If You Want to Know Who We Are: An Unscheduled Stop, or, The Cats of Hiroshima
This post continues the account of the trip Alex and I took to Japan. The last post described our trip to Yunomine Onsen, in Wakayama Prefecture.
We left Yunomine Onsen by bus at first light, headed for Kii-Tanabe. The bus took us to the Tanabe train station, and the train took us to Kobe for lunch with a friend. As a first impression, it’s obviously a sweet town. Kobe seems to suggest Japan has done its best to perfect urban living. Once again we heard that nobody goes to Wakayama. Due elsewhere—due in Miyajima before suppertime—we did not have time to formulate a second impression of Kobe.
We left Yunomine Onsen by bus at first light, headed for Kii-Tanabe. The bus took us to the Tanabe train station, and the train took us to Kobe for lunch with a friend. As a first impression, it’s obviously a sweet town. Kobe seems to suggest Japan has done its best to perfect urban living. Once again we heard that nobody goes to Wakayama. Due elsewhere—due in Miyajima before suppertime—we did not have time to formulate a second impression of Kobe.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
We had no plans to stop at Hiroshima, but planning is overrated, and the Peace Park is just a short cab ride from Hiroshima Station. I am not among those who believe we should “study war no more,” in the words of the old gospel song. That would be like studying disease no more. We had best study it long and hard before it kills us. But Hiroshima is almost uniquely horrible. I belong to a generation that grew up with Hiroshima. Call us the radioactive snow generation. History as we know it began there. I didn’t at first want to go, but I am extremely glad I did.
The Hiroshima that was destroyed was a rustic little place with one foot in the Industrial Revolution and the other foot in the grave, as it turned out. It was selected as a potential target because it was too small and unimportant to be worth bombing. Paradoxical as that sounds, no historian of the period would disagree. The air force was seeking a “virgin target.” People will argue forever whether the atomic bombing was necessary. Some people still need it to have been, so they can come to terms with it. Some still believe in the myth of a Japanese last stand, although the Japanese army was trapped in China with no way home, the home islands had been nearly stripped of military resources for the South Pacific campaign, industry had already collapsed along with transportation and food distribution, and elements of the Japanese government had been trying to surrender for months. In many ways the Pacific War was a fiasco, which is why we carefully study the heroes and ignore the causes. People will make excuses forever, but we dropped that bomb on ourselves as much as on the civilians of Hiroshima. It was a shot that hit everybody.
Modern Hiroshima has completely grown over the footprint of the old town, but the geography of the place guarantees the modern city has the world’s first Ground Zero for a heart. It is a big heart, a friendly place, a beautiful and even stunning park. We were there the day after the anniversary of the bombing. There were many stands of flowers and wreaths, some from America.
The Hiroshima that was destroyed was a rustic little place with one foot in the Industrial Revolution and the other foot in the grave, as it turned out. It was selected as a potential target because it was too small and unimportant to be worth bombing. Paradoxical as that sounds, no historian of the period would disagree. The air force was seeking a “virgin target.” People will argue forever whether the atomic bombing was necessary. Some people still need it to have been, so they can come to terms with it. Some still believe in the myth of a Japanese last stand, although the Japanese army was trapped in China with no way home, the home islands had been nearly stripped of military resources for the South Pacific campaign, industry had already collapsed along with transportation and food distribution, and elements of the Japanese government had been trying to surrender for months. In many ways the Pacific War was a fiasco, which is why we carefully study the heroes and ignore the causes. People will make excuses forever, but we dropped that bomb on ourselves as much as on the civilians of Hiroshima. It was a shot that hit everybody.
