Hiroshima (2 page)
Authors: Nakazawa Keiji
Beginning in the mid-1980s, I translated the monuments of Hiroshima literature, the literature of the atomic bombing: Hara Tamiki's
Summer Flowers
,
O
¯
ta Y
o
¯
ko's
City of Corpses
, T
o
¯
ge Sankichi's
Poems of the Atomic Bomb
, which were all part of
Hiroshima: Three Witnessees
, and Kurihara Sadako's
Black Eggs
. (In press now is my translation of the autobiography of
O
¯
ishi Matashichi, who was on board the Japanese fishing vessel
Lucky Dragon #5
when it was contaminated by radiation from the U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini in 1954.
[10]
) In various ways these works affected my teaching, as did the superb film by John Junkerman and John W. Dower about the artists Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi,
Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima
(1986). So also two short films:
The Air War against Japan, 1944â1945
, chapter 23 of
The Air Force Story
, a massive official film history of the air campaigns of World War II (1946), and
Hiroshima Nagasaki August, 1945
, a compilation of footage taken by Japanese photographer Iwasaki Akira and then kept out of circulation until 1970. (U.S. Occupation censors were responsible for the blackout until 1952; thereafter it was largely a matter of chance.) These two films are short enough that I could show both of them in a fifty-minute class and still have time for discussion. The sound track of the former features triumphant trumpets as the atomic cloud rises over Hiroshima, its inhabitants, of course, unseen. The atonal, otherworldly soundtrack of the latter underscores close-ups of unspeakable human suffering on the ground. The contrast always left my students stunned and questioning.
That contrast still survives today. American textbook treatments of Hiroshima since World War II, the fiasco at the Smithsonian in 1995, when political pressure prevented even the most careful questioning of the Hiroshima decision, the decision of the Obama administration in spring 2010 against adopting a “no first use” policy: these are all different facets of the same phenomenonâdenial. Even sixty-five years after Hiroshima, we refuse to face the reality of nuclear war. Just this spring we learned of an American serviceman who claimed, falsely, to have been in the B-29 that photographed the bombing of Hiroshima.
[11]
Why make such a claim except to bask in the glory of a “successful” mission? Yet Nakazawa and many other bomb victims who really were there concealed their past, hoping to avoid the supposed shame. Why not admit to having been in Hiroshima on August 6 unless there is a social price to be paid?
[12]
A man on the sidelines fakes involvement in order to share supposed glory; many directly involved pretend not to be involved in order to avoid supposed shame. We have all lived in nuclear denial.
[13]
In his note to the 2004 English translation of the manga, Nakazawa writes: “Human beings are foolish. Thanks to bigotry, religious fanaticism, and the greed of those who traffic in war, the Earth is never at peace, and the specter of nuclear war is never far away. I hope that Gen's story conveys to its readers the preciousness of peace and the courage we need to live strongly, yet peacefully. In
Barefoot Gen
, wheat appears as a symbol of that strength and courage. Wheat pushes its shoots up through the winter frost, only to be trampled again and again. But the trampled wheat sends strong roots into the earth and grows straight and tall. And one day, that wheat bears fruit.”
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Nakazawa Keiji for permission to translate this book into English and for permission to reproduce illustrations from the book and from
Barefoot Gen
. Asai Motofumi, director of the Hiroshima Peace Institute, served as contact person with Nakazawa. I thank him for his very important help. I am most grateful to Colin Turner of Last Gasp for permission to reproduce excerpts from Last Gasp's fine
Barefoot Gen
, 10 volumes (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2004â2009).
Kyoko Iriye Selden, herself a translator of Hiroshima literature, helped me enormously by comparing the translation very carefully with the original and suggesting many corrections and improvements; I am greatly in her debt. Mark Selden read the manuscript with care. This is the fourth time Susan McEachern of Rowman & Littlefield has acquired a manuscript of mine, and each time it has been a pleasure to work with her. Janice Braunstein served ably as production editor. Don Sluter drew the maps and provided last-minute emergency assistance. Tyran Grillo scanned and reversed the illustrations.
You all know the graphic work,
Barefoot Gen
, don't you? It's in libraries and on school bookshelves. You may even have a copy at home.
Barefoot Gen
is read not only by Japanese, but also by people around the world. It's been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, Tagalog, and Esperanto, and there are plans for translations into Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. So
Barefoot Gen
is literally the Gen who raced around the world.
I haven't told you yet, but I'm the author of
Barefoot Gen
.
Barefoot Gen
depicts a boy (Gen), who on August 6, 1945 witnesses a this-worldly hell when the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, overcomes the ravages of war, and goes on living life at full speed.
I get letters from lots of people. And when I give speechesâfor example, in schoolsâI'm often asked, “Is Gen's story true?” “Who served as the model for Gen?” Well, who do you think?
Hiroshima's atomic bomb dome stands at right about the center of Hiroshima. Just less than a mile from that dome, there's a place called Funairi Hommachi.
[14]
That's where I was born and brought up. Ours was a family of seven. A baby due in August (August 1945!) was in my mother's womb, so perhaps you can say we were a family of eight.
