LOOKING FOR MEANINGS OF MY A -BOMB EXPERIENCE IN NAGASAKI
Susumu Ishitani
The James Backhouse Lectures
This is one of a series of lectures
instituted by Australia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends on
the occasion of the establishment of that Yearly Meeting in January 1964.
This lecture was delivered in Brisbane on 7
January 1986 during the Yearly Meeting.
James Backhouse was an English Friend who
visited Australia from 1832 to 1838. He and his companion, George Washington
Walker, travelled widely but spent most of their time in Tasmania. It was
through this visit that Quaker Meetings were first established in Australia.
James Backhouse was a botanist who published full accounts of what he saw,
besides encouraging Friends and following up his deep concern for the convicts
and Aborigines.
Australian Friends hope that this series of
lectures will bring fresh insights into truth, often with reference to the
needs and aspirations of Australian Quakerism.
William Oats
Presiding Clerk
Australian Yearly Meeting
Copyright
1986 by
The
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia Incorporated
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About the Author
Susumu Ishitani. Member of Tokyo Meeting. Visiting Fellow at
Woodbrooke, 1982-83. His grandfather worked with an American Friend, Willis
Whitney, at Akasaka Hospital in the 1870s. He was 13 when the A-bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.
As a peace activist he attended the International Peace
Researchers and Peace Activists conference in the Netherlands in July 1975 and
the International Seminar on Training in Nonviolent Action in Mexico in July
1978.
In Japan he has been active with the Peace Tax Campaign and works with local peace groups opposed to the us naval home-port at Yokosuka in his home town of Yokohama.
In Japan he has been active with the Peace Tax Campaign and works with local peace groups opposed to the us naval home-port at Yokosuka in his home town of Yokohama.
Susumu is currently Professor of Ethics at Hosei University
in Tokyo and chairman of the National Council of Churches - Japan Peace
Committee. In 1984 he went with a delegation from the committee to the Philippines
and Belau. He is married with three children.
------
About this lecture
Susumu was a boy of 13 when the A-bomb was dropped on his
home city, Nagasaki. In this lecture he gives graphic details of the experience
of living through the aftermath of the disaster. Apart from the horror of human
suffering from the blast itself, the author reflects on the impact on Japanese
people of the increasing awareness of the aggressive military role played by
their country in the years before 1945. He also identifies positive elements of
the experience, such as the good friendships formed between occupying US
soldiers and Japanese citizens.
The author himself became a Quaker as a direct result of
meeting a visiting American conscientious objector. Susumu Ishitani became
committed to peace work as an extension of a deep concern for the universality
of God's children. He travelled to other parts of the world to strengthen links
among people of different backgrounds.
In the lecture Susumu Ishitani affirms the unity of human
experience and the potential for concerted action for peace. He evokes parallels
between the crisis of 1945 and the crisis of today for the world. He relates
his personal trauma to the wider fate of humanity.
----
----
Foreword
There is a fundamental difference between
the Japanese way of thinking and that of the West. This lecture, which may
appear to some as a personal document, is in fact a perfect presentation in the
Japanese manner of a philosophical and religious exercise resulting from the
devastating experience of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
Logic for Western people is equated with our
method of thinking: the inductive or deductive method by which an idea or
intellectual intuition is subjected to scrutiny with a view to proving a thesis
or arriving at a conclusion. A simplified way of describing it may be linear or
directional thinking.
Japanese thought does not proceed in this
way. It consists of a number of ideas or insights thrown out in a seemingly
random way, which gradually illuminate and converge upon a central theme, at
first unperceived by the reader or listener which as it becomes clearer appears
as the conclusion or target. The ideas leading to this conclusion are not
purely intellectual but result as well from the emotions, the senses and to
some extent from the will. In perfectly integrated thinking these functions
will be in perfect balance.
It is important in this lecture for Susumu
Ishitani to return constantly and not necessarily in chronological order to
actual experiences. When he writes of the moment when the bomb was dropped, the
time spent in the shelter with Japanese soldiers, the American troops arriving
and so on, he recounts in detail his physical reactions and his feelings,
because these are an integral part of his dawning awareness of the meaning to
him of these events. While for us the meaning might be the 'moral' to be drawn
from the events - the gold separated from the dross - for a Japanese the gold
and the dross are inseparable, part of a total experience.
This lecture stands as a meditational
exercise and what Susumu Ishitani calls the 'inwardness' of his thinking not
only cannot be separated from the physical and emotional experiences which gave
rise to it, but cannot be seen as more valid.
Susumu lshitani is not unaware of our kind
of logic and thought processes but he paid us the compliment of trusting us
with his own way, realising perhaps that not everyone would follow his
progress. Bridging cultural differences can lead to new perspectives and if we
can take this 'total' view, we shall be the richer.
