Tag: Hiroshima

A living tapestry of peace and reconciliation (Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Alan O’Hare, a Seanchie (Celtic storyteller)

Rossville Street, Derry Peace mural
Mural in Derry, Northern Ireland. Image used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

As you reflect upon the visions of peace and reconciliation presented in this blog, I invite you to co-create a living tapestry that celebrates the voices of peace activists and serves as a beacon for others.

Focus now on the center of this limitless tapestry, where visitors from across the ages are eavesdropping on the conversations of teachers of peace. In their midst is a floating multidimensional puzzle that pairs of participants work on together.

What a meditative gathering it becomes as Thich Nhat Hanh, Elise Boulding, and Bishop Tutu move gently and playfully among the guests, offering pieces of the puzzle that have fallen to the floor.

As a band of international roving musicians begin playing, Nelson Mandela joins hands with Aung San Suu Kyi and invites other guests to join their dance of celebration and reflection. In moments, a circle of once-alienated sisters and brothers are singing so joyfully that puzzle solvers stop and join in.

On the rooftop is the entrance to an endless museum of art, co-created by prisoners of war and oppression, celebrating the human dream and spirit. In this world of peace, reconciliation, and harmony, standing alone in a corner are remnants of violence inside a dumpster. They await conversion into mulch for growing new forms of learning, creating, and healing. These remnants include photos, drawings, and scrapings of:

  • Fenced-in, starving prisoners from an endless corridor of concentration camps
  • Bombed-out images from Rwanda, Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, China, and more others than can ever be counted
  • Endless reams of plans and designs for weapons of destruction, cruelty and subjugation

From all of these terrifying remnants, we are reminded once again of the tragic, dehumanizing echoes of the past that can move us to learn new ways to be or not to be with one another.

Is this vision realistic, possible, or even desirable? The mission of the griots and other storytellers is to bear witness to the voices of the past and to move us to search among the endless possibilities for a more loving future.

We hope you will join us in pursuing a path to world peace and reconciliation. Please share your stories and dreams at engagingpeace.com.

Alan O’Hare, LifeStoryTheatre.org

Reaching for reconciliation, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm


By guest author Tomoko Maekawa

On August 9, when I was at Nagasaki Peace Park for the memorial ceremony for the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, I had the opportunity to listen to Clifton Truman Daniel and help interview Ali Mayer Beazer.

These men, with their direct links to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, were invited to Japan by Masahiro Sasaki, the president of the Sadako Legacy. Sasaki is the older brother of the late Sadako Sasaki, who died of radiation after the Hiroshima bombing. Mr. Sasaki wanted to reconcile with them and, presumably, allow them to search for reconciliation with the atomic bomb survivors.

When speaking to the international media, Truman’s grandson said he could imagine the moment of 11:02 and could see people dying while hearing the sirens and offering silent prayers.

Currently a freelance editor living in Chicago, he expressed gratitude to the people of Nagasaki, especially the atomic bomb survivors who had shared their experiences with him. He had heard as many as 20 survivors’ talks while visiting Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. He said that his feelings against nuclear weapons had grown stronger during this trip.

After watching a documentary including comments from his grandfather, who served on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing flights, Beazer commented,  “I’ve come to Japan to hear the survivors’ experiences and spread it to the world.  I’d like to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons in the world.”

It must have been emotionally difficult for Clifton Truman Daniel and Ali Mayer Beazer  to participate in the memorial ceremony at Nagasaki’s Ground Zero. However, their courage allowed them to overcome their emotional turmoil, and they dared to face the outcome of their grandfathers’ duty.

In order to avoid repeating mistakes, we should not forget the past, but at the same time reconciliation is important to go forward. Now is the time for the third generation, who might not have experienced war themselves, to do so. The future of our planet is in their hands.

This visit from two men from a second generation, with their courage, comments, willingness to reconcile, and feelings of responsibility as human beings, have given me a brilliant hope, which is much shinier than Olympic gold medals.

Tomoko Maekawa, with edits by Kathie Malley-Morrison

Reaching for reconciliation, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

December 7, 1941, August 6, 1945. August 9, 1945.

Burning ships at Pearl Harbor
Burning ships at Pearl Harbor. Image in public domain

How should these days be remembered? Only for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? As days that must live in infamy? As just another set of dates and names in a violent world history?

Or can we view them as signposts at the end of an old wrecked highway that has given way to a newer path, one that was carefully constructed to avoid siren calls for punitive justice, one that leads instead towards reconciliation?

Today we begin a two-part series on reconciliation by Tomoko Maekawa of Nagasaki University, who provides a personal story from the 67th  anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

By guest author Tomoko Maekawa

During the excitement of the Olympics in London in August 2012, other moving scenes were observed quietly in Nagasaki, Japan. Clifton Truman Daniel and Ali Mayer Beazer, grandsons of men who were directly involved in the bombing, participated in the memorial ceremony.

Clifton Truman Daniel, 55, is a grandson of the late U.S. President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Ali Mayer Beazer, 24, is a grandson of the radar man, Jacob Beazer, who boarded both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombers and probably decided when to drop the bombs. I personally talked with him when an NBC TV reporter asked me to act as interpreter.

On August 8th, Ali watched an old documentary made by the broadcasting company 27 years ago to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing. The documentary contains interviews with three men — Thomas Ferby, a bomber on the Hiroshima flight; Calmat Behan, a bomber on the Nagasaki flight; and Ali’s grandfather Jacob Beazer, the radar man for both flights.

In interviews at the ceremony, both of these grandsons expressed a commitment to fighting against nuclear weapons.

Tomoko Maekawa, with edits by Kathie Malley-Morrison

Twice exposed to nuclear radiation

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Beth Balaban

More than 60 years ago, the first atomic weapons were dropped on Japan. Today about 200,000 Hibakusha–survivors of those attacks–live as reminders of the nuclear horror that devastated the country.

Fukushima radiation dose map
Image in public domain

Among the multitude of lives thrown into turmoil by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a few Hibakusha were exposed to radiation for a second time.

Eighty-one-year-old Saichi Ouchi is one of only eight people in history to be twice exposed to such high levels of nuclear radiation. In 1945, a few days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima, military medic Saichi entered the city to tend to the injured and was himself exposed to high levels of radiation.

After the war ended, he returned to his hometown in the sparsely populated Yamakiya district of Kawamata to take over the family rice farm. He and his wife Tsugiko raised four children who brought them three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

After suffering three strokes over the last few years, Saichi remains sequestered at a nursing care facility in Iitate, Fukushima–a small village just 24 miles north of the Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Saichi’s eldest son, Hidekazu, has now taken on the responsibility of leading the family. Unable to carry on their generations-long tradition of farming due to the contamination of the land, Hidekazu works as a truck driver to provide for his parents and children.

As Japan slowly heals from a terrible catastrophe, the Ouchi family, too, must find a way to recover.

Over the next few weeks, I will be making a film that will follow the Ouchi family as they reassemble their lives, bringing to light a universal human experience– the importance of family–amid the rarest of misfortunes.

Beth Balaban
Co-director/Producer
Principle Pictures