loss was too great or too fresh. Or maybe that is the Japanese way of grieving: to remember in silence and to slowly change a war-like culture to a peace-loving culture.
Mr. Nakamura died last year. A mutual friend informed me of his death. I had lost contact with him. But the lesson that he taught me in forgiveness and grace will always be a part of me. And on this day, in remembering the dead of Hiroshima, I hope that the world has more people like Mr. Nakamura and less like those who dropped the bombs.
(Source: masoodraja.com)