As I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
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60 years ago today, the United States dropped the atom bomb onto Hiroshima killing approximately 80,000 civilians outright, and tens of thousands people throughout the next few days, weeks, and years due to radiation related ailments. Three days later, the United States dropped the atomic bomb onto Nagasaki, killing 75,000 civilians outright, and many more over subsequent days, weeks, and years due to radiation related ailments.
Through my military career in Japan, I had the opportunity to go to both cities and view both memorial museums that serve to honor and remember those lost during those last days of World War II.
Usually during time off in new cities, my Marine friends and I would enjoy walking around the cities we were in, checking out the local restaurants and shops. Often times, the cities that we were in were basically indistinguishable from our hometowns in the United States, except that the signs were written in a language we couldn't understand, and the food was more “exotic,” whatever that means. Our eating habits consisted of opening up a menu that we could not read, and just pointing to something that looked interesting and was not too expensive. But our favorite thing to do on days off would be wander in and out of all of the Japanese shops that sold this, that, and everything in between.
But when we found out that we'd have the opportunity to go into Hiroshima and Nagasaki (on two separate occasions, a year apart from one another), we decided that we would not miss the opportunity to take in some of the cultural sites that were set up to honor and remember those who lost their lives on those horrific days. We knew, without explicitly saying it outright, that this was going to be a once in a lifetime experience, so we had better take in as much of it as humanly possible.
Most of the information I knew about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the point of view reported by a couple of paragraphs in a history book, or from the accounts that my grandparents told me when I would ask them questions about hearing the news of the dropping of the bombs on the radio; seeing the cities and museums up close and personal was almost like history literally coming alive before my eyes. All of the words that I read about the bombings throughout my entire life seemed unimportant and inconsequential as I passed each exhibit and its artifacts and pictures taken during that time period.
First were the pictures taken of both cities before the bombs were dropped. Both cities seemed pretty much like your typical Japanese cities of the time; either outright industrial or early-industrial, filled with Japanese civilians going about their daily lives during war time. Both cities were relatively untouched during the fire bombings that were taking place at the time; these campaigns had wiped out many of the other large cities in Japan, along with the hundreds of thousands of people that lived in those cities. I guess in the military commanders' eyes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the next logical targets. Picture after picture showed cities and lives already in progress, both totally unaware of the literal hell on earth that awaited them.
Seconds before getting to the exhibits that dealt with the actual explosion and its aftermath, both museums had recreations of the bombs that were dropped on their cities: "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. "Little Boy" was black and long, almost looking like every other bomb you've seen in pictures, but much larger. "Fat Man" was appropriately named, because it's a bowling ball of a bomb, black and round and about the size of a Volkswagen bus. Walking past the recreations of those bombs, I could scarcely believe that human beings were capable of creating such maniacal devices.
I often cite my reading of Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" as the moment in which my views on pacifism began to take root and grow, but as I write this now, I think it may have started the moment I saw the images and artifacts of those fateful mornings.
Both museums had wall size pictures of the atomic explosions over their cities. Those images seemed to be both huge and infinitely small at the same time, as if these mere pictures could begin to capture just how powerful and awful those explosions must have been. A picture speaks a thousand words, yet those pictures were speechless to me. They could not (how could they?) capture the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings of those days. I don't think we realize just how powerful those weapons were, and sadly, continue to be. The smallest particles of all matter bounced off one another until nuclear elements such as uranium (Little Boy) and plutonium (Fat Man) started the reaction that literally opened up the power of the sun onto these cities. The sky lit up brighter than the brightest star, while the earth rumbled as if the ground itself were going to open up and swallow the cities whole. And then came the fire and the heat waves, which demolished nearly everything in their path as if the fiery hand of the gods had willed it to be, until all that was left were burnt patches of earth.
