Unleashed Voice: Lessons from Hiroshima / Part I
A copper vase, an atomic bomb and the rest is history—from which we can all learn so much in these parlous times. The first of two parts.
The so-called tactical nuclear weapons that Russia has threatened to use against Ukraine range up to 1,000 kilotons. ‘Little Boy,’ the weapon dropped to utterly devastating effect on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, had a yield of barely 15 kilotons. On July 6, less than one month earlier, the first (test) bomb, code-named Trinity, was detonated on the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico, witnessed by its creator J. Robert Oppenheimer. Now, an extraordinary film of his struggles has opened, with an astonishing opening weekend worldwide box office approaching $175 million….and the world is about to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon on a human population.
This Unleashed Voice, the first of two parts, is a cautionary tale—an essential document to understand the horrors that would await any use of such a weapon today.
By Audrey Ronning Topping
Some 360 years ago when Nagaaki Asano established himself in Hiroshima as a feudal lord, after having been transferred from Wakayama, he brought with him an artisan by the name of Kiyouji Dochu who was to serve as court craftsman. Dochu produced hand-made copperwares with such skill and elegance that he won the favor of the lord. With the lord’s encouragement he made remarkable progress in terms both of quantity produced and quality. The Dochu craft was passed on from generation to generation and continued to this day, enjoying a unique position amongst the special products of Hiroshima. The copper artifacts produced in the 17th century and those produced by craftsmen four centuries later are enduring—indeed have endured wars, revolutions, and all but untouched by an atomic bomb. But not its owners. Just one lesson that Hiroshima can teach us.
This is the story behind two beautiful DOCHU: a hammered copper vase inlaid with two brass carp and a triangular DOCHU wall plate showing the famous Itsuku Shima shrine in the shadow of Mt. Fujiyama.
The pair was presented to my late husband Seymour Topping, the longtime New York Times journalist, and me by Takeshi Araki, the Mayor of Hiroshima on the 42nd anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, which, after a second was dropped on Nagasaki, brought an end to World War Two.
Warning: the DOCHU artwork is beautiful, but this story is not.
Much is taken from my diary written at the time.
August 5, 1987
We were met at the airport of the City of Hiroshima with flowers and a battery of Japanese paparazzi. Despite the long trip, Top was alert and granted interviews to a group of television and newspaper reporters. A stretch limo waited to take us to the ANA Hiroshima Hotel. We spent the evening preparing, both emotionally and physically for the ceremony tomorrow which, with typical Japanese efficiency, had been timed to the minute. Breakfast at 7:00 AM, sharp. At 7:30 we were hastily guided to the Peace Memorial Museum to view the gory details of the devastation caused by the atomic-bomb.
Our group consists of five journalists representing the leading newspapers from the five Allied Powers that fought against Japan during World War ll.
Victor Afanasiyev, tall, lanky, blue-eyed editor-in-chief of Pravda from the Soviet Union
Xi Lin Sheng from China’s People’s Daily
Digby Anderson, an English columnist representing the Times of London
Jean-Marie Dupont of Le Monde from France
Seymour Topping, managing editor of The New York Times, from the United States
Also, some Japanese journalists from Asahi Shimbun together with eager escorts representing our hosts in Hiroshima. We were welcomed by the director of the museum who began by telling us he was attending a middle school near the center of the city at the time of the “big blast.”
The director proceeded to describe the horrors. He saw hundreds of his fellow students blown apart, but astonishingly escaped without injury. Not even left with radiation sickness. He claims it was a miracle and feels he was spared to warn the rest of the world about the horrible effects of atomic weapons.
This was Hiroshima before the attack, a thriving metropolis of 255,000 people:
Enlarged black and white photos depicted the explosion….
The bomb exploded about 1,900 feet above ground. The mushroom cloud rose and swirled up to 29,700 feet—higher than Mt. Everest. All the buildings around the hypocenter were destroyed. Huge blow-ups displayed the effects of the blast on human bodies—amazing but horrible photos. Life size wax figures depicted the victims, dead and half-dead, mostly women and children, running through the smoke with shredded skins dripping from naked bodies. Many had been blown off the ground for hundreds of feet. The blast stripped off clothing, tore off skin, sucked out eyeballs, and caused an explosion of internal organs. Thousands of victims at the hypocenter were vaporized. The most incredible thing was a human shadow imprinted on granite steps. It was the only a trace left of the Sumitomo Bank. Estimated deaths were about 100,000. By the end of December 1945, it had risen to 140,000. Forty-two years later some victims are still dying of radiation-related sickness.
We were all aware of the devastation before we came to Hiroshima.
But standing where it had happened and still feeling the vibrations left us stunned. The Japanese photographers were disconcerting. They were everywhere, taking pictures of our faces as we looked at the record of horror. The paparazzi focused on Top and me because we were the only Americans. We were the monsters who’d dropped the A-bomb. The whole scene was extremely disturbing. I felt strongly that something was missing.
