神風

Words. They have so much meaning, so much history, carry so much weight - but we, at least in American/Western cultures, are so quick to forget them or brush aside their depth.

What does Hiroshima mean to you? Seriously consider that for a moment. Just the word.

Now try this one on for size: Kamikaze.

How'd that stack up? What taste did you get in your mouth? Did you pull your lips up in disgust? Or put an imagined meaning to the word? It has a long, deep, and meaningful history that means nothing in the context of the Western world.

Kamikaze (神風) means "divine or heavenly wind" and reaches back to the 1200's when the Mongolian forces from China attempted to twice invade Japan. Each time they were defeated not by the military might of Japan, but by a sudden typhoon - a heavenly wind, protecting Japan.

The World Wars brought with them both the greatest and fastest upgrades of weapons and tactics of the world's militaries any time period has ever seen and the most atrocious horrors that humans were capable of at the time. These wars set the standards for the lows to which we would sink as a world fighting for God knows what and their atrocities continue to ripple outward in time. If you were to ask me what the most terrifying monster I could conjure up would be I would say, "Mankind." We have such a huge potential to be, to really be, something incredible but so often in our history I look back and only see the rejection of that potential for something far worse.

I love my country, my home, that land. But there are so many things that fill me with such shame when I think of our short history. We are a grasping, selfish, and impudent country. As a country we rejected the idea of a monarchy and divine right but we placed on a pedestal and forced our grand illusion of a "Manifest Destiny" on everything we ever touched.

There are no excuses for anything that occurred during either of the great Wars - for any side - but a light bulb went off this weekend when I visited Hiroshima. In 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, filled with a sense of duty to the great United States of America, forced Japan to open its shores to American shipping vessels, beginning a relationship of forced negotiations and treaties with the United States. With this forced opening a massive boom of modernization began that sent the country and it's long standing social structure into upheaval. A whole class of people lost their entire identity overnight, merchants who had held family businesses in the port cities suddenly had to sell and leave their ancestral homes, and the lifeblood of Japan, the katana, was outlawed. The Meiji Reformation, like all reformations, was heavily mixed with blessings and curses. Imagine the children of these people who had no identity as a Japanese citizen (I'm primarily thinking of the Samurai class) grew up resenting these changes and loss of culture. I  think that in the West we like to think that these feelings and problems had mainly disappeared long before the War ever began, but I think that those feelings aren't so old as we've thought them. I can imagine the Meiji government using this resentment to fuel the idea of a independent Japan, one that was truly glorious an restored to the solidarity it held before the Americans changed everything they knew. And I can see this behind the Kamikaze, the heavenly wind, sent to protect Japan and strike a decisive blow to gain glory for the homeland and Emperor.

While I concede a military response was absolutely necessary, I will never agree with the use of a weapon with capabilities that were largely unknown as a response. I'm not a historian, nor a scientist, nor have I done extensive reading upon the entirety of the circumstances leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it feels like a response that was made with much emotion. Especially when one takes into consideration the fact that the government was aware that there was a declaration of sorts of war from Japan, but then, I don't know enough details to debate this any further than to say that.

After hearing a living survivor's story, seeing the art of other survivors, long lost to cancers and other illnesses brought on by the bomb - my heart broke. I was horrified by our response. On a human level, not as an American or someone who has the tiniest bit of Japanese blood in her heritage, but as a human, I can't describe the absolute horror I felt seeing the pictures and imagining that world through the words of Mrs. Kajimoto, who was 14 at the time the bomb went off.

She explained how she heard the bomb and saw the blue light it gave off (she was 1.3 kilometers from the hypocenter) and immediately held her ears closed and covered her eyes with her hands the way she'd been taught in the even of a bombing - this is for a regular bombing, of course. The reason being that the inner ear and eyes would be perforated by the force of the explosion. She dove under the work table closest to her  in the airplane factory where she was working and felt the earth lift up under her before everything became black. She was grateful to feel her arm throbbing in deep pain when she woke because it meant she was alive, but she was trapped. The air was thick with ash and it hurt to breathe. People were screaming, begging for their mothers or their teachers who were working alongside them to help them. When Kajimoto-san was finally pulled out by her friends, who hurried as much as possible to pull her out before the fire spread to the factory, the air was filled with a stench like rotten fish (I think I remember her saying it smelled like fish that had been left out in the strong heat for a few days). Not long after this, she thought there were ghouls or monsters coming from the direction of the center of the city. The ghouls had rags dripping from their outstretched arms, covered in blood, and shuffled mindlessly forward in an unending line. "You were unable to distinguish if any were male or female, their fronts and backs had been completely melted off. I finally realized they were holding their remaining skin by their fingernails, which had slid down from their arms, so they would not lose it. One small boy held his severed arm in his hand and died in front of me, naked without skin. I could see many exposed bones and a mother held her baby - nothing more than a lump of blackened bones and melted flesh - and wandered in circles before finally dying. All of them made no sound, unless it were to cry for water. When they would find water they would die. The next day, the burning of the bodies began. There was nothing else to do. Hiroshima, the whole of Hiroshima, became a crematorium."

It took two months for Kajimoto-san to receive any treatment for her wounds from the collapse of the factory building, which included a deep gash that held seven large pieces of glass in it and a severely broken ankle that remained swollen during that two month wait. She also experienced many months of bleeding gums and vomiting blood. Her father died a year and half after the bombing after becoming exposed to radiation in his search for her body. It took another ten and half years for the Japanese government to arrange any kind of medical treatment or help for the survivors. Those who were closer to the hypocenter and lost their skin died soon after, often with only cooking oil to cover their wounds. Many people never found their relatives, one school girl related that she saw her friend in the doorway of their classroom right before the "bright light and heat wave" that came and afterwards not a trace of her was found. Doctors were unwilling to treat the survivors and even after radiation illness were better understood the survivors faced a deep stigma.

 200,000 people died in Hiroshima alone, 140,000 immediately following the bombing. 200,000 souls for the 2,403 lost in Pearl Harbor. Both are tragic, both break my heart. But what absolutely broke my heart about Hiroshima was the response of the survivors. Kajimoto-san said that the first thought the survivors had was caring for the worst victims of the bomb and rebuilding the city. Through this their common goal became one of gaining hope. She said that she didn't know anyone who thought of asking for revenge, they wanted peace. At the time, war is the only world they knew and what they knew of the war - and after, when MacArthur came to Japan - was heavily censored. After the bombing though they wanted peace. It's become the mantra of the city, not exclusively the way it used to be, I'm sure, the young people there today aren't as close to the horror and it doesn't strike them as hard as their parents, but everywhere in the city there are pleas for peace.

I first thought there was a buzzard sitting in the window of the A-Dome, but I realized it was a crane, one of the symbols of Hiroshima, post bombing

Hope sitting among the ruins

If you don't know the story of Sadako Sasaki, then you'll need to read it to understand the significance of these growing outdoor rooms for paper cranes

This part of the peace park was very well designed. It's a plaque in a shallow pool of water in front of the Flame of Peace. The artist who designed this put a lot of thought into it, as simple as it is. It forces the viewer to stand over the words and see their shadow and reflection as they read the words, so they are able to connect with them. Much like the Vietnam Memorial in D.C, which forces you to view yourself in juxtaposition to the thousands of names of the soldiers who died, the Flame of Peace Memorial likewise forces a personal contemplation that's inescapable.