Unleashed Voices: Lessons from Hiroshima / Part II
A copper vase, an atomic bomb and the rest is history—from which we can all learn so much in these parlous times. The second 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 bomb, code-named Trinity, was detonated on the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico, witnessed by its creator J. Robert Oppenheimer. Now, a film of his struggles has opened and the world is about to commemorate on Sunday, the 78th anniversary of its first use.
This Unleashed Voice 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
From Hiroshima to the island of Miyajima
We sailed from Ujina Port by hydrofoil and sped across the Seto Inland Sea, barely 10 miles southwest from Hiroshima to the island of Miyajima. To me it was like travelling from Hell to Heaven. From the boat we could see the Itsuku Shima shrine—a cluster of bright vermilion Shinto shrines connected to each other by covered walks built on pilings, just above the water.
The Grand Gateway or “O-Tori,” which symbolically marks the mundane world from the world of the spirits, seemed to be floating in the sea with its vermilion-lacquered, camphor pylons shimmering in the hot morning sun—well earning its renown as one of the three most beautiful sights in Japan. The shrine is devoted to the worship of the three daughters of Susano-o, who is the brother of Amaterasu, the sun Goddess—believed to be the divine ancestors of the imperial family. No one is certain of their age, but the shrines were already in existence in the year 800.
The island is believed to be inhabited by kami (spirits of the gods), and indeed we could feel the magic the moment we stepped off the hydrofoil.
The island remained largely untouched by the bomb whose low-yield destructive radius barely stretched beyond downtown Hiroshima. Miyajima has a quiet, almost divine atmosphere. As we walked through the charming town, sprawled at the foot of Mount Misen, dozens of small, white-spotted deer followed us through the narrow cobblestone streets lined with old Japanese-style houses topped with black tile roofs. (The kind one seldom sees in the big cities of Japan anymore.) In the shopping streets the curious deer were poking their noses into the quaint looking shops. One row of stores had robots in the windows making maple sugar cookies stuffed with almond paste. Another row of small cafes displayed shelves piled high with oysters and clams.
The deer were everywhere; sleeping in the shade of the trees and drinking from the creek that twisted its way through the park. In ancient times, they were worshipped as messengers of the gods and have long been considered sacred animals. One deer, obviously an ice cream addict, was munching happily on the left-over ice cream cones and cookies outside an ice cream parlor. His eyes bulged with satisfaction, but he was so fat I feared he might explode any moment. I tried to save his life by shushing him away, but he just looked annoyed and went on chomping. I bought a couple of carrots for a particularly handsome buck with a large set of fuzzy antlers.
He looked deep into my eyes. I coveted his long lashes. Since there was nothing else to do, the lovely buck followed us as we strolled through a primeval forest, crossed bubbling streams on vermilion moon bridges, climbed for a bit, then took a cable car to the top of Mount Misen and enjoyed a splendid view of the inland sea with some of its 3,000 islands floating around it. As we trekked up a stone path from the cable car to the very top, the forests came alive with little brown monkeys scampering all over and watching us from the trees.
At the aquarium, the famous sea otters swam around on their backs grinning and holding their shell collections on their stomachs for all to appreciate, and in the late afternoon we strolled through the shrines. The tide was coming in. The main shrine, built on stilts, seemed to be floating on the sea, casting a perfect vermilion reflection in the water, creating a mystical ambiance, almost tangible. Unlike the highly decorated Buddhist temples, the Shinto shrines are spartan, almost bare, except for the Shinto symbols and simple beauty of the architecture and polished wood. We stopped before the main sanctuary, closed off by a curtain, threw some money onto an offering table, clapped three times, and made a wish. Then I shook the joss sticks and one came out with a number corresponding to my written fortune. “You will have good fortune,” my interpreter read, “very good fortune and excellent fortune, which is not so good because the only place to go from there is down.”
August 7
I spent the next morning at a tea ceremony as practiced by the Ueda School. It had been organized by Shoko San who had studied tea ceremony in Tokyo. In the car she explained that the Ueda School had been originated over three centuries ago by the great Shogun in the Hiroshima area, Soko Ueda, who was excellent in battle and developed his sense of art to a high degree. His accomplishments included the architectural designing of great castles and unique gardens. The Ueda family inherited the tradition and have sought to perpetuate the beauty of the movement he created—called the world of “Chanoyu.” Our tea master, she said, would be a direct descendent of the Shogun. The family had lived in Fukuyama Castle until it was destroyed by the A-bomb. Since then, it has been completely rebuilt but is now a museum housing the family’s treasures.
We drove to the outskirts, stopped by an unpretentious wooden gate, followed a pebble path through a beautiful garden and entered the tearoom chamber where we removed our shoes. We were met by our host, a handsome young man with an aristocratic aura, warm eyes, and waxen skin. He wore a gray robe with a black sash and ushered us on a pebble path through a series of rooms to the ceremonial chamber. The walls were cracked by the blast, but otherwise the famous tea house and gardens remained intact.
We knelt on the matting and proceeded with a long, painful ceremony before getting a taste of the rather bitter green tea. We were shown the tea making utensils as if they were the crown jewels including a tea bowl or chawal, made by Soko Ueda himself in the 17th century. The tea bowl had a story. When the Shogun first showed it to another powerful man named Hideyoshi, the man said “satemo” which means “well, well.” So the bowl was called “well, well.”
Afterwards we visited the Shukkeien Garden which was also designed by Soko. It is a typical strolling-type garden of Edo Period—said to be a miniature representation of the scenery of Hsi-Hu lake in Hangchow, China.
