Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons: a "Hiroshima Centennial Call"

Remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall,
explosion epicenter from the US nuclear attack on August 6, 1945.

This summer will be the 75th anniversary of the days in August, 1945, when the United States used nuclear weapons against Japan.

It is possible that, considering 2020 is the 75th anniversary, more people will mark this day than in ordinary years. But I fear that it will still only be a "blip" on the screen of most people, and will, in itself, not offer much help in the overall endeavor of ridding the world of these terrible weapons.

Perhaps the best way to make use of the 75th anniversary would be to call attention to something that is perhaps much more sobering: the 100th anniversary. Because there is a very real possibility that the 75th anniversary will give way to the 76th . . . and the 76th to the 77th . . . and on and on, until we find ourselves facing the Hiroshima Centennial -- one hundred years of a world living under nuclear terror --  and realizing we have still been helpless to guarantee that it will never happen again.

Thus, the real question becomes not "how will the anniversary be marked in 2020?" but "are we still going to be in the same situation twenty-five years from now?"

The time is now to issue a Hiroshima Centennial call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons from the world by 2045. And then work as hard as we can toward that goal. That would offer the hope of an anniversary recognition that all of us would be grateful to participate in.

A Ceremony to Commemorate Hiroshima: "Remember the past to commit oneself to the future."

(Originally published in August, 2012, as "Our Dark Beacon: Prayer Vigil for Hiroshima and Nagasaki" on the Protest Chaplains of Chicago blog.)

Water Tower Monument
Chicago, Illinois

August 5, 2012, 6:15 PM
(Corresponds to 8:15 AM in Japan, August 6th, the exact time of the first bomb and the time of most commemoration services.)


To remember the past
is to commit oneself to the future.
To remember Hiroshima
is to abhor nuclear war.
       -- Pope Paul II


ORDER OF SERVICE

Ringing of singing bowl twice (one for the bereaved families and one for the children)

Welcome and Opening Words by Joe Scarry from No Drones Network and Rev. Loren McGrail from Protest Chaplains of Chicago

O God, tender and just
the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
cut through our denial
that we are capable of destroying the earth
and all that dwell therein.
Forgive us---
and help us always to remember.
We must remember because this must never happen again.
We must remember because you would have us live
in harmony with each other,
seeing the joy of your creation in our
sisters and brothers.
Holy God, God of all ages,
lead us from death to life,
to the stockpiling of hope and possibilities, and of love
rather than the stockpiling of weapons, or of stones to throw,
or of hate.

Opening Ritual

(Lighting first candle and placing it in the fountain) Sixty-seven years ago tonight, morning in Japan, a single B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. This incredible blast destroyed most of the city and killed over 60,000 people almost immediately. Another 80,000 more died in subsequent months and years from the deadly radiation.

(Lighting second candle and placing it in the fountain) Three days later, another B-29 dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing about 20,000 people almost immediately and about 60,000 more in subsequent months and years from radiation.

From Mayor Matsui Kazumi’s Peace Declaration (2011)

“The time has come for the rest of us to learn from all the hibakusha and what they experienced and their desire for peace…

This description is from a woman who was sixteen at the time: “My forty-kilogram body was blown seven meters by the blast, and I was knocked out. When I came to, it was pitch black and utterly silent. In that soundless world, I thought I was the only one left. I was naked except for some rags around my hips. The skin on my left arm had peeled off in five-centimeter strips that were all curled up. My right arm was sort of whitish.

Putting my hands to my face, I found my right cheek quite rough while my left cheek was all slimy…Suddenly I heard lots of voices crying and screaming, ‘Help!’ ‘Mommy, help!’ Turning to a voice nearby I said, ‘I’ll help you.’ I tried to move in that direction but my body was so heavy. I did manage to move enough to save one young child, but with no skin on my hands, I was unable to help any more…’I’m really sorry…”

Now, we must communicate what we have learned to future generations and the rest of the world. Through this Peace Declaration, I would like to communicate the hibakusha experience and desire for peace to each and every person on this planet. Hiroshima will pour everything we have into working, along with Nagasaki, to expand Mayors for Peace such that all cities, those places around the world where people gather, will strive together to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020…

The accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and the ongoing threat of radiation have generated tremendous anxiety among those in the affected areas and many others. The trust the Japanese people once had in nuclear power has been shattered. From the common admonition that “nuclear energy and humankind cannot coexist,” some seek to abandon nuclear power altogether.

Others advocate extremely strict control of nuclear power and increase utilization of renewable energy…

Message From Hiroshima

Dear all,

We appreciate very much the fact that you are holding a special gathering commemorating the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima on August 6.

The nightmarish days following the Tsunami had nearly every person in Japan filled with fear of truly catastrophic scenarios, and actually the situation surrounding the Fukushima Nuclear Plants still remains very precarious and requires utmost caution.

Although one of the nuclear plants has been restarted, the mass demonstration of anger at the government’s decision is becoming more and more visible and intense. We hope these rising waves against nuclear power will be united around the globe so that we can advance steady steps toward creating a nuclear-free way of life.

On August 6 in Hiroshima, we are going to hold, beside many other events and conferences, the 9th NO DU gathering; this year we aim to draw people's attention to the fact that next March will mark the 10th anniversary of the start of Iraq War by announcing that we will hold a commemorative conference in Tokyo around mid-March next year in order to call into question again the military use of nuclear waste, that is, DU weapons, as a wedge problem relating to the whole nuclear cycle.