Betty Bredt, 15.1.1986
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LOOKING FOR MEANINGS OF MY A-BOMB EXPERIENCE IN NAGASAKI
Susumu Ishitani
Before I talk about my personal experiences of the A-bomb
dropped in Nagasaki, I would like to make it very clear that I am not so much
concerned with my being a victim of the bomb as with my being a part of the
responsibility for what the Japanese have done, inflicting sufferings and
sorrows upon other people. I am related to the responsibility of the Japanese
who were the causes of the war and its disasters. Even though I was young
during the war time, I cannot but feel guilty for the fact that I was
completely cheated by the whole society surrounding me at that time. I believed
that what the Japanese nation was doing was fully right and that Japanese
military men would always behave right as models for us children to follow.
After the Japanese surrender we came to know really shockingly that my country
was intruding upon other nations and invading them rather than saving them from
oppression and poverty. We could hardly believe that the Manchurian War was
started due to the secret manipulation of the Japanese military. Most of the
Japanese people were not informed at all of any wrong-doings by Japanese, such
as the Korean and Taiwan colonial dominations, the massacre in Nangking, and
the inhumane medical experiments on live human bodies by Japanese medical
troops in the northern part of China. There are many other cruel deeds made by
Japanese. And even today, in different ways from the former ways, Japanese are
taking advantage of underprivileged people in different parts of the world in
money-making. For me it is more important to remember the responsibility for
the present problems rather than to think we are the victims of the last war. I
really feel we Japanese need to ask for forgiveness from those who have
suffered from the inhumane deeds of us Japanese. Therefore I want to begin this
lecture by asking your forgiveness if there are any among you who had unhappy
experiences with such Japanese wrong-doings, as I mentioned just now.
I must also confess that I sometimes wonder if I am
qualified to be a victim or survivor of the A-bomb and to talk about my
experience as one of the A-bomb experiences because my experiences have not
been so terrible as many others have been.
However, I am going to talk about them not because I want to describe
what terrible things happened but because I want to go together with you on a
further journey of enquiry to find the meanings of such experiences. Since
personal experiences of anyone are partial and limited, they may not convey the
destructive and disastrous pictures of the bomb enough. My experiences are
limited but they are more closely related to my identity than any other's. So
these will form my topic.
I was in the eighth grade, at the age of thirteen when I was
exposed to the A-bomb in Nagasaki. I was talking with my elder sister in the
dining kitchen of our house after coming back from school on the day. We began
to feel hungry and my sister had started cooking when we heard the buzzing sound
of a US bomber. My sister, who had experienced some terrifying air-raids before
she came to Nagasaki city, immediately recognised the sound as that of the B-29
and suggested that we go to the shelter for safety. But I who had not had any
terrifying experiences of bombing said, "Well, Sister, they just came
again. They wouldn't do any harm. So far Nagasaki has never been badly
attacked. So we shall be all right." Before I had finished the last
sentence, a strong glittering light had struck us. I thought it was the light
of a flash-light bomb dropped by mistake on the top of the roof of my house. I
dashed into the next room shouting out to my sister to come along, to hide
myself from the light, proceeding to the corridor to get out of the front door.
But before I reached the door I felt a strong blast approaching and I flattened
myself on the floor. Soon I felt the blast arrive, smashing and blowing things
around. I could not do anything but rely on God. In the moment when I felt the
danger of death, a strong sensation of trusting God ran all through my body. It
was a warm sensation like electricity, which made me feel that I would be
definitely protected by God. Somehow I did not feel any fear. I concentrated
all senses of awareness on the trust-feeling. Things were coming down near me.
But I felt a kind of religious feeling and knew that I would not die, being
protected by the divine power. It was a spark of the religious feelings of me
which I had not been aware of in daily life. From time to time even today, I
ruminate on this existential experience I had then under the dangerous
conditions. I wonder what it was, and what it would mean to me.
After a while I opened my eyes but could not see anything
but dust. Fearing the dust might get in my eyes, I closed them again and
covered them tightly with my fingers without getting up. I did not feel any
heat of fire around me. So 1 thought I had a good chance to survive. After a
few minutes, I opened my eyes to find the dust cleared and my sister lying just
close behind me, flat on the stomach just as I was. I patted her on the
shoulders saying, "Sister!" She raised her face up to look at me. Her
face was dirty with dust, her eyes shining wide open. Both of us suddenly burst
into laughter almost at the same time. We did not know why we laughed. It came
out from deep within us. It must have been really necessary for us to release
the tension we had been holding during the frightening time of a few minutes
and to recover a certain balance of our psychology.
Soon we decided that we should go to find my father. At that
time we used to live in a house on the campus of a Christian women's college
and high school named Kassui (Living Water) as my father was vice-president of
the college. So we both went up to the school building to look for my father.
