Today is 6 Aug, the day commemorated in Japan, Hiroshima especially, to remember the dropping of the atomic bomb. Seventy years. I first visited the Hiroshima Peace Park and memorial museum 30 years ago. History just rises up and hits you in the face sometimes.
I have often spoken about the visit to this museum as being pivotal in shaping the academic path I have pursued. Although I was always interested in politics, as a student WW2 had always been 'history', something to read about but that was about it. Spending a week in Hiroshima however, it became living history. It wasn't just the artefacts in the museum, as horrific as they were, but encountering survivors and their children really drove home the fact that despite the bomb dropping (then) forty years earlier, the people lived, or tried to live, with its consequences every day. They continue to live with it. To be shouted at in the back streets to 'Go home Yank' was confronting. But I guess I tried to understand.
I started to shift my study of 'just' domestic politics to trying to find ways to make sure this never happens again. I shifted to international relations, security studies, peace studies. Peace. It's got to be easier than the other options.
And it is why I found myself in the city this evening. I was on my way to a seminar in the evening anyway but, third Thursday in a row, I received a call from 612ABC to come in and have a chat with Drive presenter Emma Griffiths about Hiroshima and the 70th Anniversary. I usually handle these things well, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to people via the radio. But I was taken aback just a little at the level of emotion that still wells up when I talk about that first visit to Hiroshima, or talking to my landlady of thirty years ago who was a teenager working in a local factory amidst a firestorm of strafe bombing in Tokyo, not really understanding what was going on. (I'm glad she survived, she was a most wonderful landlady, full of stories.) Probably not my best radio work but a sharp reminder of why it is I do what I do. When the going gets tough...etc and so forth.
So it turned out I had an hour or so to spare before the seminar. Across the river, at Raddacliff Place some acquaintances from the peace movement were holding a Hiroshima Day gathering. Just to stand and remember and hope. Hope we can as humans avoid this happening again.
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| It started with a few candles... |
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| And people added more... |
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| And they almost joined up |
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| One of the groups presenting the gathering |
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| Taiko: drums |
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| The UQ Taiko ensemble |
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| Drummers in perspective |
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| Goes without saying |
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| Back across the bridge end of a day to never forget |
Then, back to the other side of the river to hear a recently-retired leading public servant talk about his life in international relations and security. Yes, it re-affirmed to me why it is I do what I do, and why we're still a long way from realising it...
I won't give up though. We remember Nagasaki on Sunday.
[Camera : Canon 60D, 28-80mm, 5.18pm-5.49pm]