Suddenly, we stumbled upon an old graveyard where the bodies of dozens of bomb victims had been found and dug up just one week earlier. A group of relatives stood quietly looking at the upturned earth. They had hung white banners and laid fresh wreaths. At least now they knew what had happened to their loved ones. It is hard to get away from the memory of death in Hiroshima.
August 9 Return to Hiroshima
It was our final day in Hiroshima, but it allowed me to revisit in my mind the first time I ever saw the horrors of this city and experienced it firsthand—those vivid memories of the day in 1949 that I witnessed the devastation of Hiroshima.
Since 1946, I had been living in Nanking, China where my father served as a Canadian diplomat. Our family lived in a large stone house previously inhabited by a prominent Japanese general during the occupation and “Rape of Nanking.” The house was still protected by iron doors, bunkers and a high wall spiked with jagged glass.
In the final phase of the Chinese civil war, I was evacuated with other diplomatic women and children. Bidding farewell to my father and fiancée, Seymour Topping, then a correspondent for the Associated Press, we flew over the Nanking wall in an Australian Air Force plane and landed near Shimonoseki in Japan. There, we boarded a train to Hiroshima where we changed and proceeded onward to Tokyo. Although we only had one hour in Hiroshima, the vision of the most searing destruction ever visited upon mankind left an enormous, abhorrent, lifelong impression on my mind.
My mother, sister Kjeryn, and brother Harmon joined me and some other passengers for a bus tour of the remains of Hiroshima, which four years after the blast was still struggling back to life. It was painfully obvious that the horrors of the atomic bomb did not end with the massive destruction of the moment. On both sides of the dirt road the earth was scarred with reddish scorches. Piles of ashes lay where buildings had once stood. Imprinted on my mind 38 years later is the incongruous sight of bright red and blue, blistered tiles scattered over the green grassy mounds.
We could not help but weep for the people, many with facial burns and twisted limbs who were gallantly attempting to repossess the land where their homes once stood. They were scavenging tiles for the roofs of their makeshift shacks and tending the wheat and corn fields fertilized by the bones and marrow of their relatives and friends. They seemed to move in slow motion as if still in shock.
Some stared vacantly or with pleading eyes at the passengers peering at them from the bus windows, as if we were creatures from another world—a world they had once belonged to until it vanished in one millionth of a second in white light. When I looked into their eyes, I knew for certain that nothing, nothing could ever justify this.
Restoration was in progress in some parts of the city but there were no tall buildings at the center. Only the skeletal remains and the hollow dome of the Hiroshima Industrial Promotion Hall, which later became the symbolic A-Bomb dome, loomed above the ruins. Looking at the devastation we asked each other how such a catastrophe could happen. Then we asked, whatever made the leaders of this small, island nation believe they could do battle with the American giant?
Returning to Hiroshima 38 years later, I was astonished to see that the city had miraculously risen from the ashes like the phoenix. But as I sat before the A-bomb dome during the ceremony and watched the throngs of relatives participate in the “Dedication of Rolls of Names of the Fallen A-Bomb Victims,” I knew that the scars still ran deep, not only on the bodies of the 340,000 surviving victims but in the heart of every civilized person. I could not hold back the tears.
The previous day we had talked with Miss Michiko Yameoko and Akihiro Takashi, who are among the “hibakushi” or surviving victims, dying slowly of radiation and other related illnesses. As they spoke movingly about the problems of the “living dead,” I realized that for them the millionth-of-a-second burst is without end. At the moment of the blast, too far from the epicenter, they are today the living symbols who were denied the privilege of a quick death by the fates, in order to make their fervent appeal to all mankind; to warn us to abolish nuclear weapons before we perpetuate a catastrophe beyond human imagination and possibly our own extinction.
Through their unspeakable suffering the surviving victims have become leaders of “New Age Thinking.” They are peacemakers that oppose all nuclear weapons and oppose all wars for any reason whatsoever.
It was the human mind that carried Japan to early victories and ultimate destruction. It was the human mind that split the atom and devised the weapon that ended the war and ushered in a new era for humans. Thus, total abolishment of nuclear weapons can also be achieved through a collective effort of the human mind. Wars can only be prevented by the wisdom of human beings.
History will long debate whether it was necessary to drop the bomb, but to prevent a reoccurrence the responsibility must be shared by all the warring nations. The bomb has had a pervasive effect upon the lives of an entire generation of survivors. The threat of extinction now hangs over us all. It is past time to change our mentality. It is time to give notice to the basic causes of total war rather than the instruments of war and eliminate both.
A Farewell
For our final evening, we dressed for a formal farewell banquet hosted by the Mayor of Hiroshima. We all sat on the floor on tatami mats around the outside of a table shaped like a staple while some geisha girls in beautiful ceremonial kimonos crept around on their knees on the inside of the staple to serve us the most exotic Japanese feast one could ever wash down with Saki.
The toasting began in earnest just after the fifteenth course. I was amazed by the dexterity of the mayor and other middle-aged officials who walked around on their knees, to make individual toasts to each guest while one of the geishas dutifully took Polaroid photos for the record. The whole evening—all 15 courses— was over by 8:30. Our Japanese hosts obviously had more insects and other delicacies than time.
They had to stick to the schedule no matter what. We opened the gift from the mayor and found our beautiful Dochu vase and wall plate which now reside in our living room and brings back meaningful but painful memories of Top and Audrey in Hiroshima and the horrors of a kind of war that must never be repeated.
End of Lessons from Hiroshima Part II by Audrey Topping
That is so kind of you Stephen … yes, Audrey is an extraordinary observer & commentator…it is indeed a privilege to give her voice !
that's what we AIM for....thanks, Kevin !!