Today, August 6, marks the 78th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima by an atomic bomb dropped on the city by the United States during the Second World War.
Tokyo: America’s pathologies are, in my experience, more apparent (though no less troubling) from afar. The simultaneous release of the films Barbie and Oppenheimer resulting in the distasteful but hardly surprising “Barbenheimer” meme is a case in point: America’s twin obsessions of how it looks in the mirror and how it’s remembered in the history books have collided head on, leaving a twisted mess of wreckage – however harmless at this point – revealing more about our culture and ourselves than we care to admit.
As someone who has yet to see either film, I’ll withhold judgment on the filmmakers’ vision and their success or failure in realising it on the big screen. Like last year, I’m happy to report that I’m spending much of this summer in Japan visiting family, meaning my 11-year-old son’s grandparents and a whole host of welcoming uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, and neighbours.
These, it should be said, are exactly the kind of ordinary Japanese folks that director Christopher Nolan chose to leave out of his film about the “mastermind” of the atomic bomb, and precisely the people who suffered and died in the hundreds of thousands when the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I respect Nolan as a filmmaker and, once again, will withhold judgment until I see the film. Being in Japan – which has yet to set a release date for Oppenheimer, but is expected to later this year after the August 6 and August 9 anniversaries of the 1945 atomic bombings – I haven’t had the opportunity to see his film, which I certainly will see. I have, however, had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima on a number of occasions, first as a young journalist nearly 30 years ago, and last summer with my wife and son.
On that first visit in 1995, not long before the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, I had the great honour of interviewing Yoshito Matsushige – a photographer for the local newspaper who was just 2.7 kilometres from the hypocentre when the blast occurred at 8:15 that August morning.
As I wrote last August in Hiroshima’s Message, “His immediate reaction was to grab his camera and head toward the fire. But when he saw ‘the hellish state of things’ he couldn’t bring himself to take pictures. ‘It was great weather that morning,’ he said, ‘without a single cloud. But under that blue sky, people were exposed directly to heat rays. They were burned all over, on the face, back, arms, legs—their skin burst, hanging. There were people lying on the asphalt, their burnt bodies sticking to it, people squatting down, their faces burnt and blackened. I struggled to push the shutter button.’”
After what seemed like an eternity, Matsushige said, he finally brought himself to take two pictures of people, suffering horribly, who had gathered on Miyuki Bridge, about 2.3 kilometres from the hypocenter. Many were middle-school children, their bodies terribly burned. Someone was applying cooking oil to their wounds. He remembered asking them for forgiveness, wiping away his tears, and saying “I just took a picture of you as you are suffering, but this is my duty.”
In all, Matsushige snapped his shutter just seven times – the only photos taken in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that survive to this day. He died in 2005, at the age of 92, a dedicated peace activist who shared his story with people around the globe, including before the UN General Assembly.
West end of Miyuki Bridge in Hiroshima, morning of Aug. 6, 1945. This was taken moving in closer after the photo above, explained Yoshito Matsushige. That evening the injured were taken by truck to Ujina and Ninoshima Island. Photo: Yoshito Matsushige, Chugoku Shimbun.
Christopher Nolan has said his film – which was inspired by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus – is focused more on the moral dilemmas facing the scientist tasked with making a bomb that could end World War II than on making a war “documentary.”
“He [Oppenheimer] learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio—the same as the rest of the world,” Nolan told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd. “That, to me, was a shock… Everything is his experience, or my interpretation of his experience. Because as I keep reminding everyone, it’s not a documentary. It is an interpretation. That’s my job.”
Fair enough. But I can’t help thinking of the photographer Matsushige and what he told me over a quarter-century ago, while taking pictures of children whose clothes and skin were charred and hanging from their bodies when only a few moments prior they were walking to school on a clear August morning: “I just took a picture of you as you are suffering, but this is my duty.”
Below is an interview, also from 1995, with the then-mayor of Hiroshima, Takashi Hiraoka, who, coincidentally, was a journalist before entering politics and worked for the same newspaper as Matsushige, the Chugoku Shimbun. I remember him as a true gentleman in his mid-60s, at ease with his role in local politics and passionate about sharing Hiroshima’s “Never Again” message with the world.
Now 95, Hiraoka served eight years as mayor of Hiroshima before retiring in 1998. Since our interview, two more countries – Pakistan and North Korea – have joined the nine-member “nuclear club.” According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US, the UK, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have among them nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons, all of which are many times more powerful than the two bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945.
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Excerpts from the 1995 interview of the then-mayor of Hiroshima, Takashi Hiraoka, as published by The Japan Times Weekly, August 5, 1995. Used with the author’s permission
MJ: As mayor of Hiroshima, what is your message to the world on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing?
TH: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked not only the end of World War II but the beginning of the nuclear age. In this respect, the bombings were a tragedy for all of humanity. The people of Hiroshima have chosen to see their experience as a lesson for humanity. The 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is an excellent opportunity for us to look back on our past and think about our future.
Our message has always been that the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never be repeated. Now that we have reached the half-century landmark, this message should be re-emphasized, together with the call for nuclear disarmament. I see the 50th anniversary as an opportunity to come together with the people of the world so that we can work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Japan does not consider the use of nuclear weapons to be against international law. What is Hiroshima’s official stance on the deployment of nuclear weapons ?
As the first city to have experienced a nuclear attack, we firmly believe that the use of nuclear weapons violates international law. We believe this for two main reasons. The first is the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to restrict the destructive power of nuclear weapons. The second reason is the extraordinary cruelty of nuclear weapons. What I mean by this is that there are still many hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) suffering the effects of radiation exposure.
International law prohibits the deployment of weapons that inflict unnecessary suffering on human beings such as “dumdum” bullets and chemical weapons. The United Nations General Assembly has passed a number of resolutions prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons for the very same reason.
