.JPG)
it is hiroshima day. the japanese observed one minute’s silence at 8:15 this morning. on august 6, every year, to commemorate all the war victims, i'd think of hiroshima, and then the red carps i saw in a pond of a hotel garden in hiroshima. i was six back then. at the time we lived in kokura, kyushu, the southern part of japan, but we spent every spring holiday in kyoto, where we are from and a big house that belonged to my mother’s family still could accommodate us. one spring holiday, my parents came up with an idea of stopover in hiroshima en route to kokura from kyoto; decided to take me and my brother there. we were all to see what happened to our country during the war. i’ll appreciate my parents’ decision forever and ever.
in hiroshima, we went on a guided tour of the city’s now preserved damaged sights. that was utterly shocking to me as a child. the morning after the day of dazed and confused, i at last felt easy, aimlessly watching red carps swimming in the small pond of our ryokan (traditional japanese inn) while my parents were checking out of it. since that morning, i’ve never forgotten about those red corps and hiroshima. we all should not forget that in 1945 enola gay, an american B-29 bomber, dropped the little boy, an atomic-bomb, on hiroshima today, and three days later, nagasaki was destroyed by another atomic-bomb (of which, i learned, original target was in fact kokura).
in hiroshima, we went on a guided tour of the city’s now preserved damaged sights. that was utterly shocking to me as a child. the morning after the day of dazed and confused, i at last felt easy, aimlessly watching red carps swimming in the small pond of our ryokan (traditional japanese inn) while my parents were checking out of it. since that morning, i’ve never forgotten about those red corps and hiroshima. we all should not forget that in 1945 enola gay, an american B-29 bomber, dropped the little boy, an atomic-bomb, on hiroshima today, and three days later, nagasaki was destroyed by another atomic-bomb (of which, i learned, original target was in fact kokura).
those people who started the war were completely stupid. as a pacifist, i am very proud of our “three non-nuclear principles.” like the great japanese designer, issey miyake, i, too, am a little more hopeful, thanks to mr obama’s anti-nuclear stance, than last year. but, i am frustrated at the fact that some people still fail to learn. not only nuclear weapons, but any war is stupid. we all know that war is never the answer, no?
1 comment:
Total insanity... thanks for sharing these memories. My father used to tell me also stories from the war, he then was a father of 2 of my older brothers, I never forgot those stories.
Post a Comment