One poor soul, who happened to be standing in front of a brick wall, had his shadow permanently burnt onto the wall's surface, leaving his shadow as the only evidence that this person ever existed. Clocks frozen at 8:16 and 11:02, displayed behind cold panes of glass, seemed to echo the ticks and tocks of the non-moving hands. Those who had sat down for breakfast or lunch found their food suddenly solid within the metal containers that had moments ago held rice and fish. A mother, with the pattern of her clothes branded into her skin, nursed her baby which didn't look human.
Each exhibit took my breath away, yet I felt I could not turn my head away, nor did I really want to. I felt a seemingly insurmountable amount of shame, that here I was, a United States Marine, walking through a museum that only exists because our two countries could not find a better way to solve their problems than by raining death upon each other. Here I was, a person trained in numerous ways to kill another human being, walking through a museum which showed man's destructive powers taken to a near infinite degree.
Yet, neither a judging eye, nor a feeling of condemnation was cast my way. Japanese people walked through this museum, side by side with representatives of the country that brought this monstrosity upon them, and were able to see that this act was brought about by forces greater than any of us could begin to comprehend, not by the individuals standing meters to either side of them. I wonder now if the tables had been turned, and Montgomery, Alabama had been nearly completely brushed off the face of the Earth, if my fellow countrymen would have been as magnanimous. God only knows.
As I walked through this exhibit, which by all accounts was the symbolic beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, my brother, unbeknownst to me, was preparing to walk through "Checkpoint Charlie" in Berlin. Here I was, a kid from the suburbs standing at the spot where the Cold War began, while my brother from the same suburban house stood in the place where the Cold War ended. You can't make this stuff up.
A solitary book awaited every person who left the Hiroshima exhibit hall. On the pages of this book, people were asked to write a testimonial sentence regarding what they had witnessed in the museum, or a summary of the thoughts that were without a doubt racing through their heads. I flipped through the pages to see what those who had come before me had written. A lot of it was written in Japanese. One person drew a peace sign. Some inconsiderate soul wrote a snide, sarcastic comment. Someone wrote “Never Again.” I wrote a simple "Amen," and made my way outside of the exhibit hall.
One of the things about living in Japan that never ceased to amaze me was the countless number of times that Japanese civilians would ask me and my fellow Marines to pose with them for photographs. As I left the Hiroshima exhibit hall, some Japanese school children asked me and a couple of my buddies to pose for photographs, and we gladly obliged. If I wasn't already completely blown away by the depth of the forgiveness that took place in this city and country, I was completely floored by being asked to take a photograph by children who were only about 2 generations removed from the terrible events that forever shaped their city. We all followed their lead and thew up our fingered peace signs.
A river gently flows next to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. As survivors struggled to come to grips with what had just happened in 1945, they fled into the contaminated river in hopes that their badly burnt skin would be soothed by the cool water. Many of the people that lost their lives that day, lost them in that water, contaminated by atomic fallout. The river continues to flow through the city, just as it had before the bomb, and just like it will when we're all long gone from here.
The museum is located within a few meters of ground zero, and only 200 meters from ground zero stands a hollow, blast-shaken building, now referred to as the A-Bomb dome, which serves as a daily reminder of what happened that day. The building's bricks are a rusty mix of red and brown, yet it is the jagged and broken dome on top of the structure that gives the building its most recognizable feature. Despite being a mere two hundred meters from ground zero, the building somehow managed to hold solid against the forces unleashed by the bomb. And I guess, just like the building is a symbol of what happened that day, it can also serve as a testament to how the people of Hiroshima bounced back and began anew. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now pretty fair-sized and modern cities, filled with tall buildings, bumper to bumper traffic, neon signs that stretch high into the night sky, and heavy amounts of pedestrian traffic. Life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had begun anew.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have numerous artistic representations of what happened that day, and in some ways, those artistic representations are just as powerful as the photographic images inside of the museum itself. Here's the description of "Children's Peace Monument," which was one of my favorite exhibits outside the Memorial Hall.