Soon we were able to find him but I saw a stream of blood coming down from the
top of his head when I saw him first. At the first sight of him, I was
frightened to think he might be dying. He was being treated. He saw us and
said, "Oh, you are safe here. Good. I am all right." In fact it was
just a small cut on his head with a small piece of glass. The rest of my family
were all out of the city fortunately. There were none of my family killed. In
the area where we were nothing was burned but things were only destroyed by the
blast of wind. The roof of my house was badly damaged so that it was not
possible for us to live in the house until it was repaired. All pillars on one
side of my house were leaning to one side and the other side pillars leaning to
the opposite side. Window panes were all smashed into pieces and powder. Among
the people treated where my father was, I saw a young man who had a big
triangle-shaped piece of glass stuck deep into one of his upper arms. He asked
a few strong men around him to pull out the piece of glass, with another man
holding him tightly so that he did not move when the glass was finally taken
out.
I was assigned to go to a shelter in a corner of a
playground of the college. When I looked out at the far places of the city from
the top of the hill, I could see the downtown area on the left was burning in
flames very widely. Gas tanks were blowing up with terrifying noises. As the
distance did not allow me to see people, I was not able to think of the people
who were dying and crying out for help then in the flames. I was too shocked to
think of anything. Only my head without power of imagination was vainly excited
at that time, as I remember now.
For about ten days since then, I had to live in a primitive
shelter dug under the ground together with some female teachers of the school
and the several Japanese soldiers who were very badly burned by the rays as
they had been working half-naked at the pier in the harbour. A few of them died
in a few days. I helped them go to see the doctors who came to the campus
grounds to treat the burned and wounded people who came to the area out of the
devastated areas. After some days flies laid eggs in the pus of the burned
flesh of the soldiers in my shelter. A terrible smell spread and filled the
shelter. The soldiers felt apologetic about staying with us with their ugliness
and the smell. But what else could have been done in such a situation! A great
sympathy was shared among all who were in the same shelter, with nobody
complaining. Many people came up for medical treatment but the medical
equipments were apparently lacking. I saw many people simply lying on the
ground waiting to die with no one attending, groaning and asking for water in their
feeble voices. Some of them could not move or make any sounds and were just
left out on the playground with vacant-looking eyes open to the summer sky.
While we were living in the shelter, food was supplied to us
through the Neighbourhood Organization channel, and the soldiers were provided
with their food from the military separately from us. Every time food was
brought to the soldiers, finding the kind of food brought to them far better
than what we ordinary citizens got, the soldiers felt guilty and showed us
their sympathy. They gave us some portion of what they were given. A few of the
soldiers were not able to open their mouths due to the burns and could not eat
at all. In those days in Japan all good things were used for the military and no-one
was allowed to criticize it. In the name of "for defending our
nation" the military took the best part of everything. But it was rather
seldom that we were aware of such an actual difference as for this ease because
military people usually lived apart from ordinary citizens. They were supplied
white polished rice abundantly while citizens lived on sweet potatoes and not
enough to fill their stomach.
On the 15th August, we were told to listen to the radio so
that we could hear a very important item of news. A few families in the
neighbourhood and several individuals who were separated from their families
gathered together in one of our neighbour's houses to listen to a radio.
Emperor Hirohito spoke regretfully to tell us that Japan had surrendered in
order to survive as a race. Reception conditions for the radio broadcast were
not good and it was not easy for us to know exactly what he said. But it was
very clear that he said Japan had surrendered. It was a great shock to all of
us who believed that Japan would never be defeated. And moreover surrender! A
few soldiers who were there listening to the radio wept when they heard the
Emperor's talk. I felt some sense of relief within myself, thinking that now we
would be able to be free from fear of death and would not be bothered sleeping
at night by air-raids. There were some people who were saying that the defeat
news was wrong and that Japan would continue to fight as it used to do.
Therefore we were not able to be quite sure how things would go and be settled
for a few days even after the broadcast of the surrender.
I still remember vividly when the US warships and a Red
Cross boat came into Nagasaki harbour. I could see them easily from our garden.
A few days later the landing of the US military took place. Before that, there
were rumours among the citizens that since the American soldiers were so cruel
and wild, women and children should leave the city to hide themselves in the
mountains. My parents discussed whether they should do something about it and
they decided by all means all of us would stick together staying in the city as
usual whatever might happen. In spite of the terrible propaganda made by the
government and school teachers and everyone, my parents must have had better
knowledge of Americans in general than the average citizens of Japan at that
time. I heard from somebody that at first black men of the US Marine Corps came
ashore with automatic guns and with much tension of fear that there might be
some suicidal Kamikaze attacks of Japanese soldiers or of citizens on them. The
Christian women's college and high school where my father worked was occupied
by white soldiers to live in. And a Catholic boys' high school building nearby
was taken as a barracks for black soldiers.
At that time in the US military the segregation was still kept on.
While US men stayed in the area, my family were able to find
some place to live in the other houses belonging to the college. But in any
case we lived almost next to the school building where the US soldiers lived.
