She melted away
President Biden visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum yesterday (May 19, 2023). He was there for 40 minutes; President Obama spent 10 minutes during his visit. What did Biden get to see? What was rushed through or skipped? I share what I saw on my visit to Hiroshima museum in 2004.
Walk through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and it traces the history of the war, the role of the Japanese, how they forced people to pay for the war by giving up their rights, how the Koreans were brought in for slave labor, and the four options that the allies had to choose from to make Japan surrender as Japan started losing the war in the Pacific. The A-bomb was one of them. (more about the 4 options in Part 3).
Albert Einstein pushed for the bomb and gave his support to the scientist who lobbied for it. The U.S. spent an enormous sum of money to develop the bomb and public opinion was questioning the decision. Why then was the option of the bomb selected when there were three other options on the table? According to the documents in the Museum, it was because this option gave the US supremacy over Japan. Any other option would have meant sharing the power with Russia. And, because using the bomb would justify making the bomb and its expense. Is that a historical fact? That is the Museum’s version.
No warning was given to Japan. They were asked to surrender, and they refused. But they were not warned that if they do not surrender, the A-bomb would be dropped on them. Would they have surrendered if they were forewarned? Historians can debate that.
Why were they not forewarned?
Could this devastation have been avoided?
And no sooner had the bomb dropped than Russia leaped in and attempted to wrestle control of Japan. Then the second A-bomb was dropped, and Japan surrendered to the U.S. after which US forces occupied Japan. When the Commission reviewed the dropping of the A-bomb, it concluded, “Had there been no war, there would have been no bomb.”
And that was that!
Are we sorry for what we did? Are we remorseful? Have we apologized? Not that I know of.
And what happened after the bomb was dropped?
Keep walking through the museum and you will find out. For 6 years, the British (a US ally in the war) imposed complete censorship in Japan. Did you know that? I didn’t. Our lives are full of pockets of ignorance. Censorship! Censorship of writing and publication.
No one was allowed to write about the bomb.
No one was allowed to tell the awful story.
No one was allowed to say it the way they saw it.
No one was allowed to express his or her horror.
No one was allowed to scream out over the plight of the victims, the maimed, the blinded, the burnt, the orphans.
Their cries were not heard. Only the official version was related. People in other parts of Japan did not know what had happened, except for the official version.
My silent screams of outrage gave me a pounding headache. This is a tragic chapter in the history of humanity. In the same war, in the same period, when the Allies took over Germany and freed the prisoners in the concentration camps, German citizens were brought into the camps to reveal to them what the SS had done to the Jews so that there would be no denying of the atrocities that took place, and so that the truth could be seen and told as it was. And yet on a parallel track, Japan was denied that right.
You must pause; you cannot just walk by onto the next exhibit. You need to absorb what you have just learned, take a moment to reflect, maybe look for answers that aren’t there, or just out of sheer respect for the victims, pause.
Today, the museum is very crowded and full of little children. Why are children brought here? What are they told? What goes through their minds? As I moved on to the section, which has some of the more gruesome details and the sad personal stories, I noticed that the children had been kept behind. They don’t need to see what I was looking at. I didn’t see any Americans, well maybe just a few, just lots and lots of Japanese, and Koreans.
The only building remained standing, as Hiroshima was leveled.
As I walked through the museum, I picked up bits and pieces of history most of which was news to me. This was not the narrative I was told in history classes in school.
P.S. May 20, 2023. Biden’s visit to Hiroshima did not make front-page news. New York Times featured it on page A4, Wall Street Journal on Page A7.
Read Part 3: What I Believed; What I Know Now
And read:
Part 1: Hiroshima. What Have We Done!
Part 3: What I Believed Then; What I Know Now
Part 4: Objective Attained
Part 5: The Healing Begins
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