As taken from their website:
"One of the most popular monuments in Peace Memorial Park is the Children's Peace Monument, also known as the Tower of the Paper Cranes. This monument was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a vivacious young girl struck down by radiation aftereffects. Sadako, two at the time of the bombing, was one of many children who developed leukemia about ten years later. In the hospital she folded over a thousand paper cranes using medicine wrapping paper in the hope that doing so would cure her. She and her classmates continued bravely folding the cranes until the day she died-October 25,1955. Sadako's grieving classmates decided to build a monument in her honor. Their sincere passion led to a nationwide fundraising campaign to build a monument for her and the thousands of other children lost to the atomic bombing. With contributions from all over Japan, the monument was built and unveiled on May 5, 1958. On top of the concrete tower stands the bronze statue of a young girl holding over her head a huge paper crane symbolizing the hope of all children for a peaceful future.
In and around Peace Memorial Park stand numerous monuments to A-bomb victims. Each and every one of these monuments, beyond its specific purpose, embodies the common desire that nuclear weapons be abolished and world peace be realized."
Not far from the Children's Peace Monument is the Hiroshima Peace Bell, which contains a world map with no national boundaries drawn in. Both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums are focused towards the advancement of nuclear disarmament and of world peace. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know the pure horrors of war at a fundamental level, and sadly there are literally billions of people throughout human history who have seen the horrors of nation-state fighting from a similar vantage point. If ringing that peace bell would be a symbolic act of solidarity with those people, then ring it I would. Throughout the day, no matter where I was in the park, I could hear different people ringing that bell. Hearing the bell ring made me feel empowered by the realization that I wasn't the only person who believed in peaceful resolutions to global conflicts, but I couldn't help but feel saddened by the fact that world leaders who should be ringing that bell and witnessing the glorious resonance of that ring as it echoes through their body were nowhere to be found.
A few days after visiting the Hiroshima museum, as my friends and I waited in the bus for our military transport back to Okinawa, we heard some bells start to ring all over the city. At first we were confused as to what was going on, but then someone in the back of the bus said that they were signaling the exact moment that Hiroshima had been bombed, 53 years earlier. I was kind of hoping that it was another person ringing the peace bell, only this time it wasn't just one person, but an entire nation.
matt out
Through my military career in Japan, I had the opportunity to go to both cities and view both memorial museums that serve to honor and remember those lost during those last days of World War II.
Usually during time off in new cities, my Marine friends and I would enjoy walking around the cities we were in, checking out the local restaurants and shops. Often times, the cities that we were in were basically indistinguishable from our hometowns in the United States, except that the signs were written in a language we couldn't understand, and the food was more “exotic,” whatever that means. Our eating habits consisted of opening up a menu that we could not read, and just pointing to something that looked interesting and was not too expensive. But our favorite thing to do on days off would be wander in and out of all of the Japanese shops that sold this, that, and everything in between.
But when we found out that we'd have the opportunity to go into Hiroshima and Nagasaki (on two separate occasions, a year apart from one another), we decided that we would not miss the opportunity to take in some of the cultural sites that were set up to honor and remember those who lost their lives on those horrific days. We knew, without explicitly saying it outright, that this was going to be a once in a lifetime experience, so we had better take in as much of it as humanly possible.
Most of the information I knew about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the point of view reported by a couple of paragraphs in a history book, or from the accounts that my grandparents told me when I would ask them questions about hearing the news of the dropping of the bombs on the radio; seeing the cities and museums up close and personal was almost like history literally coming alive before my eyes. All of the words that I read about the bombings throughout my entire life seemed unimportant and inconsequential as I passed each exhibit and its artifacts and pictures taken during that time period.
First were the pictures taken of both cities before the bombs were dropped. Both cities seemed pretty much like your typical Japanese cities of the time; either outright industrial or early-industrial, filled with Japanese civilians going about their daily lives during war time. Both cities were relatively untouched during the fire bombings that were taking place at the time; these campaigns had wiped out many of the other large cities in Japan, along with the hundreds of thousands of people that lived in those cities. I guess in the military commanders' eyes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the next logical targets. Picture after picture showed cities and lives already in progress, both totally unaware of the literal hell on earth that awaited them.