We hope you will join us in such reflection, too, and we wish you great success in your activities on August 6 and further on.

With friendship and solidarity,
Kazashi Nobuo
Director, International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) Hiroshima Office

Song: This is My Song

Excerpts from Blessing the Bombs, a speech by Father George Zabelka

“The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus… What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies…

To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and a priest. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian Church that has asked for it---that has prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and justify the unthinkable…

As an Air Force chaplain, I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang, “Praise the Lord” and passed the ammunition…As Catholic Chaplain for the 509th composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar...”

Excerpts from The Drone Summit, the Lunchbox and the Invisibility of Charred Children by Hugh Gusterson

I kept thinking about the lunchbox.

The lunchbox belonged to a schoolgirl in Hiroshima. Her body was never found, but the rice and peas in her lunchbox were carbonized by the atomic bomb. The lunchbox, turned into an exhibition piece, became, in the words of historian Peter Stearns, "an intensely human atomic bomb icon."

The Smithsonian museum's plans to exhibit the lunchbox as part of its 1995 exhibit for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II enraged military veterans and conservative pundits, who eventually forced the exhibit's cancellation.

Everyone knows, in the abstract at least, that the atom bomb killed thousands of children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But any visual representation of this fact - even if done obliquely, through a lunchbox, rather than through actual pictures of charred children - was deemed out-of-bounds by defenders of the bombing.

Today, we must still make an enormous effort to bring forward visual representations of the victims of U.S. attacks, such as in the remote borderlands of Pakistan. Brave activists like the Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights -- a Pakistani lawyer who represents civilian victims of US drone strikes in Waziristan (a tribal area on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan) -- are making sure this happens.

In Japan after World War II, the US occupying authorities made it illegal for Japanese citizens to own any pictures of the aftermath of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In Japan, Akbar would have been locked up by General MacArthur.

Excerpt from The Drone and the Bomb by Ed Kinane

“The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki belong always before us. The agony of those two cities must remain our dark beacon.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki wasn’t so much about targets as about audiences. We---or rather, the very highest reaches of the U.S. government---annihilated a couple hundred thousand nameless, unarmed, undefended human beings to warn the world: “Don’t mess with us; we run things now…”

Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen echo Hiroshima/Nagasaki. With its new cutting edge technology, the Pentagon still trots out the old myth: the Reaper drone is all about “saving our boys’ lives.”

And Bomb-like, the Reaper proclaims: “If you defy us, wherever you are, we will hunt you down and kill you.” Déjà vu.

Like Japan’s hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, the Reaper’s civilian casualties in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen fail to matter. Few ask: What’s the human cost? What’s the blowback?”

Excerpt from Twilight of the Bomb a speech prepared by Jay Kvale

“This week an international conference on nuclear disarmament is being held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to promote reductions in arsenals, given impetus by the stories of some of the last survivors of the bombings.

In addition to actual warheads, the problem of securing loose nuclear materials is also being addressed since 1,600 tons of enriched uranium and 500 tons of plutonium, enough to make tens of thousands of bombs, are still scattered around, mostly in the former Soviet Union…

Teams of specialists expect to have more than 80% of loose nuclear material from the world’s 129 research reactors secured by 2014…The Non-Proliferation Treaty has limited the number of nations with nuclear weapons to nine.”

Song: Lead Us From Death to Life (World Peace Prayer)

Litany of Remembrance

We remember each child born since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, the miracle and sacredness of each living being.

We remember the image of the first mushroom cloud of the Trinity atomic test rising above the earth in New Mexico.

We remember the words of Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, “I have become death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

We will remember “ Little Boy” and “Fat Man”---the bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945.

We remember the 300,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died as a result of the atomic bombs. May they rest in peace.

Sixty-seven years, the people of the earth remember the terrible destructive power and violence latent within us and made manifest in the bomb.

We will meet this power of destruction by drawing on the rich sources of our human and spiritual traditions and the deep wells of faith, beauty, humor, and creativity of the human spirit in order to nourish a culture of nonviolence and peace.

We will remember the cost to all life of our commitment to death.

We will remember the indigenous people, on whose land we mined for uranium, tested our nuclear weapons, and now fill our nuclear waste.

We will remember the plants and animals of the earth, whose waters, soil, and air we contaminate in the name of “security.”

We will remember our children and grandchildren and all beings of the future whose toxic radioactive inheritance we cannot keep from them.

We will remember our nuclear history so that we will not repeat it.


Closing Ritual

Children at the Yamazato elementary school in Nagasaki gather to commemorate the 1,300 students who were killed when the atomic bomb fell on their city. As part of their ceremony, they pour water on a stone monument symbolically quenching the thirst of the bomb’s victims and offering a prayer for their souls.

Tonight, we gather at this fountain in front of Chicago’s Water Tower, to remember not only those students but also all the people killed by these atomic bombs, all the civilians killed by our new drone weapons; we remember and pray for all their souls. You are invited to put your hands in the water---let it pour through your fingers in memory of all those whose thirst could not be quenched. In the fountain, you will also find some stones. You are invited to take one as a remembrance of these lives, of this day and your commitment to work for a nuclear free world and peace.


Liturgy for First Annual Prayer Vigil for Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Our Dark Beacon was created by Rev. Loren McGrail and Joe Scarry.