Modern Hiroshima has completely grown over the footprint of the old town, but the geography of the place guarantees the modern city has the world’s first Ground Zero for a heart. It is a big heart, a friendly place, a beautiful and even stunning park. We were there the day after the anniversary of the bombing. There were many stands of flowers and wreaths, some from America.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
We saw the astonishing trees that survived the blast and seem to be doing fine, albeit somewhat scarred by their experience.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
The world offers few mass graves larger than the Peace Park, and the civilians who died there were as innocent as it is practically possible to be.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Park
Allegedly, one of the great unavoidable questions in human life is, “Who (or what) are we?” An hour spent wandering the Peace Park’s beautifully landscaped monuments and relics may remind us that the Enola Gay’s bomb is a considerable part of who we are. There are only a few living people at this point who had anything to do with dropping it, and only a few living people who happened to be inside the blast radius, so we may be tempted to think it hasn’t got much to do with us. But that is a failure of imagination. Mercifully, the ability to bear testimony and warning against our own lower nature is also part of what we are, along with the floral tributes, the offerings of water for radiation-burned ghosts, the gardens and the cenotaphs. We are all that.
The Children’s Peace Monument, with its famous and countless origami cranes, might be considered the heart of the park, since killing children seems so particularly contrary to human values.
Allegedly, one of the great unavoidable questions in human life is, “Who (or what) are we?” An hour spent wandering the Peace Park’s beautifully landscaped monuments and relics may remind us that the Enola Gay’s bomb is a considerable part of who we are. There are only a few living people at this point who had anything to do with dropping it, and only a few living people who happened to be inside the blast radius, so we may be tempted to think it hasn’t got much to do with us. But that is a failure of imagination. Mercifully, the ability to bear testimony and warning against our own lower nature is also part of what we are, along with the floral tributes, the offerings of water for radiation-burned ghosts, the gardens and the cenotaphs. We are all that.
The Children’s Peace Monument, with its famous and countless origami cranes, might be considered the heart of the park, since killing children seems so particularly contrary to human values.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
I was just as moved by the monument to drafted middle-school war workers, children of 13 or 14 who were conscripted for patriotic factory work as the war fell apart, and who mostly died. Innocence comes in many forms; it even comes in conscripted forms, even in patriotic forms.
Finally my sentimental and/or moral speculations reverted back to mere tourism as we crossed the bridge to the A-Bomb Dome, the famous unreconstructed remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall which was close to the hypocenter of the blast.
Finally my sentimental and/or moral speculations reverted back to mere tourism as we crossed the bridge to the A-Bomb Dome, the famous unreconstructed remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall which was close to the hypocenter of the blast.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
Like a huge modernist sculpture, the ruins are visually arresting even at first glance and become more and more interesting as one pours over them. The ruins are so interesting in themselves, and so weirdly beautiful somehow, that they partly obscure their own meaning, and what could be more modern than that?
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
The Peace Park had another surprise. There were cats in the ruins, including a mother cat nursing kittens.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
My first reaction was delight. This was a splendid place for some cats. They fit right in. Life goes on. When we get through with civilization, the cats will be un-judgmentally delighted with what remains of it and cheerfully infest the rubble.
But the zoom lens made it dreadfully obvious that these cats were thin and hungry. The A-Bomb Dome was no paradise for them. It was a poor refuge. Some of the world’s most oddly housed feral cats badly needed feeding.
But the zoom lens made it dreadfully obvious that these cats were thin and hungry. The A-Bomb Dome was no paradise for them. It was a poor refuge. Some of the world’s most oddly housed feral cats badly needed feeding.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
We considered nipping into a nearby convenience store for cans of tuna. If not a solution, still it would be more than a gesture. We considered this but it didn’t seem wise. How would we explain ourselves as the first litterers in history to chuck cans of tuna at the UNESCO World Heritage A-Bomb site? Headlines no one wants to see surely must include “Americans Re-Bomb A-Dome with Tuna Cans.” In the upshot, how to do anything for these cats was beyond us. We didn’t take responsibility in the end.
To truncate this story, we may ask how come we can’t prevent war or nuclear weapons, or protect the innocent, but in fact we don’t always succeed at feeding the cat. Let us not be grandiose. History is huge and ugly, and we aren’t everything we might wish either. So it was time to climb back in the taxi.
Photo by Alexander Mawyer
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