Walking back to the hotel I asked the Chinese representative, Mr. Xi, if he felt it too. After all, China had suffered more than any other country from the war and the Japanese occupation. I told him, “After the war, my father was a Canadian diplomat in Nanjing. My family lived in the house of a Japanese general who participated in the Rape of Nanking.” He nodded and looked at me with a hint of terror in his eyes.
“I could not help remember that today,” I went on, “because in the museum there was not even a mention of the invasion of China or the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I think we should also remember why the bomb was dropped. We didn’t start the war. We only finished it.”
He said nothing but looked at me as if I was being very rude to even talk of such a thing when we were guests of the Japanese. Later, Top told me he had experienced the same reaction. When he told the director that they should include a section on what started the war, he received a cold stare.
Afterwards we met with some university professors involved in radiation research. Some A-bomb victims described their terrible ordeals. I was particularly shaken by the story of Miss Michiko Yamoaka, a woman about my age, who is one of the “Hiroshima Maidens,” sent to the U.S. for medical help in the 1960s. Her face and body had been distorted by keloid burns. She had 27 operations, and now looks beautiful except for some burn scars and a slightly distorted chin. After the blast, she was buried in the wreckage, surrounded by flames for several horrifying hours until found by her mother who got some soldiers to rescue her.
“My face was bloated like a balloon.” she said in a quiet voice. Only her troubled eyes held a trace of the horror she experienced. “The scene was just hell. Oh, bodies of dead without heads, a mad mother holding a dead baby, a completely skinned child, eviscerated remains. I have not been able for 42 years since then, to eat sausage.” I could not hold back the tears when listening to her, but I quickly recovered when the paparazzi focused on me. I felt embarrassed and exploited.
Another victim, a fascinating man, Akihiro Takahashi, with skin so smooth and yellow, he resembled a character out of the “No Opera.”
He recalled what had happened to him on “that day.” He was 14 years old and had just arrived in the schoolyard, less than a mile from the blast center. He was with his classmates. They were blinded by the tremendous explosion. The sun was totally blotted out. He lost consciousness. When he woke up, perhaps ten minutes later, the smoke was beginning to rise. His classmates, dead and dying, were “scattered here and there.” He was badly burned: “The skin of my arms and legs was peeled off and drooping like rags leaving skinned muscles exposed in reddish color: I felt a terrible heat on my back and several fragments of glass stuck in my body; the pain was unbearable.” He crawled on his hands and knees over the wreckage to the river. “Then came a black rain.” He made it to a medical station but lingered on the verge of death for a year and a half. His recovery was slow and painful. He often wished he had died with his classmates. His right arm and hand are still bent and crippled with keloids. Growing from the index finger of his right hand is one of the weird phenomena of radiation, a long, sinister black fingernail resembling a snake. He still suffers from hepatitis which accounts for his yellow skin, and radioactive contamination.
But he spoke clearly: “Desperate thoughts have haunted my mind to the effect why I still have to stay alive with such a burden of pain?” Yet in spite, or perhaps because, of his suffering he had a comforting look of compassion and peace in his eyes as he spoke:
“For realization of total abolishment of nuclear weapons, I believe that everybody in the world should regard each other as the same human being and recognize that individuals and nations have a high inter-dependence existing among all of them.”
Then he made a veiled reference to the military fanaticism that existed during the war.
“A rigid adherence to narrow minded nationalism and a higher evaluation upon the sovereignty of a nation over sovereignty of a single community of mankind will never produce peace. If people stick to such ideas, there will be no hope to accomplish peace in this world. We, the sufferers of the atomic bomb, oppose the use, experimental test, research, development, production, mobilization, and storage of any kind of nuclear weapons including those used in space. We are also opposed to any war for any reason whatsoever.”
Later, at lunch, I told him I felt he was chosen to live so he could show the rest of us that we must abolish all nuclear weapons. He smiled warmly and thanked me for recognizing what he believed was true. “There has to be a reason,” he said. “Of my 60 classmates only 10 of us survived. Now I feel I have a mission to make future generations heed their dignified silence.”
In the afternoon we met formally with Takeshi Araki, the Mayor of Hiroshima City—“to exchange views.”
After much bowing, he presented us with some books. Later there was a stand-up reception and buffet dinner hosted by the mayor and prominent city officials. I talked to a young Japanese interpreter who reminded me of a fact I had forgotten: “More people were killed in Tokyo than in Hiroshima. 200,000 people were burned to death in Tokyo during five consecutive nights of incendiary bombing by Americans that only ended the day before the Hiroshima A-bomb blast.” He said that Tokyo had been destroyed by the fires. The people became living torches and those that managed to reach the shore were boiled to death in the ocean. All this is too horrible to contemplate.