For more information on this service or other anti-war or militarism information or events contact:

Rev. Loren McGrail at lorenmcgrail [at] gmail.com or visit Protest Chaplains of Chicago on Facebook or go to Awake to Drones for writings on drone warfare and surveillance by area faith leaders.

Joe Scarry at jtscarry [at] yahoo.com for information on the No Drones Network.


WORSHIP RESOURCES

Cover Image by Laurence Hyde: woodcut print from the novel Southern Cross, a book about atomic testing in the Pacific

from Christian Prayer by Rev. Loey Powell, Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ.

Excerpts from Mayor Matsui Kazumi’s Peace Declaration (2011).

Message from Hiroshima: Kazashi Nobuo, Director, International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) Hiroshima Office.

Excerpts from The Drone Summit, the Lunchbox and the Invisibility of Charred Children by Hugh Gusterson at Truthout | Op-Ed.

Excerpts from Blessing the Bombs, a speech by Father George Zabelka, Catholic Chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, the atomic crew. Speech was given at Pax Christi conference in August 1985.

Excerpts from The Drone and the Bomb by Ed Kinane, an anti-militarism activist on Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website July 28, 2012.

Excerpts from Twilight of the Bomb a speech prepared by Jay Kvale for Hiroshima Commemoration ceremony at Lake Harriet Peace Garden in Minneapolis, August 6, 2012. Published on War is Crime.org.

Litany of Remembrance adapted from Pax Christi, St. Joseph’s Watford way, Hendon, London

Photograph of the Closing Ritual at the Chicago Water Tower, August 5, 2012, by Meghan Trimm, Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Chicago

A Ceremony to Commemorate Hiroshima: "People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury"

(Originally published in February, 2015, as "Good Friday 2015: People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury" on the Chicago Nuclear Injury Action Group blog.)

Good Friday 2015 Walk for Justice in downtown Chicago:
Remembering the 70th anniversary year of the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.
(Image courtesy FJJ.)

Our new group participated in the April 3, 2015, Good Friday Justice Walk sponsored every year by the 8th Day Center for Justice in Chicago.

This year's theme was "Give Light and People Will Find the Way." We hosted Station 6: "Falling."

Below is our prayer, followed by references about the sources we used.


Reader 1: The 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki falls this year. Despite the facts of nuclear injury -- which are undisputed and taught in every school – we allow our government to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons on alert, capable of destroying the world at the flip of a switch.

Why do we allow this?

Is it that we don't know? Or that we are unwilling to see?

Response (all): Awaken our hearts. Give us hearts capable of seeing.

from Hiroshima No Pika

Reader 1: The testimony of thousands of people about the reality of atomic bombing is preserved in books, art, and film. These materials are available in every library in the United States. Listen to these words from popular children's books . . . .

Reader 2: "There were crowds of people fleeing the fire. Mii saw children with their clothes burned away, lips and eyelids swollen. They were like ghosts, wandering about, crying in weak voices. Some people, all their strength gone, fell face down on the ground, and others fell on top of them. There were heaps of people everywhere."

[p. 14, Hiroshima No Pika [The Flash of Hiroshima], by Toshi Maruki]

Response (all): We see you have fallen. We don't have the strength to lift you up. But we will not turn our backs on you.

Reader 3: "Every school became a hospital for the badly injured. I heard people screaming and moaning in pain, and there was a horrible smell of burnt skin."

[p. 24, My Hiroshima, by Junko Morimoto]

Response (all): We can hear you are in pain. We can smell your injuries. We don't have the power to restore your health. But we will NOT forget you.

Shin's Tricycle

Reader 4: "I stumbled over our fallen house and found Mother digging in the rubble. There was Shin, pinned under a big beam. He was too weak to talk but his hand still held the red handlebar grip from his tricycle. That night he died, ten days before his fourth birthday."

[p. 15-20, Shin's Tricycle, by Tatsuharu Kodama; Noriyuki Ando, ill. ]

Response (all): We will keep Shin's tricycle. We will remember Shin.

Reader 2: "Mii watched as her mother examined her father. 'He's hurt badly,' she said. She untied the sash from her kimono and wrapped it around her husband's body as a bandage. Then she did something amazing. She lifted him onto her back and, taking Mii by the hand, started running."

[p. 12, Hiroshima No Pika]

Response (people on the right): Who will lift us up?
Response (people on the left): We are living in the dust of the nuclear threat.
Response (all): Help us lift each other up, for we cannot rise alone from the dust.

Response (people on the right): How will we see the way?
Response (people on the left): The truth has been hidden by smoke and ash.
Response (all): Give light and people will find the way.

Reader 4: "Maybe if enough people could see Shin's tricycle, they would remember that the world should be a peaceful place where children can play and laugh."

[p. 30, Shin's Tricycle]

Response (all): Thank you, Tatsuharu Kodama, for giving light. The people will find the way.

Junko Morimoto

Reader 3: "War, the atomic bomb . . . They are the crimes of adults who forget the precious value of life. I believe it is the duty and the responsibility of adults to teach our children the importance of not repeating these mistakes and to give them the heart to care for and value all life on earth."

[afterward, My Hiroshima]

Response (all): Thank you, Junko Morimoto, for giving light. The people will find the way.

Reader 2: "Every year on August 6 the people of Hiroshima inscribe the names of loved ones who died because of the bomb on lanterns. The lanterns are lit and set adrift on the seven rivers that flow through Hiroshima. The rivers flow slowly to the sea, carrying the lanterns in memory of those who died."