Seconds before getting to the exhibits that dealt with the actual explosion and its aftermath, both museums had recreations of the bombs that were dropped on their cities: "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. "Little Boy" was black and long, almost looking like every other bomb you've seen in pictures, but much larger. "Fat Man" was appropriately named, because it's a bowling ball of a bomb, black and round and about the size of a Volkswagen bus. Walking past the recreations of those bombs, I could scarcely believe that human beings were capable of creating such maniacal devices.
I often cite my reading of Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" as the moment in which my views on pacifism began to take root and grow, but as I write this now, I think it may have started the moment I saw the images and artifacts of those fateful mornings.
Both museums had wall size pictures of the atomic explosions over their cities. Those images seemed to be both huge and infinitely small at the same time, as if these mere pictures could begin to capture just how powerful and awful those explosions must have been. A picture speaks a thousand words, yet those pictures were speechless to me. They could not (how could they?) capture the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings of those days. I don't think we realize just how powerful those weapons were, and sadly, continue to be. The smallest particles of all matter bounced off one another until nuclear elements such as uranium (Little Boy) and plutonium (Fat Man) started the reaction that literally opened up the power of the sun onto these cities. The sky lit up brighter than the brightest star, while the earth rumbled as if the ground itself were going to open up and swallow the cities whole. And then came the fire and the heat waves, which demolished nearly everything in their path as if the fiery hand of the gods had willed it to be, until all that was left were burnt patches of earth.
One poor soul, who happened to be standing in front of a brick wall, had his shadow permanently burnt onto the wall's surface, leaving his shadow as the only evidence that this person ever existed. Clocks frozen at 8:16 and 11:02, displayed behind cold panes of glass, seemed to echo the ticks and tocks of the non-moving hands. Those who had sat down for breakfast or lunch found their food suddenly solid within the metal containers that had moments ago held rice and fish. A mother, with the pattern of her clothes branded into her skin, nursed her baby which didn't look human.
Each exhibit took my breath away, yet I felt I could not turn my head away, nor did I really want to. I felt a seemingly insurmountable amount of shame, that here I was, a United States Marine, walking through a museum that only exists because our two countries could not find a better way to solve their problems than by raining death upon each other. Here I was, a person trained in numerous ways to kill another human being, walking through a museum which showed man's destructive powers taken to a near infinite degree.
Yet, neither a judging eye, nor a feeling of condemnation was cast my way. Japanese people walked through this museum, side by side with representatives of the country that brought this monstrosity upon them, and were able to see that this act was brought about by forces greater than any of us could begin to comprehend, not by the individuals standing meters to either side of them. I wonder now if the tables had been turned, and Montgomery, Alabama had been nearly completely brushed off the face of the Earth, if my fellow countrymen would have been as magnanimous. God only knows.
As I walked through this exhibit, which by all accounts was the symbolic beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, my brother, unbeknownst to me, was preparing to walk through "Checkpoint Charlie" in Berlin. Here I was, a kid from the suburbs standing at the spot where the Cold War began, while my brother from the same suburban house stood in the place where the Cold War ended. You can't make this stuff up.
A solitary book awaited every person who left the Hiroshima exhibit hall. On the pages of this book, people were asked to write a testimonial sentence regarding what they had witnessed in the museum, or a summary of the thoughts that were without a doubt racing through their heads. I flipped through the pages to see what those who had come before me had written. A lot of it was written in Japanese. One person drew a peace sign. Some inconsiderate soul wrote a snide, sarcastic comment. Someone wrote “Never Again.” I wrote a simple "Amen," and made my way outside of the exhibit hall.