At first we were somewhat afraid of the American soldiers, who looked very much
different from us Japanese, but we were full of curiosity and very eager to
look at them. Of course the chewing gum and chocolate bars the American
soldiers gave us were also elements of attraction to us young boys. American
soldiers were very much surprised and pleased to find me able to speak a little
bit of English and to find that we were acquainted with many of the world
famous songs and Christian hymns to sing. We had a very good time singing songs
common to Americans and us Japanese. My parents were able to speak English
better than I did at that time. We had several GI boys as regular friends to
meet almost every day on the road in front of the school gates. A few times at
least my parents invited some of them to visit our family to talk and sing
Christian hymns together. Even today I keep correspondence with one of the old
day's GI friends. Many of the GI boys at that time were far more humane and
intelligent than we expected and they too found us Japanese far more humane and
intelligent than they thought we would have been. They were the Marine Corps
soldiers who had rather severe fighting with Japanese soldiers in Saipan and
other Pacific islands, losing many of their friends in battle. We established
such a wonderful relationship that it was almost impossible for us to think
that we had been hating each other as enemies. We really wondered why we had
been made to fight like that. I still remember the names of several GIs
familiar to us then: Joe, Bill, Dick, Flower, Vincent, Bakken, Saito-san and
others.
I could go on and on, talking about the days
I spent with those young
American GIs, such as how we enjoyed eating,
talking and singing on Christmas eve for the first time after the war with the
recognition of one another as human beings.
Joe whom I visited in his house in Syracuse when I went to
the States as a government exchange program student wrote me in Japan a very
moving letter when he knew of my mother's death about ten years ago, telling me
how much he was impressed by her when he found her treating and even rebuking
the young GI boys as human beings as she would do with her sons, just like
their own American parents would have done to them. He emphasised the
foolishness of wars and the importance of meeting people face to face to make a
real foundation for peace. He is quite right. We have to change our old framework
of thoughts into new ones in order to survive.
Though many people still take for granted the defence of
one's own country, I can say clearly that it is impossible to defend or protect
our life by means of arms now when such weapons as A-bombs, H-bombs, Neutron
bombs, bacteriological weapons exist. Having strong military forces is contrary
to democracy as the military always requires secrecy without letting voters
know the essential knowledge to vote properly and to control the violent powers
of the military. People must be well informed to determine their destiny. If we
want to defend democracy, our life and human dignity, we must learn how to live
in nonviolent ways to establish human relations with those who might get into
conflict in our survival. Meeting people is very much needed for us to
recognise that we are all human beings who have joys and sorrows. We all have
those who care for us as parents and brothers and sisters and friends. People
need to meet in order to be inspired to change themselves into new people who
know deeper quality of happiness related to the ever-lasting life.
When it was very cold in early spring after the year of the
surrender had passed, my father coughed out much blood with tuberculosis at
night. I have a very vivid memory of my elder brother and me running to one
medical doctor or another to ask him to come and see my father coughing out
blood very late on a cold dark night. He recovered slowly but he had to resign
his job, and move to Mito, a city 100 kilometres north east of Tokyo. My father
had to sustain his family consisting of his wife and five children, as if he
were walking on a thin tight rope, and take great care of his own health for
nearly ten years more.
As for my health, about half a year later I got blisters all
over my body. The shape of those blisters was strange, looking like small round
pancakes full of pus. I had swollen glands with a slight fever. I found it
necessary sometimes to lie down on the floor without participating in gym class
because of the dullness and fever from the blisters. When we were kept standing
for a long time in line at school I sometimes felt dizzy and had to leave the
line. This was for the few years when I was still in Nagasaki. In those days I
was apparently affected by the bomb but we did not know anything of the effects
of the radio-activity.
It was hard for me to imagine so many people were vaporised
to the air in an instant, or suffered till long death asking for water or
calling the names of their parents, brothers and sisters in the hell-like fire.
This kind of situation should not come to any people, children of any place or
any country of the world in future.
Mito was the place where my father spent his three years of
his high school life and used to attend a Quaker meeting by chance. He became
one of the active young Friends there, lodging in a students' house set up and
run by Friends. Therefore when he moved to this city from Nagasaki he took my
elder brother and me to the Quaker meeting for worship on a Sunday. The city
was extensively burned during the war and the meeting house was burnt down too.
Therefore people were gathering in one of the 'tatami' rooms of the old
people's house which was run by the Friends as a social welfare program. It was
my first exposure to the quiet meditation service. We used to go to the
Methodist churches near our home wherever we moved until then. Somehow I was
attracted by the way of worship and was impressed by the messages shared by a
few old people in the house. The messages were quite different from the sermons
I used to listen to in churches. I felt comfortable to be in the silence
without being bothered by vocal prayers with too much theological vocabulary
and by the set procedure with standing up and sitting down. I felt I was able
to be more honest about myself to God in Quaker silence.
