I meant to spend time working on a post for the 70th anniversary of
the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because I spent the past
month writing about the
Kimono Wednesdays protests I haven't had time. I
didn't want to let today's anniversary pass without posting something
so here's a round up of stuff happening in the Boston area and some interesting articles.
Mass Peace Action seems to have collected a lot of the 70th anniversary events in the Boston area on their website. Unfortunately, some events
already happened but there's a
Concert in Observance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings tomorrow night at
The Church of the Advent in Boston and a free film screening on Sunday of
Article 9 Comes to America by local filmmaker
David Rothauser as part of an
evening of activities organized by
Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment.
Apparently, there's a private museum in Natick called the
Museum of World War II that houses
original bombing orders for Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with other
WWII artifacts. You can only
visit by appointment.
I would like to note that the United States has never apologized to Japan for dropping the bombs and killing somewhere between 129,000 - 246,000+ civilians (mostly Japanese, but including others) and maiming hundreds of thousands more including
Japanese Americans, Koreans, and other foreign nationals. For scale, compare that to the
nearly 16,000 who died in the 3.11 tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear disaster. Many Americans persist in the belief that the bombing was "
an act of mercy" that
ended the war rather than the result of rabid
racism that fueled things like the
imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese for committing the "crime" of being Japanese or of Japanese descent. Look up pictures of
hibakusha (people who survived the bombings
- the literal translation is "explosion-affected people") and tell me the bombings were merciful.
Although opinion on the use of atomic bombs has shifted in the US, there is
very little support
for an apology. A US president has never attended ceremonies to mark
the anniversaries; the highest ranking official we have ever sent have
been US ambassadors to Japan and that only started five years ago (see
The New York Times article below for more details).
I was very surprised to
read that the Battleship Missouri Memorial at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is
currently displaying an exhibit of artifacts from the
Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots (
Wikipedia) which has never been displayed outside of Japan before. Elsewhere in the US
WGN America has been making a fictionalized TV show called
Manhattan
about life in Los Alamos and the building of the bombs. They style the show's title as "
MANH(A)TTAN" with the "(A)" on top of an unexploded bomb stuck into Los Alamos. The show premiered last year just a few days before the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I thought about writing about it, but I was so disgusted after watching the
trailer and
reading reviews that praised the show that I couldn't
bring myself to watch the first season. There's nothing entertaining about how the US maimed and killed up to half a million people and Americans still think it's funny to
joke about it. Incredibly the show got renewed for a
second season.
It has always amazed me that Japan and most of its citizens don't hate the US. It is
widely believed that this is due to the US's
heavy involvement in rebuilding post-war Japan during the
US-led Allied occupation that lasted until 1952. Earlier this year the Pew Research Center published the results of a survey titled,
Americans, Japanese: Mutual Respect 70 Years After the End of WWII. While US-Japan relations are generally seen as good, Japanese see Americans as inventive and tolerant but not honest or hardworking. Interestingly, 75% say they trust the US even though 79% don't think that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified.
For some stories from Hiroshima, please see Koji Kanemoto's blog,
Masako and Spam Musubi and
A-Bomb and Us, a website containing translated stories from surviviors.
Updates
- 8/8/15: Added Further Reading section with Masako and Spam Musubi and A-Bomb and Us.