One of the things about living in Japan that never ceased to amaze me was the countless number of times that Japanese civilians would ask me and my fellow Marines to pose with them for photographs. As I left the Hiroshima exhibit hall, some Japanese school children asked me and a couple of my buddies to pose for photographs, and we gladly obliged. If I wasn't already completely blown away by the depth of the forgiveness that took place in this city and country, I was completely floored by being asked to take a photograph by children who were only about 2 generations removed from the terrible events that forever shaped their city. We all followed their lead and thew up our fingered peace signs.
A river gently flows next to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. As survivors struggled to come to grips with what had just happened in 1945, they fled into the contaminated river in hopes that their badly burnt skin would be soothed by the cool water. Many of the people that lost their lives that day, lost them in that water, contaminated by atomic fallout. The river continues to flow through the city, just as it had before the bomb, and just like it will when we're all long gone from here.
The museum is located within a few meters of ground zero, and only 200 meters from ground zero stands a hollow, blast-shaken building, now referred to as the A-Bomb dome, which serves as a daily reminder of what happened that day. The building's bricks are a rusty mix of red and brown, yet it is the jagged and broken dome on top of the structure that gives the building its most recognizable feature. Despite being a mere two hundred meters from ground zero, the building somehow managed to hold solid against the forces unleashed by the bomb. And I guess, just like the building is a symbol of what happened that day, it can also serve as a testament to how the people of Hiroshima bounced back and began anew. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now pretty fair-sized and modern cities, filled with tall buildings, bumper to bumper traffic, neon signs that stretch high into the night sky, and heavy amounts of pedestrian traffic. Life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had begun anew.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have numerous artistic representations of what happened that day, and in some ways, those artistic representations are just as powerful as the photographic images inside of the museum itself. Here's the description of "Children's Peace Monument," which was one of my favorite exhibits outside the Memorial Hall.
As taken from their website:
"One of the most popular monuments in Peace Memorial Park is the Children's Peace Monument, also known as the Tower of the Paper Cranes. This monument was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a vivacious young girl struck down by radiation aftereffects. Sadako, two at the time of the bombing, was one of many children who developed leukemia about ten years later. In the hospital she folded over a thousand paper cranes using medicine wrapping paper in the hope that doing so would cure her. She and her classmates continued bravely folding the cranes until the day she died-October 25,1955. Sadako's grieving classmates decided to build a monument in her honor. Their sincere passion led to a nationwide fundraising campaign to build a monument for her and the thousands of other children lost to the atomic bombing. With contributions from all over Japan, the monument was built and unveiled on May 5, 1958. On top of the concrete tower stands the bronze statue of a young girl holding over her head a huge paper crane symbolizing the hope of all children for a peaceful future.
In and around Peace Memorial Park stand numerous monuments to A-bomb victims. Each and every one of these monuments, beyond its specific purpose, embodies the common desire that nuclear weapons be abolished and world peace be realized."
Not far from the Children's Peace Monument is the Hiroshima Peace Bell, which contains a world map with no national boundaries drawn in. Both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums are focused towards the advancement of nuclear disarmament and of world peace. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know the pure horrors of war at a fundamental level, and sadly there are literally billions of people throughout human history who have seen the horrors of nation-state fighting from a similar vantage point. If ringing that peace bell would be a symbolic act of solidarity with those people, then ring it I would. Throughout the day, no matter where I was in the park, I could hear different people ringing that bell. Hearing the bell ring made me feel empowered by the realization that I wasn't the only person who believed in peaceful resolutions to global conflicts, but I couldn't help but feel saddened by the fact that world leaders who should be ringing that bell and witnessing the glorious resonance of that ring as it echoes through their body were nowhere to be found.
A few days after visiting the Hiroshima museum, as my friends and I waited in the bus for our military transport back to Okinawa, we heard some bells start to ring all over the city. At first we were confused as to what was going on, but then someone in the back of the bus said that they were signaling the exact moment that Hiroshima had been bombed, 53 years earlier. I was kind of hoping that it was another person ringing the peace bell, only this time it wasn't just one person, but an entire nation.
matt out
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