One Sunday, we had an American young man coming from Tokyo
where he worked on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee. He was
Neil Hartman, who now lives in New Jersey, USA. He spoke to us about his own
experience of being a conscientious objector to wars and the idea of
Conscientious Objection. It was my first experience of hearing anything about
Conscientious Objection. I was deeply moved to know that such a wonderful thing
existed in this world. I never thought
or even dreamed of such a thing even among Christians. In Japan, we looked at
all Americans and British as enemies and were taught to look at them only as
the objects to fight and kill; otherwise they who were enemies and beasts would
come and kill us all in the most cruel ways. While I was listening to the young
American, I was deeply moved to believe that this person was pointing to a
universal truth which I would like to emulate in my life.
He told how he refused to take part in the war according to
his conscience. He believed that human life was sacred and divine, not to be
subject to the desires of human beings and never to be ended, regardless of
nationality, race or ideology. I felt that he was a real Christian who lived
following the way of Christ. As his alternative service, he worked in the
forest, in a mental hospital to look lovingly after the patients without any
means to protect himself physically, and he became at the end even a guinea pig
for a medical experiment. He lost one of his kidneys because of the experiment.
He overcame the troubles with his own family and his communities around him due
to his commitment to pacifism. I was then an eleventh grader. I felt I would
like to live such an attractive life as his to be true to the universal way of
God. I was drawn into Quaker ways. When I was a sophomore I became a member of
the Religious Society of Friends. I came to feel that I am a person, and a
Christian rather than a Japanese, a child of God rather than a Japanese, a
human being rather than a member of a nation. It was my great joy to take part
in Young Friends activities and organise workcamps as well as study on peace
issues among Quakers in Japan.
I went to a Christian college founded by Southern Baptists
who are very much fundamental. I was given a scholarship to study there for two
years. I organised a small group of those who were interested in peace issues
and at the cultural festival of the college we organised an exhibition of
A-bomb pictures taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the American
missionaries did not like us doing such a thing but I had a firm conviction
that it was right to show as many people as possible what would be the effects
of nuclear war in order to let people feel that it is impossible for human
beings to wage war any more. I heard at that time some Japanese people as well
as Americans were trying to assert that those who exhibited such pictures were
communists or pro-communist and antiAmerican.
So I openly said that I was a Christian and I had many friends who were
Americans. Nobody could deny what I said. I explained about the A-bomb in such
a manner as only those who had experienced the bomb could do, by mentioning my
own direct experiences in Nagasaki. I became more conscious of my being under
the mushroom cloud. While I explained about the photos, I often talked about
the ideas of Conscientious Objection, emphasising how important it is to Japan
as a nation to commit herself to peaceful ways defined clearly in the new
Constitution, which forbids the nation, Japan, to possess any military forces.
When I was in junior year, I decided to go to India to join
an international workcamp sponsored by the Service Civil Internationale as a
long term volunteer. At that time 1 felt I was not able to concentrate myself
on study as much as I felt I should be doing. I felt I was moody. I needed to
earn money to be as much independent from my father financially as I could. My
vision for my future was not very clear to me. In these circumstances going to
India was very attractive, because India at that time was the third power in
world politics, trying to be neutral between the two big powers. Jawaharlal
Nehru as Prime Minister was holding a good relationship then with Communist
China. I was interested in Ghandian philosophy too. I was lucky to have very
good understanding parents who let me go wherever I wanted to go, even though
some of our acquaintances said that we should finish school education as soon
as possible so that my brother and I could lighten the financial burden of my
father. It was a very precious time for me when I was in India. I was given the
privilege of staying for two months in a Ghandian asylum in the western part of
India by UNESCO which granted me a youth travel grant to cover the travel
expenses between Japan and India.
After a year and two months stay in India, I had to return
home a few months earlier than I planned due to a tropical illness I caught in
the flooded area in Bihar. I was exposed to much more dreadful conditions of
poverty than I experienced right after the war in Japan. I was sad to see the
situation but at the same time I was impressed to see such poor people were
living just like we were with joy and sorrow. I began to think of my existence.
I came to realise that my being a Japanese was not my choice, that I was thrown
into where I was by something beyond myself, into my family, into Japan, and at
this particular time of the process of human history. I sensed wherever I moved
that human beings were just like my family members and friends. Some racists
might think that we should be loyal to our own country but I felt already then
that I was one of God's children and should consider every man and woman as
precious as anybody else regardless of his or her nationality, sex, colour, and
social status. I could feel then I needed to be able to live and die like Jesus
Christ who died for the benefit of other human beings and for the glory of the
divine. I was able to enjoy the life in India among amiable friends from many
different countries.
We sometimes hear people involved in peace movements in
Japan say a phrase "Hiroshima of anger and Nagasaki of prayer". Often
when they say this, they mean that in Hiroshima active peace movements come out
of the anger of the victims of the A-bomb and in Nagasaki people never stand up
against anything but pray for help without doing anything positive, depending
on either their fate or some authority. We cannot deny that in Hiroshima we
always find some activities regarding peace going on while visitors to the
A-bomb museum in Nagasaki find very few peace activities. But I wonder if anger
can really produce anything of peace? How about prayer? According to my
understanding, anger needs to be checked carefully so that it does not produce
hatred which is one of the elements of war.
