I don't know what to think about this

[dorchadas]

So yesterday, schoolpsychnerd and I went into Hiroshima for the Flower Festival. She wandered off at one point, and I'm sitting in the Peace Park waiting for her when an old man comes up to me and says hello and asks me how I am. I say fine, ask him how he is, and he laughs and says he doesn't speak English well. So I switch to Japanese and ask him how he is.

We chat a bit, he asks where I live and where I'm from, and when I say America he gets down on the ground, picks up a stick, and draws a small circle.

"Genbaku Doumu," he says (Atomic Bomb Dome).

Now at this point, I'm preparing for the worst, especially when he draws an even bigger circle for the blast radius. Then he draws the streetcar line, and asks me if I know what the area north of that used to be. I admit that I do not, and he says it was a military area.

He then tells me that he was a 10-year-old in the military (a conscript, I assume) at the time that the bomb dropped.

Oh fuck, I think. Not really sure what to say, I nod and get ready to get chewed out, but then he says that everywhere Hiroshima is called the Peace City, with the Peace Park, Peace Memorial, etc., but back then it was a military city. He says that when the Americans came and bombed Japan, they brought 民主主義 (minshu shugi, something like "democratic principles") with them. And then he bowed and thanked me.

I was a bit stunned, and I muttered some of the standard Japanese responses to compliments (i.e., denying them), while he told me that the bombing was very sad, and many people died, but because of it, now Japan is peaceful and democratic. He bowed again and thanked me, wished me good day, and walked away.

I got his name (Takau Tarou) and Googled it, but nothing showed up. Maybe if I knew the kanji...but then again, maybe not. I was going to see if there was some sort of database on hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), but then I remembered that they've had problems with discrimination against them in Japan, so there's probably no public record kept. Well...maybe I'll run into him again at the remembrance ceremony on the 6th.

Comments

[notthecheat.livejournal.com]

That is an amazing way for a survivor to process and think about the bombings.

[khandreia.livejournal.com]

It truly is remarkable how personal experiences can shape one's perspective on a major event, how sometimes some good can come out of something so devastating and tragic. I think you stumbled onto something very interesting here.

[deathfromafar.livejournal.com]

I think the man in my icon would be overjoyed to have heard this.

I'm a decade late, hope you don't mind

[omnipotent]

Wow. Something so horrible and this man saw what he believed was good from it. What a perspective. And he was so kind to you about it, too! I can't imagine too many other survivors would have felt as he did towards an American, even a younger one like you.

Re: I'm a decade late, hope you don't mind

[dorchadas]

I had actually expected more hostility when I learned we were moving to Hiroshima, but luckily I never received any! Even our elderly Japanese tutor, when we asked about the black-and-white photograph of a teenage boy on her family shrine and she said it was her older brother, was never anything but kind to us.

I think, a lot more than elsewhere in Japan, the people of Hiroshima knew that war is always terrible.

[corvi]

I don't know what to think about it either, but I'm glad I read it. Thank you for sharing.

[dorchadas]

I still think about this at least once a month.