[p. 44, Hiroshima No Pika]

Response (all): Thank you, people of Hiroshima, for giving light. The people will find the way.

Annual commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima.

About Hiroshima No Pika [The Flash of Hiroshima], by Toshi Maruki

Hiroshima No Pika on Amazon

Maruki Toshi (1912-2000) and Maruki Iri (1901-1995)

Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels

About Shin's Tricycle, by Tatsuharu Kodama (Noriyuki Ando, ill.)

Shin's Tricycle on Amazon

Shin's tricycle in the Hiroshima Peace Museum

About My Hiroshima, by Junko Morimoto

My Hiroshima on Amazon

"80 year old artist paints the horror of atomic bombing live"

FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: Kurosawa's "I Live in Fear" (Nuclear Danger: Three Ways of Talking About the Unmentionable)

Unable to get nuclear weapons out of his mind: unreasonable?
(from I Live in Fear by Akira Kurosawa)

How do we talk about something that has been branded "impossible to talk about"?

After profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I've begun to think this is the fundamental problem of nuclear danger. Akira Kurosawa tackled the problem in his film, I Live in Fear (1955).


Courtroom drama

People love crime shows, police procedurals, and courtroom dramas. Wouldn't it be great if we could put nuclear weapons on trial?

Kurosawa does the next best thing in I Live in Fear: he sets up a court case pitting a family against a father, Nakajima, who is so terrified of the possibility of another nuclear blast that he is acting in ways they fear will tear the family apart. They bring a case in family court to have him declared incompetent so they can get control of the family finances.

The court is thus required to answer the question: Is the man's fear of nuclear weapons rational or irrational?

Nested within the court proceedings -- i.e. the activities of the three people acting as family court mediators and the family members who are parties to the suit -- we see several (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to talk about nuclear danger, the failure of diverse forms of discourse.

The first form of discourse to crumble before nuclear danger is family deliberation. After decades of looking to the ever-practical father -- factory owner, business man, always planning, always weighing the risks, literally wearing belt and suspenders -- the family members become unable to understand what he is thinking. They singly and collectively just can't wrap their heads around his concern about the risk stemming from nuclear weapons, fallout, and radiation.

Family council in I Live in Fear.

And so the matter goes to court. As the court mediators carry out their careful, logical deliberations, it's clear they all consider Nakajima's concerns valid . . . up to a point. But ultimately they conclude "he's grappling with a problem far too big for any individual," and rule against him.

One of the mediators, the dentist, remains troubled, and goes in search of facts. (He is, after all, a scientist.) He reads the book, Ashes of Death, about nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout, and is so stunned by what he learns that he tells his son, "If the birds and beasts could read it, they'd all flee Japan." And yet . . . he goes along with the decision to declare Nakajima incompetent.

Conflict escalates and Najakima collapses. Near the end of the film, a doctor in a psychiatric hospital reviews the records of the case and the condition of the patient and muses, "I feel anxious. Is he crazy? Or are we, who can remain unperturbed in an insane world, the crazy ones?" Significantly, it is Nakajima who ends up locked in a cell.


Religion ("Hell")

Kurosawa offers an alternate tool for communication in I Live in Fear. At many junctures he reminds us that we have in "hell" a ready metaphor for what nuclear weapons threaten.

As you watch I Live in Fear, you can practically feel the heat as everyone in the film wipes the perspiration induced by the summer weather from their brows, and Nakajima frenetically rattles his fan. Nakajima's complexion is oddly dark, as if his skin has ashes rubbed into it. The family business is, it turns out, a foundry -- a scorching site of molten metal and noxious fumes -- and one that, in fact, finally goes up in flames near the end of the film. In a confrontation with the dentist in the street, Nakajima says, "I'm out of my mind with fear. I keep thinking about the H-bomb, but there's nothing I can do. It's a living hell." Nakajima describes the man who offers to provide land in Brazil as a safe haven for the family as "a Buddha come to save us from hell." In the film's penultimate scene, a now maniacal Nakajima cringes before a blazing summer sun and warns, "The Earth is burning!"

"The Earth is burning!"
(from I Live in Fear)

Suggestions of fire and heat aside, I wonder if the real hell Kurosawa wants us to remember from  I Live in Fear is Nakajima's inability to communicate with his family about nuclear danger. His frustration is palpable as he calls a family meeting and throws himself on the floor, begging that they join him in leaving Japan.

The film ends with the dentist descending a ramp towards indistinct lower levels of the psychiatric hospital . . . while Nakajima's mistress walks up the opposite ramp, cradling their infant child in her arms, toward the light-filled upper stories.

It is perhaps a sign of the authenticity of this film that it doesn't suggest the solution is easy. As reported by Donald Richie,

Kurosawa himself finds confusion in the film. "When we made it, the entire staff sensed our confusion. No one said very much and everyone worked hard and it was very hard work indeed." He kept remembering, he says, [collaborator Fumio Hayasaka's] words: "The world has come to such a state that we don't really know what is in store for us tomorrow. I wouldn't even know how to go on living -- I'm that uncertain. Uncertainties, nothing but uncertainties. Every day there are fewer and fewer places that are safe. Soon there will be no place at all." (Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, p. 112)

Which brings us to Fumio Hayasaka . . . .


Friend-to-friend

The part of the story of I Live in Fear that I find most interesting is the way it came to be made, and the interaction of the actual people involved.