I can admit that indignation against injustice is necessary to create peace that should be based on justice. The energy that comes out of indignation can be the source for the energy to push us to work for peace-making. The energy to create anything has to be directed through the right channels. It cannot be creative if the anger is aimed at either American people or Russian people. Indignation has to be addressed to what cruel deeds we Japanese people did just as equally to what the American military did, but not to military men as persons. Indignation should be directed to oneself for one's being cheated or manipulated by the state.
I can admit that indignation against injustice is necessary to create peace that should be based on justice. The energy that comes out of indignation can be the source for the energy to push us to work for peace-making. The energy to create anything has to be directed through the right channels. It cannot be creative if the anger is aimed at either American people or Russian people. Indignation has to be addressed to what cruel deeds we Japanese people did just as equally to what the American military did, but not to military men as persons. Indignation should be directed to oneself for one's being cheated or manipulated by the state.
Out of my thoughts just mentioned, I came to feel that I
should do something to find out what the silence of Nagasaki is and why it is
so. It became my natural interest as I am a survivor of the Nagasaki A-bomb and
a Christian. I did not like to see people feeling that prayers are something
negative. I know in Australia, New
Zealand, America and Europe the role of prayer is basic and an important aid
for people to stand up and carry on their peace works. Therefore I decided to
go home and spend some time in Nagasaki during my vacation, long after I left
the city in 1947. During summer in 1983 and during spring in the next year I
spent about ten days altogether, meeting several Catholic survivors in the
Urakami area which was badly affected by the A-bomb. There is a famous Urakami
cathedral where many Catholics have lived and died for a long time since the
16th century. Nagasaki had been a special place historically for its free trade
with the Dutch and Portuguese under the strict supervision of the Shogunate's
government before the modernisation of Japan.
I had an opportunity to have an interview with three women
who were all victims of the A-bomb and descendants of the old time Kirishitans
(that is what Catholics were called in Japan in those old days). The place was
the Old People's Hospital Community run by the Sacred Heart Holy Mothers Association
in Nagasaki. It was about one hour's interview. The women talked to me much
more easily than I expected. It helped for them to speak as a small group. Of
course, my self-introduction helped them to open their mouths too. While they
talked one of them coughed hard once or twice so that we had to stop
interviewing to take rest a while and then another of them said she had pains
on the waist bone, and I had to give massage to her, while listening to the
others talking. I set a tape-recorder in front of them to tape their voices
after getting permission from them. The eldest lady was then eighty four. Her
house was only a mile away from the centre-point of the Bomb and burnt down.
She was fortunately out of the area to live in the hilly place. She took care
of the rest of her family and relatives who were badly affected by the bomb and
she became sick later on. She lost her only grand child then and later her
youngest son who was in the navy in the Pacific, only a day or two before the
end of the war. When I asked a very difficult question: what had she learned
out of such terrible A-bomb experiences for her to live on, how she had found
some spiritual support to her, she was puzzled. It was no wonder. Because even
I who was asking the questions had not found any clear answer for myself.
I had to change my question then. I asked how she would
relate the Abomb experience to her faith in God, Jesus Christ and Mary. I was asking myself how I would reply had I
been asked a similar question. She told me that she had been told by her mother
about the "trip". It was the harsh experience for the Catholic
Christians in Nagasaki to leave their home and be expelled to unknown places
simply because they were Christians a long time ago. In the second year of Meiji,
1869, 3394 of them were expelled to 21 different districts from the Urakami
area of Nagasaki. The persecution by the Government officers was very severe
and cruel. The elderly lady associated the "trip" of the exile of her
ancestors with her own A-bomb experience. About 8500 Catholic family members
died from the blast while the total death toll in Nagasaki on the instant was
70,000 approximately. We extended our talk into the suffering of Job of the Old
Testament.
One of the things that impressed me most was the influence
on the Catholic survivors in Nagasaki from the Pope's visit to this city in
snow in February 1981. Many of the people told me how much they were moved by
the eagerness of the Pope for peace.
Another thing which impressed me was that the late medical
Dr. Takashi Nagai's footprints of his journey after the A-bomb were deep in the
hearts and minds of many people there. At the sacrifice of his own weak
physical conditions affected by the radiation, he devoted himself as a medical
doctor to the care of those who suffered the burns and injuries from the bomb.
He had lost his beloved wife under the mushroom cloud. Later he himself stayed
in bed with two young children of primary school age who took care of him till
his death. He wrote many essays, stories and letters which showed his abundant
love to his children who would soon be left to be orphans by their father. His
"Leaving these Children". and "The Bell of Nagasaki" are
two of his many books published after he died.
Many people outside of the Catholic world
read them but especially the Catholics in Nagasaki who received most impact
from his writings. As for the significance of the A-bomb he wrote "We were
chosen to be an atonement by becoming sacrifices". "It was by His
plan that the A-bomb was dropped upon Urakami rather than any other place. It
is a grace of God. Urakami people must be thankful to God." "Only
belief can be the real momentum to restore the burnt fields of Nagasaki."