Top was asked to say a few words which he did with feeling. He has an unusual ability to say the right thing at the right time. He congratulated the Director and the Mayor on the exhibition but added that it would be more effective if the Museum told the whole story, beginning with the Japanese occupation of China, the “Rape of Nanking” and the unprovoked bombing of Pearl Harbor. No comment. They scowled but bowed low when we left. I was completely wrung out, physically and emotionally.
August 6,1987
5:30 A.M.
This is the day the first A-bomb was dropped on this city at 8:15 am, precisely 42 years ago….(now 78 years ago). All the flags are at half-mast. In one hour, we will go to the Peace Memorial Park where ceremonies will be held to remember those who died and to pray for peace. There is not a cloud in the sky. Just like on “that day.” It is going to be a long, hot, trying day.
9:30 A.M.
This morning was one of those unforgettable experiences that in retrospect we are grateful we went through it, but never want to experience again.
We walked to the Peace Park with our Japanese hosts. Throngs of people were walking the same way. In the streets, demonstrators were shouting slogans from passing trucks. Students were handing out pamphlets and flowers to be laid on the memorial. I found that I was more in sympathy with the views of the “Hiroshima Citizens Group” than with the views of the establishment hosting us. I was impressed by one leaflet that read:
“Please listen to what we Citizens of Hiroshima have to say....We recall that 42 years ago Hiroshima suffered two kinds of violence. One was the violence perpetrated under the ‘Emperor System’—an emperor-centered militarism that rounded up citizens of Hiroshima, a military city, to go off and trample over countries of Asia. The other was the violence of the first atomic bomb to be dropped on humanity. If our cries of ‘No More Hiroshima’ are to have meaning, they must signify a stand against both these kinds of violence.”
Bravo! This was the first time we had seen or heard reference to the Emperor System that I believe was responsible for the war in the first place. The war with the U.S. had occurred at the end of a 15-year expansionist war, a “holy war” waged by Japanese Imperialism in Asia.
Over 5,000 people attended the peace ceremony ‘that day’ in 1987. Three years earlier, Jimmy Carter had laid a wreath on the same spot.
We sat in the honored guests’ seats. During the opening a JAL plane circled the park. It may have been coincidental, but the timing was perfect, it gave me the shivers, and I thanked God I had not been in the same place 42 years ago.
After the “Dedication of Rolls of Names of the Fallen A-bomb Victims,” Top and the other four foreign journalists, all dressed in black suits with white silk flowers on their lapels, laid wreaths of yellow and white chrysanthemums. The music was dramatic, I could not help but think of the irony of the situation: 42 years ago. Captain Seymour Topping was in the Infantry serving in the Pacific. The day the A-bomb was dropped, he was sailing with his platoon towards Japan on an American destroyer scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan, a mission, the odds predicted, few Americans would have survived. And now, this sad day, he is paying homage to the victims of the horrible weapon of mass destruction that ended the war.
During the Silent Prayer and Peace Bell which occurred at precisely 8:15, the exact time the bomb had exploded, the atmosphere vibrated with the silent screams of the dead and dying. We all, except for most of the stoic Japanese who remained calm, wept openly. We foreigners couldn’t help it. We not only wept for the victims, but for all of humanity. That it could have ever come to this.
After a succession of messages from high officials, including the President of Japan, thousands of peace doves were released with a great thunder of wings. The white birds flew into the blue skies and momentarily blotted out the sun. Later when Top was asked to comment, he said: “I noticed that there were some hawks circling in the sky above the doves which reminded me that we must always keep the vigil.”
The Hiroshima Peace Song was sung beautifully by a children’s choir. After the closing at 8:45 am, thousands of relatives of the victims, many crippled, came to lay flowers on the Memorial Cenotaph: “Let all the souls here rest in Peace; For we shall not repeat the evil.”
We were back in the ANA Hiroshima Hotel by 10:00 for a tea break. I don’t know whether it is the saving grace or the downfall of mankind, but I do know that the human mind can only face the burdens of humanity for a short time. It was time to reflect.
Truly …. You have captured the spirit of this weeks Unleashed Voices with Audrey Ronning Topping…. Bravo!
Thank you for these memories shared by those journalists visiting some years ago to give perspective to the “Oppenheimer” film in theaters now; so very well received. I am privileged to learn about the personal memories offered by those on the receiving end of the “bomb” (have yet to see the film although I suspect it is similar to the documentary more easily accessible to me). Somehow I imagine it is a bit skewed; even Oppenheimer knew not the impact the atomic bombs would have on the immediate and long term future of the people whose nations battle for sovereignty. The words of those visitors more closely aligned to the timing of the events are priceless. Did the Japanese citizens deserve such horrendous consequences for Pearl Harbor? How did it all begin? When will it end? Certainly not in the budget of the USA which allots more 💰💰💰to the production of such weapons than any other item in our projected and current expenditures. Such a sad commentary on humanity. 🥲