First, although this may make me sound like a little bit of a hippy, I think I had a very spiritual experience today in Hiroshima. I really enjoy Ehime, but I never feel fully comfortable here. However, as soon as I got out of the car in Hiroshima it had a feeling of homeliness...I felt as though I was coming back to a place Iʻd been. It was a place I was a part of..and thatʻs not something I usually feel. In fact, if I closed my eyes I might have just thought I was in Hawaiʻi.
You see, my fathers side of the family (as many of the Japanese-Americans of Hawaiʻi) came from Hiroshima. I donʻt know what part, maybe one of my relatives does but it doesnʻt matter. What matters is that I felt a sense of homecoming...knowing that my own family could have stepped exactly where I stepped, thought what I thought, and seen what I have seen today.
Which leads me into my second point: I would say at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum I went through two phases. These occured in the order that the museum was arranged. For those of you who donʻt know thereʻs a devastating half of the museum, and then thereʻs a heart-wrenching part of the museum. In the devastating half of the museum, I couldnʻt help but think to myself, "You know, I donʻt think anyone could feel worse here then someone whos 3-4th generation from Hawaiʻi whose family came from Hiroshima. Because, on one side, people from Japan bombed Hawaiʻi and made life hard for Japanese people not just in Hawaiʻi but all over America; and on the other side, America bombed Hiroshima and could have (for all we know) wiped out whatever family we had left. Or maybe it wasnʻt direct family, maybe it was friends. Maybe the nurse who helped give birth to my great grandfather was obliterated in the blast. Maybe the man who made my great-great grandfathers tile roof was in the blast." and then, to get a little more specific to me I had to wonder, "I wonder if anyone from Hiroshima was involved with the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I wonder if we were connected?" and then I thought, "And my grandfather was in the US military...actually both of them were..."
Now, Iʻm not saying anything against Hawaiʻi and my country but on a personal level, the whoʻs-who of catastrophe is mindboggling isnʻt it? I was feeling pretty bad, didnʻt want to talk to anyone...and then I entered the heart-wrenching side.
For those who donʻt know, this is where there are sculptures of melting skin and preserved skin samples; where they keep photos of lost kids and display walls that have been pierced by glass and dyed by black rain; where they show cranes that Sadako herself folded and a picture of her in her casket. This is where roof tiles melt into bottles and where tattered school uniforms are hung next to photos of hands with fingernails torn upright from a mother scratching at a wood and stone to try to make a hole big enough to save her child but sheʻs too late. Where a black shadow from a disintegrated body stains the sidewalk...
...and then I realize, that this hurts everyone. To see this hurts absolutely everyone.
No, not everyone lost someone; but the world on the whole lost people and that IS tragedy.
I guess Iʻm just saying, that I thought I looked at the big picture enough but I guess Iʻll need to try harder. You may want to think about it too.
No one talks in the museum, they just walk around. I hardly hear the Japanese "sugoi" only ticks and gestures to come here or go there.
I guess you do have to be quiet to hear the answers after all.
(~_~)
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