The idea for the film came out of conversation between Kurosawa and his long-time collaborator, the composer Fumio Hayasaka. Kurosawa describes a visit to Hayasaka:

[Hayasaka] was quite ill . . . and just before we had had word of the Bikini [H-bomb] experiments. When he said to me that a dying person could not work, I thought he meant himself. But he didn't, it turned out. He meant everyone. All of us. The next time I went to see him, he suggested we do a film on just this subject. He was quite taken with the idea and that is how the film began. (Richie, p. 109)

In other words, I Live in Fear was the result of two close friends who asked the question, "How can we create something that really matters, considering the danger nuclear weapons pose to the world?"

Hayasaka and Kurosawa

The film's lead is the frequent star of Kurosawa films, Toshiro Mifune. When I see him in this film playing against type -- i.e. not playing a strutting samurai as in Yojimbo or Seven Samurai, but a stooped and scared old man -- I imagine him putting everything he has into the mission set forth by Hayasaka, and taken up by Kurosawa.

Similarly, every time I see the film's dentist character, played by Takashi Shimura, I can't help thinking of the role played by Shimura in Ikiru [To Live] -- an ordinary bureaucrat who learns he will soon die and so determines to do one small thing to make a difference.

And so, one by one, a wider and wider circle of friends and colleagues took up the problem. After production, another cast member said: "Well we worked hard, didn't we? But from now on living our parts will be the more difficult." (as reported by Kurosawa Richie, p. 112)

And so here, as in my previous post, I propose that "We need powerful stories . . . and conversations!"

Which way?
(from I Live in Fear)

See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and the Horror of Forgetting

Have you ever noticed people have
a way of noticing what they want?
 - from Hiroshima Mon Amour

In the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, a Japanese man asks a French woman, "What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?" She sets out six propositions:

The end of the war. I mean completely.

Astonishment that they dared do it,

and astonishment that they succeeded.

And the beginning of an unknown fear for us as well.

And then indifference.

And fear of indifference as well.

No simple answers. And it just gets more complicated from there . . . .

Scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour is a provocation. It challenges us to wrestle with the real possibility that we will only eliminate nuclear weapons when we invest our whole personalities -- our hearts and our souls -- in the project.

In recent days I have been profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

So now we come to Hiroshima Mon Amour. It is a film jointly produced by French and Japanese studios, set in Hiroshima, with a French director, a Japanese leading actor (who himself starred in an earlier Japanese film about Hiroshima), a French leading actress (playing the role of an actress in a movie-within-the-movie set in Hiroshima), featuring a long opening sequence about the atomic bombing of Japan, and continuing with a tale of forbidden love set in Nazi-occupied France, all in the the context of an affair fated to lapse in a matter of a few hours . . . .

If you are an anti-nuclear activist, you might be forgiven for objecting to the way that the tragedy of Hiroshima may seem to be elbowed into the background by not one, but two, compelling love stories in this film. I know I certainly struggled with such feelings when as I first watched it.

Later as I listened to several interviews with the director, Alain Resnais, I began to warm to his approach. What I heard him saying was: providing the facts about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to people is necessary but not sufficient; to have an impact, we must deal with people as complex, feeling beings, beings in a perpetual whirl of sensing, forgetting, and remembering.

Put another way, people are, at every second, electing where to direct their gaze. That face? The tale of irrational love? (Yes? Never?) Do I like this? Abhor it? Don't ever want to let it go? Will I feel what I want to feel? Or what I should feel? Will I think what I don't want to think?

Real. Genuine. Sordid. Artificial. Forced. Noble.

I can forget it all if I want to.

Hotel room scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

The film scholar François Thomas speaks of "interlaced combs" - the way past and present intertwine in Hiroshima Mon Amour, the way remembering and forgetting intertwine, and ultimately the way personal trauma and global trauma do, too.

In the opening sequence, we hear a woman's voice recount what she has learned about Hiroshima and the atomic bombing, telling about museum exhibitions, victim photographs, newsreels, and other evidence, testifying over and over, "I saw it" -- alternating with the a man's voice contradicting, "You didn't see."

Museum scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

Having recently visited Hiroshima, including the exhibits at the Peace Museum which are explored in detail in the course of that opening sequence, I can begin to understand both the forcefulness of her testimony and the immediate assault of that voice challenging, "What? What have you seen?"


I will carry two statements from Hiroshima Mon Amour with me:

First, the simple plea of the Japanese man, in his elementary French, to the woman:

Reste á Hiroshima avec moi.

Second, the woman's avowal:

I tremble at forgetting such love.

See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: Are We All "Children of Hiroshima"?

Return visit to the destroyed city in Children of Hiroshima

At a time when the momentum is growing for the elimination of nuclear weapons, it is worth asking what it is to be "children of Hiroshima."

In recent days I have been profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Today I want to talk about Kaneto Shindo's film, Children of Hiroshima (1952).

I have been struggling with what to say about Children of Hiroshima. Certainly the film makes the point that nuclear weapons, and war, are bad. But it does a great deal more.


Beauty

Children of Hiroshima tells of a visit back to the city by a young teacher, several years after the bombing of Hiroshima. The film contains extensive footage of the destroyed city, including of iconic locations such as the Industrial Exhibition Hall (with its distinctive dome) and the Peace Memorial (under construction at that time).

There is much in the film that is very painful to look at.

But there is also beauty -- people, landscapes, and the quality of the cinematography itself.

Children of Hiroshima is one of the films that made me a lover of filmmaker Kaneto Shindo's work, and part of that is the beauty that he shares with us.