August 6, 1945. I was a first grader. That morning I was at the wall that enclosed the school, talking with the mother of a classmate who had stopped me when the atomic bomb fell. She died instantly. I was pinned beneath the wall and survived miraculously.
Of my family, Dad, older sister Eiko, and younger brother Susumu died that day. Of my other two brothers, the oldestâK
o
¯
jiâhad gone to Kure as a student-soldier, and the next brotherâAkiraâhad been evacuated with his class to the countryside and was unharmed.
Mom, too, survived, but from then on, her health was fragile from the aftereffects of the bomb. The baby was born into that horror right after the bombing and died soon after birth of malnutrition.
I lost Dad, Eiko, Susumu, and the baby in the atomic bombing and went to live with relatives, where I was treated as an “outsider.”
It's true. It's the same life as in
Barefoot Gen.
I'm the model for Gen.
Barefoot Gen
is based on fact. That's why I've given this book the title,
The
Autobiography of Barefoot Gen.
[
1
]
Gen
is pronounced with a hard
g
and a short
e
, as in
again
,
where the second syllable is pronounced to rhyme with
then
.
Hadashi
means barefoot. Hence, “Gen of the Bare Feet.” In the final chapter of this autobiography, Nakazawa explains the origin of the name: “I called the protagonist âGen' in the sense of the basic composition of humanity so that he'd be someone who wouldn't let war and atomic bomb happen again.” (
Gen
is the first half of the compound
Genso
, meaning chemical element.)
[
2
]
The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki
, ed. John W. Dower and John Junkerman (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985).
[
3
]
“Hiroshima” no k
u
¯
hakuâNakazawa-ke shimatsuki
(Tokyo: Nihon tosho sent
a
¯
, 1987);
âHadashi Gen' no jiden
(Tokyo: Misuzu, 1995).
[
4
]
Nakazawa refers to his mother throughout as Mother/Mom, but on August 6 his father cries out to “Kimiyo.” The
manga
gives her name as Kimie. In the
manga
, she calls her husband “Daikichi.”
[
5
]
Charles Pellegrino,
The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back
(New York: Henry Holt, 2010). A
New York Times
account of the brouhaha that has greeted Pellegrino's book quoted Jeffrey Porter of the University of Iowa, “There's a hazy line between âtruth' and invention in creative non-fiction, but good writers don't have to make things up.” Motoko Rich, “Pondering Good Faith in Publishing,”
New York Times
, March 9, 2010, p. C6. For an extended discussion of the issues involved in this hoax, see my “Misunderstanding Hiroshima,” Japanfocus.org.
[
6
]“
Barefoot Gen
, Japan, and I: The Hiroshima Legacy: An Interview with Nakazawa Keiji,” tr. Richard H. Minear,
International Journal of Comic Art
10, no. 2 (fall 2008): 311â12. An excerpt from this interview is an appendix to this book.
[
7
]
Pellegrino,
The Last Train from Hiroshima
, 325. Without footnotes, without a list of interviewees and the dates of the interviews, Pellegrino's assertions are impossible to evaluate and hence virtually worthless. At best, those survivor accounts are sixty-year-old memories of the event, and intervening events and experiences have played a major, if undocumented, role.
[
8
]
There are two other changes to note. In the plate showing the principal accusing Gen's sister of stealing from her classmate, the large characters on the wall read (right to left) “patriotism.” These are the third and fourth characters of a wartime slogan, “Loyalty and patriotism.” But now, of necessity, the third and fourth characters have become the first and second. In the plate showing water tanks in the ruins of Hiroshima, the tank now on the left edge originally had the third and fourth characters of the four-character phrase: “water for fighting fires.” Now those characters have been replaced with the first and second characters, copied from the tank now on the right.
[
9
]
“The Revolutionary Pacifism of A. J. Muste: On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War,”
Liberation
12 (SeptemberâOctober 1967); reprinted in Chomsky,
American Power and the New Mandarins
(New York: Pantheon, 1969), 168â69.
[
10
]
Hiroshima: Three Witnesses
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990);
Black Eggs
(Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1994);
When We Say “Hiroshima”: Selected Poems
(
Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
, 1999);
O
¯
ishi Matashichi,
The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the
Lucky Dragon #5
, and I
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming).
[
11
]
In
Last Train
Pellegrino quotes Joseph Fuoco at length. Fuoco claimed to have been a last-minute replacement. Pellegrino himself claimed to have had a Ph.D. in zoology (Victoria University, New Zealand, 1981), but the university has now refuted that claim. So Pellegrino's trust in Fuoco may be an instance of the scammer scammed. Even so, the scammer may well laugh last. James Cameron, director of
Titanic
, for which he won an Oscar, and
Avatar
, for which Pellegrino was a scriptwriter, has already optioned
Last Train
for a film. Indeed, Cameron wrote a lead blurb for
Last Train
, and that blurb is true in a way Cameron never suspected:
Last Train
“combines intense forensic detailâsome of it new to historyâwith unfathomable heartbreak.”
[
12
]
Victims of the bomb faced discrimination from nonvictims who feared the effects of radiation on future offspring.
[
13
]
Cf. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell,
Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial
(New York: Putnam, 1995).
[
14
]
See map 3.