He spoke of the view point far beyond the natural cause-effect relationship, to
those who suffered together the sufferings and sorrows of the Abomb as well as
shared a religious faith with him. Dr. Nagai took in the experience
existentially and spoke as one of the leading elders in the Church to appeal to
the people so that they might live with hope for the future. He said, "A
very small number of the people who live with a firm faith to live and know the
happiness of suffering and of weeping, are doing an atoning work for sins human
beings had committed for centuries." I feel this aspect of his expression
cannot be understood by most non-religious people. We must get into the depth
of the writer's experience by associating it with our own deep experiences.
Doing as much service as he could, Dr. Nagai knew he would not live long any
more and had to leave his young children behind. I think such an answer as the
one Dr. Nagai made to the question of what the meaning of the A-bomb was to the
Catholics in Nagasaki should not be taken as a formula without putting oneself
in a similar situation.
Dr. Sinichiro Akizuki of St. Francisco Hospital is another
Catholic medical doctor who worked very hard and devotedly in medical care of
the victims. He became a Catholic believer after seeing how Catholic sisters
and brothers and priests devoted themselves to the service of helping suffering
people after the Abomb was dropped. He said that he was not satisfied with the
praying only without any actual deeds. He found many of the Catholic believers
who relied on God or the Church without taking any responsibilities on their
side. He said, "People around me prayed for me to become a Catholic, and
even those who were dying under my care prayed for me to become one. 1 saw
priests and sisters around me doing a beautiful service to the people suffering
near them. Then I felt I could not stay away from the same religious
community". He had been a serious Buddhist till then.
A lady I talked with said, "We gradually felt it is not
enough for us to complain, saying that the A-bomb was horrifying, and to say
that we suffered this and that, the pains and sorrows. While we were talking
with one another among the survivors, we came to realize we should talk to a
wider circle and we must give comfort and help to others with sympathy. We
cannot only give comfort to others. We have to share the indignation about what
human beings should not do. We should do something together to care for life,
cultivate the sense of tenderness and extend it more widely, and pray together
with humbleness". She is in one of
the small religious groups which seek to share spiritual growth, having study
meetings and explore the meanings of A-bomb experiences together.
Human beings originally do not exist in solitude, separate
from one another, but exist as social beings with warm feelings of humanity.
The proof can be found among the suffering people in the situations under the
mushroom clouds. When a father finally succeeded in getting out of the pile of
fallen timbers and concrete things and found his wife unable to get out to
safety from the approaching fire, he said, "I would stay with you and die
together", after trying in vain to get her out. She said, "Save
yourself, please, lest our children should be left without both parents".
A boy who witnessed all of the tense situation of his parents' departure from
one another has written describing what he has seen and heard. He was a
sixth-grader then. His father cried and wept aloud while moving away from his
wife taking his son's hand. This boy lived to tell people about the A-bomb and
not only about the ugliness of wars but about the beauty of human nature, too.
Out of such miserable situations some people have decided to
make a new start in their life. They even say that it has to be made as a start
of a new world for humanity. They chose how to live by taking an initiative on
their part to put new meaning in their lives. Of course, they need to be
careful to make such meaning a universal one to each member of humanity. For
many, the meaning was found in a religious sphere. For some religious people,
the existing belief is being reexamined and tested to see whether it can be
really supportive for their life, to live with hope in real situations.
For me, my A-bomb experience seems to me to be something
given to me from which I am expected to draw meaning and power to live in such
a way as to be an instrument of God or to show the glory of God. I do not think
I have found all of the meaning or power that is expected for me to draw out of
my experience yet. It must be an endless or bottomless source to draw living
water for me to look back or return in order to refresh my awareness that I
live in the hand of God while being on the edge of the division of life and
death. For we all live in such an existential condition in the nuclear age
today. As we look at our living situation, we realise the development of
science and technology has put us in a dangerous situation as at any moment we
might be killed by the explosive power of science and technology. Economic
competition has put us in such a situation as we might be treating other human
beings as tools and slaves without being able to treat others as persons who
are as important and precious as we ourselves are. And the end of these trends
leads us to wars and annihilation of mankind. We should have fully realised
that we are forced by these conditions to be aware of the necessity of
determining our decisive attitude to choose life rather than destruction even
at the sacrifice of our easy ways of getting more material abundance, more
convenience and superficial pride of being better than others in worldly life.
I happened to find myself in the historical event of the
explosion of the Abomb. A Japanese philosopher whom I know well is advocating
his idea that the calendar year should start from 1945, when the nuclear age
started, because it is so significant for human conditions in the history of
mankind. I agree with him in the sense that the epoch-making event of the birth
of possibility of selfannihilation of mankind urges us human beings to make
radical changes for our survival, for finding a peaceful solution of conflicts,
for creating a new loving way shown by God in the way of Jesus Christ on the
cross and on His resurrection. Light is going to be revealed by the darkness of
the annihilating bombs to shine and show a new caring way. We are in the middle
of the time of awakening our souls to repent and change.