Certainly Shindo does want us to work against nuclear weapons and war, and one of the ways he empowers us is by giving us the kind of beauty that helps us want to go on living.


Hope: "I love these shoes!"

There is a moment in Children of Hiroshima in which a little boy exclaims about a new pair of shoes he has been given, "I love these shoes!" -- and it is at once so ancillary and yet so authentic that I have thought about it over and over.

It occurs in the midst of an episode of enormous moral and emotional complexity. The visiting teacher has discovered a former employee of her father; the employee is now horribly scarred by the bomb and reduced to begging, and his entire family has been wiped out except for a grandson in an orphanage. The teacher proposes to take the boy back to the distant community in which she now settled, to live in a real home together with her and her aunt and uncle. She urges the grandfather to come, as well. The grandfather knows he cannot go, and for a long time cannot bear to part with his grandson, either. Ultimately, the shoes - pristine white sneakers -- are the grandfather's parting gift to his grandson.

Throughout this episode, I found myself arguing with the teacher: "Why are you making it so difficult for the old man? Who are you to interfere with the way things are?" 

And I found myself arguing with the filmmaker: "What do you accomplish by showing the relatively minor trials of individual people trying to make a new life -- a building being rebuilt, a marriage proposal to a woman with a damaged leg, one couple allowing their fifth child to be adopted by another couple? Shouldn't you be focusing on the big question of making sure nuclear war doesn't happen again?"

The minor trials of individual people trying to make a new life . . . making sure nuclear war doesn't happen again . . . . Is there really a choice to be made between the former and the latter? The more I thought about those sneakers -- a child's simple joy over new shoes -- the more I realized that you can't get the latter without the fierce hope involved in the former. They're all tied up together.


Remembering and forgetting

I also had an argument with the filmmaker about the number of places in the film in which people said, "I can't remember" or "I'm just trying to forget."  Shouldn't the point of the film be to say "Never forget!" . . . ?

It was only when I pondered this problem that I recalled that there are abundant examples of remembering in the film -- such as the improvised memorial that the teacher places on the ground at the site of her former home . . . or the pictures of parents that the bride reverences before departing to her new home . . . or the images of the son and daughter-in-law that the old grandfather informs, "Everything is done" . . . or the account that the little boy has recorded in his copy book at the orphanage -- or, in fact, the scars and semi-healed wounds and destruction that surrounds the people everywhere they look.

I guess I wanted it to be "either/or" but the truth is that it's "both/and."

Like beauty and like the topic of hope, the topic of remembering and forgetting is essential to the truth of the film, and to the experience of activists working to abolish nuclear weapons. We won't live if we can't manage to forget, and yet we won't live if we don't manage to remember.


The possibility for beauty and hope and remembering and forgetting to exist -- for all of us -- in the world after Hiroshima: this is, ultimately, the subject of Children of Hiroshima.

A year and a half ago, I returned from a visit to Hiroshima and began writing a series of posts by asking, What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?"

I would now add the question, What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'children of Hiroshima'?"


See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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The Marukis' Antiwar Paintings: A Lesson in Collaboration

Toshi and Iri Maruki

Yesterday I began profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Today I'm continuing with thoughts on one of those films: Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima (Michael Camerini, 1986).

Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima is a beautiful portrait, above all, of collaboration. In it, we meet the husband-and-wife team, Iri Maruki (1901-1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912-2000). I have long been an admirer of their Hiroshima panels, and of Toshi Maruki's book for children, Hiroshima no Pika (The Flash of Hiroshima). But I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was by the story of how these two artists work together.

One of the reasons I loved Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima is that it features long sequences of Iri and Toshi Maruki sharing a studio, working to complete their wall-sized artworks. Iri works standing, tracing figures onto the paper spread across the floor, using a brush with a long extension handle. Iri kneels, adding ink washes with a broad sweep.

The Marukis were trained in different styles -- traditional, expressionist, water-based ink vs. modern, realist, oil -- and in the film we get to see some of the ways they learned to synthesize their gifts and complement each other, and to do so without working at cross-purposes. We learn in the film that their shared vision sustained the Marukis, and that they concluded that, "If two people are alike, even oil and water will mix." What makes the film particularly interesting, however, is that in it the Marukis also tell us, very candidly, that they had to do a lot of hard experimentation, painting and re-painting over each other's work, before they found the right blend. Their successful collaboration came about despite a fair dose of "selfishness . . . stubbornness . . . dissatisfaction . . . ."

The film also describes another aspect of the Marukis' collaboration that I found instructive: their annual rhythm of devoting three seasons of the year to their respective art, and one season of the year (e.g. winter) to work together on a collaborative project.

from the Marukis' Hiroshima panels

The Marukis spent decades creating and promoting their panels documenting the terrors of war - Hiroshima, the Rape of Nanking, the Holocaust, and the atrocities on Okinawa. They did a lot of thinking about war and other types of violence, like the violence we do to our environment. "At a deep level, the violence we do in war and the violence we do in peace are the same," they say in the film.

Near the end of the film, speaking about their series of Hell panels, Toshi says that she and Iri came to understand that hell is not just a place for the great evildoers of history, like Hitler, but includes a very wide circle of people indeed. Ultimately, she concludes:

We are in hell
because we have been unable
to prevent war.

If all life on earth perishes
in a nuclear war,
no one will be saved;
we will all be responsible.

