Living with Hiroshima

Inheriting Hiroshima’s Experience Means

The Chugoku Shimbun planned the “Messages to the Future” project and ran the following article:
Sixty years have passed since the A-bomb was dropped by the USA and Japan surrendered. The A-bomb survivors have appealed for world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons, saying that we must not repeat that experience. However, so many nuclear weapons which could wipe out the earth several times still exist. We also know that there are many A-bomb survivors who live their everyday lives sealing off their tragic memories of that day. Old age creeps upon those survivors. Did we face the experience of “that day” properly? Can we transmit the survivors’ memories to the future generations? Can we hand down the experience of the A-bombing, not as its awful power, but as a tragedy given to humans? Young people who shoulder the future will meet the A-bomb survivors, beyond the age gap of half a century. The young will listen to the survivors’ lives and their messages to the future.

Responding to this article, many young people joined this project and developed studies.

On June 25th, 2005, the young participants, who had studied in the “Messages to the Future” project, and the survivors, who had been dispatched as a World Peace Mission,　held a dialogue meeting. Ordinary citizens also participated.

Many demanding survivors and elderly people remarked that succeeding young people were lacking in enthusiasm, while some defended the young. The hall was filled with excitement. The young said that they could not imagine war or nuclear weapons in their fulfilled lives but that they learned many things in this project, hearing many A-bomb experiences.

I felt disappointed with notional statements and threw a chill over the meeting by saying, “Can you say that you have inherited Hiroshima just because you have heard many A-bomb experiences? The memory of bombed Hiroshima is said to have been fading, but who have made it fade? The A-bomb survivors have kept telling about their A-bomb experiences. There are countless people at home and abroad who pledged to work for realizing world peace after hearing our stories. Have they forgotten their words? Have their fallen tears already dried? Don’t kid yourselves that you have inherited Hiroshima’s experience just because you have collected many A-bomb stories.
A male graduate student disputed, saying, “In fact, we don’t have nuclear weapons in Japan. We are not threatened by any war now. I only do what I can do.”

I got excited and countered, “Doing only what you can do means that you can change nothing. It will be possible to convey messages to the future only after you make efforts to extend your actions and concerns.

An elderly person soothed me, ‟Please don’t be so harsh on the young. Let’s praise them just for being here.”

Am I extreme?

Young people learning what happened in Hiroshima