Now I am involved in propagating the idea of tax refusal
against military expenditures in Japan on the basis of conscience. For me this
idea is based on the reflection of my experience of the A-bomb. It is based on
my meeting an American conscientious objector after the end of the war, too.
Today, when anything can be bought by paying money, soldiers and generals,
fighters and bombers, nuclear and other weapons can be obtained by money. On
the other hand, there are billions of people on the globe starving to death
without being able to buy land to cultivate and food to fill their stomachs.
I met questions raised by some of the survivors such as
this, "Why do we have to suffer from such unbearable pains and sorrows as
this?" I found in the writings of the survivors similar statements fairly
often. And I tried to find some words for them while knowing fully that the
reality of suffering for them will never be understood fully by me as they have
been experiencing it. While I was pondering what to answer, one of the passages
of the Bible came to mind. It is the ninth chapter of the gospel of John: When
Jesus was asked by his disciples, "Rabbi, who sinned, this fellow or his
parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "This has not happened
because he has sinned or his parents, but that in him God's works should be
displayed." Another passage says as follows:
"Do not be surprised, dear friends, at
the fiery test that is coming upon you, as if you were experiencing something
unheard of. Instead, be joyful that you are sharing to some degree the
sufferings of Christ, in order that at the revealing of His glory you may be
full of joy." (1 Peter 4th Chapter, 12-13).
I also found another passage:
"Exercise self-control. Be on your
guard. Your opponent, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion in search of
someone to devour. Firm in your faith, resist him, aware that throughout the
world, sufferings of this kind are imposed upon your brothers. But the God of
all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will, after you
have suffered awhile, Himself equip, stabilise, strengthen and firmly establish
you." (1 Peter 5th Chapter, 8-10)
When I was in bed at a hospital for my ulcer to be operated,
in 1980, I had to face certain fears of my death and the suffering and pain. At
that time I enjoyed reading the Bible and trying to draw as much meaning as
possible for me to overcome the fears, sufferings and pain. I thought of Jesus
on the cross who faced much more severely than I did. Maybe I should say that
the fears did not exist with Jesus and it was the same almost to me too. I say
"almost" because in my ease, I had a little bit of sense of
uncertainty, though it was very small, that I might die, leaving the rest of my
family, my wife and my three young children who would need some care from their
father. As a whole, I did not have a bad time at all in the hospital. I felt I
was so blessed and happy and was able to keep my faith in God to be able to
approach other people in the hospital as I wanted to. I felt my way of life
went into the depths one step deeper by facing the incident of the operation.
The other day, I found a poem in a Japanese Christian
newspaper and thought the poem was expressing an important aspect of our search
for meaning in our life. It goes like this according to my English translation:
If not having become ill,
such prayers would not have come out.
such prayers would not have come out.
If not having become ill,
such miracle would not have been believed in.
If not having become ill,
such divine world would not have been heard of.
such miracle would not have been believed in.
If not having become ill,
such divine world would not have been heard of.
If not having become ill,
such holy sacred place would not have been visited.
such holy sacred place would not have been visited.
If not having become ill,
such a face would not have been gazed at.
Oh! unless having become ill,
I would not have been able to become a human.
such a face would not have been gazed at.
Oh! unless having become ill,
I would not have been able to become a human.
---
In our life we have sorrows to face and they come without
our comprehension why they should come in our particular place, particular time
and to a particular person like you or me.
Sorrow, however, is a good medicine for the soul. Those who
do not drink from the cup of sorrow will never understand the significance of
our life. Because of being in adverse situations, one can come to understand
the importance of kindness to others. Having adverse, unfavourable experiences
one can come to know the truth which one will never be able to know through
academic study nor by common sense. One gains the power of courage to overcome
the adverse situation and deepens the understanding of others who are in
adverse situations.
Inazo Nitobe, the first Japanese Quaker, emphasised the importance and effects of adverse situations. He said,
Inazo Nitobe, the first Japanese Quaker, emphasised the importance and effects of adverse situations. He said,
"There are some people who abandon
themselves to despair and others who will live a truthful life because of sorrows
they have faced. Sorrows are the dividing points of life. Those who cannot
discern whether this sorrow comes from the divine or from the devil will be
bound to stay in hell forever."
Here I am in Australia and will visit New Zealand later. I have been to
so many places in the world after the A-bomb experience: India, Korea, Hong
Kong, USA, UK, USSR, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, France, Mexico, Philippines
and Belau Islands. This morning David Gray mentioned the central core of Quaker
belief is "The Inner Light" in all of us. I sense it is true. And I
feel and believe through my experiences that we are made "to walk
cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone". I am
grateful to you as a part of the channel of the eternal life for letting me
walk cheerfully like this today.
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