This brief film and the example of the Marukis is a powerful tool for all of us seeking inspiration for our collaboration with like-minded people to become able to prevent war, and to make sure life on earth doesn't perish in a nuclear war.


The story of the Marukis is also told in a book by one of the film's producers, the scholar John Dower: Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki.

An animated video version of Hiroshima no Pika is available for viewing on Kanopy.


See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: On Tanabe's "Message from Hiroshima"

Film series on Hiroshima on Filmstruck

There are five films related to Hiroshima featured on Filmstruck right now:

Children of Hiroshima (Kaneto Shindo, 1952)

Hiroshima (Hideo Sekigawa, 1953)

Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)

Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima (Michael Camerini, 1986)

Message from Hiroshima (Masaaki Tanabe, 2015)

I've raised the importance of lifting up the experience of Hiroshima (see list of links below) and it's worth emphasizing it again. I've decided to post some brief notes on each of these films (plus one additional film, I Live in Fear (Akira Kurosawa, 1955), also available on Filmstruck) to my blog. Today I'm starting with Message from Hiroshima.

Filmmaker Masaaki Tanabe as a little boy.
(Image from "Remembering Hiroshima Through Cinema".)

Message from Hiroshima

Having recently visited Hiroshima, and walked around the exact ground featured in Masaaki Tanabe's Message from Hiroshima, I was deeply impressed by his film concept and how Tanabe carried it out.

Tanabe's concept is to encourage the viewer to connect to the people living in the neighborhood around the epicenter of the bomb -- as people. To do this, he combines testimony of survivors, old family photographs, footage of the places as they appear today, and computer simulations of the neighborhoods before the bomb struck.

What Tanabe has done here is so important -- getting beyond the well-known photographs of the destroyed buildings of Hiroshima, and the statistics, and enabling us to think of the individual victims as they lived their lives.

A shoe store . . . a temple . . . people playing and fishing in the river . . . games of hide-and-seek around the big ginkgo tree . . . women shopping for kimonos . . . and wigs . . .

I thought of having a meal with people in Hiroshima at an oyster boat restaurant on the river . . .

I imagined myself weaving through alleys full of children playing marbles and menko cards . . .

 . . . past the barber shop . . . the movie theater . . . the seafood store selling clams and seaweed and dried bonito . . . the public bath that stayed open until midnight so the shop owners could visit after they closed for the night . . . the mom-and-pop candy store (the one that sold the model airplanes).

After an hour watching the film and listening to George Takei's narration, I have a much more powerful sense of what one of the speakers means when he says, "Many souls of the dead call out, "I'm here!'"

(Watch trailer for Message from Hiroshima.)

(Read more about Message from Hiroshima: "Remembering Hiroshima Through Cinema" on the Golden Globes website.)


Additional posts in this series

The Marukis' Antiwar Paintings: A Lesson in Collaboration

Are We All "Children of Hiroshima"?

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" and the Horror of Forgetting

Nuclear Danger: Three Ways of Talking About the Unmentionable


Additional links to related posts

The Fire and Blast of Hiroshima: Why Are We Still Hiding It?

Can We Confront the Fire and Blast of Nuclear War and Still Remain Human? (Watching "Grave of the Fireflies")

"People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury"

An extensive list of resources on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on this AFSC event page.


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NUCLEAR WEAPONS BAN TALKS: With Japan at the Table (Hopefully)

Ground Zero, Hiroshima --  . . . photo taken during
World Nuclear Victims Forum -- November, 2015

Ever since the vote last October on holding nuclear weapons ban negotiations, I have been particularly puzzled by Japan's vote against the resolution. I posed a general question -- who would possibly vote "NO" to banning nuclear weapons? -- and this question applied to no country more than it did to Japan.

I realize now that a "no" vote on resolution L.41 doesn't preclude participating in the negotiations themselves. And the more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense that Japan would vote "no" on the resolution, but will likely participate in the negotiations.

The country's failure to show up for the preparatory meeting for the nuclear
weapons ban negotiations raised eyebrows in Japan. (Source: FNN)

The US pressured its allies to vote "no" and boycott the negotiations. By voting "no" on the resolution, Japan respected the request of the US (without changing the outcome of the vote).

Japan has a unique position in the world vis-a-vis nuclear weapons. As I think about it, it feels very likely that the leaders of Japan would feel an obligation -- bound by honor, in fact -- to be present at the table.

When I looked closely at the statement by Japan following the vote, I saw several things that were consistent with this view.  The statement begins by asserting: "as the only country to have ever suffered atomic bombings, Japan has been devoted tireless efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."

Second, it identified a fairly narrow rationale for its "no" vote: Japan "repeatedly pressed to have consensus-based decision making in the resolution, however it is regrettable that our basic position has not been reflected."

Third, it gave a nod to the US position: "we are concerned about the fact that this recommendation of the disarmament community would undermine the progress of effective nuclear disarmament."

Account (with illustration) by
survivor of Hiroshima bombing

Taken together, these elements -- Japan's unique position, its preference for consensus, its concern about undermining other efforts -- seem to me to point toward eventual participation in the negotiations themselves. The first issue is paramount. The second is not a deal-breaker. The third leaves maximum wiggle room -- especially as the failure of the nuclear weapons states to honor their NPT Article VI obligations is more and more openly talked about. ("Effective nuclear disarmament" is a coded phrase that has, in fact, become eviscerated.)

