Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Harrowing Experiences From Opposing Sides

Very different visions of the war are seared into the minds of WW II survivors on opposite sides of the Pacific.

An allied correspondent stands in the rubble in front of the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, Japan, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the US on 6 August 1945. In a moment seven decades in the making, President Barack Obama this month will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima. (AP Photo/Stanley Troutman)

Two very different visions of the hell that is war are seared into the minds of World War II survivors on opposite sides of the Pacific.

Seventy one years after the incident, the pain is still fresh in the minds of the people who lived through it.

Michiko Kodama, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, points at a poster describing human damages by an atomic bomb during an interview at an office of a survivors’ organization in Tokyo on 12 May 2016. (Photo: AP/Mari Yamaguchi)

Michiko Kodama saw a flash in the sky from her elementary school classroom on 6 August 1945, before the ceiling fell and shards of glass from blown-out windows slashed her. Now 78, she has never forgotten the living hell she saw from the back of her father, who dug her out after a US military plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan.

World War II veteran Lester Tenney, 95, holds a bamboo stick that he said Japanese soldiers used to beat him while he was held as a prisoner of war, at his home in Carlsbad, California.(AP Photo/Julie Watson)

Lester Tenney saw Japanese soldiers killing fellow American captives on the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942. The 92-year-old veteran recounts,

If you didn’t walk fast enough, you were killed. If you didn’t say the right words you were killed, and if you were killed, you were either shot to death, bayonetted, or decapitated.

He still has the bamboo stick Japanese soldiers used to beat him across the face.

Different experiences, different memories are handed down, spread by the media and taught in school. Collectively, they shape the differing reactions in the United States and Japan to Barack Obama’s decision to become the first sitting American president to visit the memorial to atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima later this week.

Japan: Victim or Victimiser?

The US dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, and Japan surrendered six days later, bringing to an end a bloody conflict that the US was drawn into after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Japan identifies mostly as “a victim rather than a victimiser,” Stephen Nagy, an international relations professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said.

I think that represents Japan’s regional role and its regional identity, whereas the United States has a global identity, a global agenda and global presence. So when it views the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, it’s in the terms of a global narrative, a global conflict the United States was fighting for freedom or to liberate countries from fascism or imperialism. To make these ends meet is very difficult.

Stephen Nagy, International Relations Professor, International Christian University, Tokyo

Mixed Feelings Over the Use of Extreme Measures

A poll last year by the Pew Research Center found that 56 percent of Americans believe the use of nuclear weapons was justified, while 34 percent do not. In Japan, 79 percent said the bombs were unjustified, and only 14 percent said they were.

Terumi Tanaka, an 84-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, said of Obama, “I hope he will give an apology to the atomic bomb survivors, not necessarily to the general public. There are many who are still suffering. I would like him to meet them and tell them that he is sorry about the past action, and that he will do the best for them.”

The White House has clearly ruled out an apology, which would inflame many US veterans and others, and said that Obama would not revisit the decision to drop the bombs.

Arthur Ishimoto, 93, a Japanese-American and US Army Military Intelligence Service veteran, poses with archival photographs of himself as he is interviewed in Honolulu.(Photo: AP/Audrey McAvoy)

93-year-old Arthur Ishimoto, a veteran of the Military Intelligence Service, a US Army said that it’s good for Obama to visit Hiroshima to “bury the hatchet,” but there’s nothing to apologise for.

Former Army General Arthur Ishimoto thinks that apologising could become controversial. He believes that America helped Japan out of the pits and made it the economically advanced country that it is today.

71 Years on, the Effects of the Bombs Continue

Beyond the deaths – the atomic bombs killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 73,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 – the effects of radiation have lingered with survivors, both physically and mentally.

Kodama, the Hiroshima schoolgirl, faced discrimination in employment and marriage. After her first love failed because her boyfriend’s family said they didn’t want “radiated people’s blood in their family,” she married into a more understanding one.

The younger of her two daughters died of cancer in 2011. Some say she shouldn’t have given birth, even though multi-generational radiation effects have not been proven.

Obama doesn’t have to apologise, Kodama said, but he should take concrete actions to keep his promise to seek a nuclear-free world.

“For me, the war is not over until the day I see a world without nuclear weapons.” she said. “Mr Obama’s Hiroshima visit is only a step in the process.”

Survivors Hope for Nuclear Disarmament, Not Apology

Terumi Tanaka, Secretary General of Japan Confederation of A & H Bombs Sufferers Organizations, speaks during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo.(Photo: AP/Eugene Hoshiko)

Nagasaki survivor Terumi Tanaka views the atomic bombings as a crime against humanity. A promise by Obama to survivors to do all he can for nuclear disarmament “would mean an apology to us,” he said.

He added that his own government also should take some of the blame for the suffering of atomic bomb victims, adding that Japan has not fully faced up to its role in the war.

Japan did issue apologies in various forms in the 1980s and 1990s, but some conservative politicians in recent years have raised questions about them said Sven Saaler, a historian at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Tenney, a former POWs from the Bataan Death March, wants Obama in Hiroshima to remember all those who suffered in the war, not just the atomic bomb victims.

I was in Japan, shoveling coal in a coal mine. No one ever apologized for that. ... I end up with black lung disease because they didn’t take care of me in the coal mine, and yet there is no apology, no words of wisdom, no nothing.

88-year-old veteran of the Alaska Territorial Guard, Earl Wineck believes that things can change.

We hated them, but things change, people change, and I think people in the world should be closer together.

Americans Should Learn the Story of Hiroshima

High school student Mayu Uchida speaks during an interview at her school in Tokyo. (Photo: AP/Mari Yamaguchi) 

One Tokyo high school student has a suggestion. Mayu Uchida, who said she cried when she heard survivors recount their memories on a school trip to Hiroshima, wants Obama to bring home what he learns and tell any supporters of nuclear weapons how horrifying they are.

“He could also suggest, promoting opportunities for more Americans to visit Hiroshima, or to hear the story of Hiroshima,” the 18-year-old said. “It will be even better if those opportunities are available for younger generations like us.”

(This story was produced with the contributions of Julie Watson, Audrey McAvoy and Ken Moritsgu from Associated Press)