The Japanese government has three non-nuclear principles: not to produce, possess, or harbour nuclear weapons. We must continue to push the government to uphold these three principles. Unfortunately, the Japanese government does not have a strong stance toward U.S. foreign policy because it wants to maintain good U.S.-Japan relations. But I think the Japanese government should have a stronger stance toward the United States, particularly in regard to its nuclear-weapons policy.
In what ways does the city of Hiroshima influence the governments of other nations? How do you get your message across to the world?
Whenever a foreign country conducts a nuclear-weapons test, we immediately send a telegram protesting the test and calling for an end to further nuclear-weapons testing. We also have a program called the International Conference of Mayors for Peace Through Inter-city Solidarity. Currently, 404 cities in 97 countries are a part of the program and support our call for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. The purpose of the program is to contribute to lasting world peace by strengthening the ties between the cities of the world…
Hiroshima and Nagasaki have long been calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. How can this goal be attained when many countries—Iran and North Korea, for example—see having a nuclear-weapons program as the key to gaining respect on the world stage?
This is a very difficult problem, and one the whole world will have to work on together to solve. We must continue to tell the citizens and leaders of the world that possessing nuclear weapons will never be a positive thing. Governments justify their nuclear arsenals with language like “national security.” But what about global security?
Not only does nuclear war mean the annihilation of humans, but every time a nuclear weapon is tested, the environment is irreparably damaged. What we have to do is raise public awareness of the dangers. We can push for the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as soon as the negotiations are completed next year…
[Apart from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] … we must also enact a law or treaty that ensures nations which possess nuclear weapons will never use them against nations that do not. Such a treaty will ease the concern of nations that do not have nuclear weapons and, hopefully, lessen the incentive to initiate a nuclear-weapons program.
We must also have strict control over the materials required to produce nuclear weapons. Those countries currently trying to develop nuclear weapons feel they are not given equal consideration in international politics. So, on the one hand, we need strict control over nuclear materials, and on the other we have to address the needs and concerns of all the nations of the world in equal measure.
In the United States and Japan, there was a great deal of controversy over a commemorative stamp that was to be issued by the U.S. Postal Service. The stamp, which was never issued, featured a painting of an atomic mushroom cloud accompanied by the caption “Atomic bombs hasten war’s end, August 1945.” What kind of message do you think it sends the people around the world?
I have many reasons to believe that the statement “Atomic bombs hasten war’s end” is simply not true. By August 1945, Japan had neither the ability nor the will to continue waging war. The Japanese government was trying to find a path to peace as early as the spring of 1945. I believe the U.S. government was aware of this when it decided to drop the atomic bomb.
If the United States had wanted only to end the war, it did not have to use nuclear weapons. The United States possessed more than enough conventional weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to end the war. There are many different opinions as to why the U.S. government decided to drop atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would like to leave the answer to the scholars, but I do have a question. In 1945, President Harry Truman said that dropping the atomic bombs saved 250,000 to 500,000 lives. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan said dropping the atomic bombs saved one million American soldiers’ lives. In 1991, President George Bush said that several million lives were saved as a result of the atomic bombings. I wonder what this change means? I understand that the U.S. government uses these figures to justify the bombings, and that once a government has committed itself to a certain policy or decision, it does not want to change its stand.
But why do the numbers keep rising? Before the atomic bombs were dropped, many U.S. officials, including military personnel, argued that the bombings were not needed to end the war.
What is your reaction to the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to scale back its controversial Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.?
A couple of years ago the Smithsonian Institution had an extensive exhibition on World War II that included an exhibit on the plight of the Japanese Americans who were interned during the war. Due in part to this exhibit, the U.S. government admitted that its policy was a mistake and compensated the surviving Japanese Americans who had been interned. This led me to believe that the people at the Smithsonian Institution were committed to historical accuracy.
Now, the Smithsonian has yielded to political pressure and has missed an opportunity to thoroughly examine the history surrounding the bombings. I am disappointed with the Smithsonian’s decision, as are many people of conscience in this world. We could spend hours talking about whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justifiable or not, but such discussion is futile—it happened 50 years ago. What we have to do now is learn from the experience and make sure it never happens again. We are not asking for an apology.
Some Americans say that we are trying to make ourselves look like innocent victims, that we are indulging in our grief in an attempt to diminish the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As the mayor of Hiroshima I acknowledge that the Japanese military carried out a war of aggression and committed many atrocities. I have personally done a lot of soul-searching on this subject and have publicly apologized to those who suffered at the hands of the Japanese military. I would also like to add that if nuclear weapons are not abolished, the horrors that Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced will be experienced by others. The question is not if but when it will happen. The nuclear weapons that exist today are tens of thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Obviously, a tragedy brought about by a nuclear war today would be far greater than the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why do you think the Smithsonian Institution decided against displaying photographs of and items belonging to the victims of the bombings?
It seems many Americans are not willing to face the reality of what happened after the bomb was released, but for humanity that is where the lesson begins. Hiroshima’s mission is to let the people of the world know what happened on the ground—what happened to the people of our city. I first came to Hiroshima in September 1945, so I remember very well the devastation and the initial rebuilding of the city. What moved me most was the strength of the survivors. That strength has evolved into a determination to prevent others from experiencing the horrors of nuclear war.
They feel it is their duty to make a constant appeal for world peace and nuclear disarmament. This is their mission, and with this mission they have overcome their tragedy. They do not harbor any hatred toward the American people. Instead, they have chosen to work for peace. The people of Hiroshima have come to understand what peace means for the world. And as the mayor of Hiroshima, I am very proud of them.
A version of this article was originally published on the author’s Substack newsletter, ‘The First Person’.