The statement by the Japan's foreign minister is suggestive: "Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida suggested willingness to participate, saying Japan should assert its stance towards 'a world without nuclear weapons.' But he said the decision will be made by the government." ("Japan remains cautious on UN nuclear ban talks")

See also: "136 Japanese legislators join global nuclear disarmament statement" and "EDITORIAL: Progress toward a nuclear-free world must keep moving forward."

Meanwhile, an important moment is coming up Saturday: the sixth anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The intensifying pressure on the government of Japan over its handling of nuclear issues can be expected to contribute to a feeling that Japan must be at the table for the UN nuclear weapons ban negotiations.

China has said it will participate in the talks. It would be difficult for Japan to justify allowing talks to go forward with China at the table while Japan, itself, sat on the sidelines.

In the last few days, there have been new flareups over North Korean missile tests. It's important to remember that this is part of an ongoing conflict involving the US, South Korea, and North Korea. Japan surely wants the problem to be resolved. That simply adds motivation for Japan to be at the table for the nuclear weapons ban negotiations (negotiations which North Korea voted in favor of, it should be remembered).

February, 2016 at Mar a Lago: Prime Minister Abe
experiences diplomacy, Donald Trump style

A wildcard in all this is what Prime Minister Abe thinks about Donald Trump. My best guess is that Abe (and his colleagues) are not reassured by the Trump record to date. This is a reason for Japan to explore every possible option to reach solutions jointly with all available counterparts.

Assuming Japan does participate in the negotiations, it has consequences for other countries who did not support the original resolution. How will it be possible for a country like Canada, or Germany, or France to refuse to participate if Japan is at the table? If Canada participates, it suddenly makes Australia's refusal to participate that much more conspicuous. If Germany participates . . . . And on and on . . . .

The nuclear weapons ban negotiations at the UN will be greatly enhanced by Japan's participation. I hope I'm right in believing Japan will be at the table.


UPDATE March 15, 2017: "Austrian foreign minister calls on Japan to join nuclear ban negotiations" - "Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has expressed hope that Japan will join negotiations later this month on a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. . . . 'Japan, as the world’s sole atomic-bombed nation, has a moral voice and can give an invaluable opinion on the issue of nuclear disarmament,' Kurz said in a written interview ahead of the first round of negotiations that begin March 27 in New York."

MORE:

Who would possibly vote "NO" to banning nuclear weapons???


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Obama's (and Putin's) Missed Opportunity at Hiroshima

At Hiroshima, Barack Obama missed the connection between the number of WW II deaths, 60 million, and the killing power of a single nuclear exchange today.

Barack Obama's Hiroshima speech was a missed opportunity.
(Please retweet this message.)

Obama's Hiroshima speech was well crafted and seemed to hit all the right notes. But it said, essentially, "war and violence is a bad thing." It was as if he was trying to dilute the importance of the nuclear threat by mixing it in with human suffering since the dawn of time. By talking broadly about peace and the need for a moral awakening, Obama sidestepped the urgency that exists for him to act.

Speaking of World War II, Obama said, "In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die." Yes, that was a time of horror --take a minute to let the number 60 million sink in.  (If you've got a strong stomach, read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder.)

But, if anything this should have alerted Obama to point to the difference between then and now.

Then, massive violence was being carried out by large states taking advantage of the fragility of smaller states. Today, that pattern continues in many ways, but the scale is just not the same.

The August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombings were, more than anything else, an announcement by the United States, principally for the benefit of the USSR, that the way of doing violence was going to be different in the future.

Today, we may not be seeing kinetic (currently unleashed) violence on anything like the scale that consumed Europe and other parts of the world and resulted in 60 million deaths. Instead, thanks to technology, we have potential (waiting to be unleashed) violence -- nuclear devastation just the push of a button away.

Obama knows it. Putin knows it. The arsenals of the US and Russia are far and away the greatest threat to all of us. I fault both of them for missing the opportunity at Hiroshima. You should, too.

I've spelled out this logic in this post: OBAMA: First stop, Hiroshima; second stop, Moscow. Here's what Obama's speech at Hiroshima should have been about:

Putin and Obama: #talk

If they won't act, we must.


Related posts

That's right . . .  just take a map of your local metropolis, spread it out on the floor, and put the whole family to work learning the geometry of nuclear strike using high quality wood-crafted educational aids.

(See Obscene Geometry: The Hard Facts about Death and Injury from Nuclear Weapons )



Perhaps most startling of all, the area affected by 3rd degree burns would extend far beyond the city limits to encompass towns as far north as Waukegan, as far west as St. Charles, and as far south as Crete, and as far east as Gary, IN.

(See What Would a Nuclear Weapon Do to Chicago? (Go ahead, guess . . . ) )







Do we have a way to immerse ourselves in the experience of what the use of those nuclear weapons would really mean -- prospectively -- so that we can truly cause ourselves to confront our own inaction?

(See Stop engaging in risky behavior )







There are three centers of power that will impact nuclear disarmament: the President, the Congress, and the people. One of them will have to make nuclear disarmament happen.

(See Countdown to U.S. Nuclear Disarmament (With or Without the Politicians) )








The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech in Hiroshima, Japan, as recorded by The New York Times:

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.

Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.

It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires have risen and fallen. Peoples have been subjugated and liberated. And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.

The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.

In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.

Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.

How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.

Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.

Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.

Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.

The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.

That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.

Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.

Some day, the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.

And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed people and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.

We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.

And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.

For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.

We see these stories in the hibakusha. The woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here because he believed their loss was equal to his own.

My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.

That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.

Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.

The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.