Tag: Hiroshima

Categories
Notes from Japan

Educating for Peace in Rwanda

By Suzanne Kamata

Photographs by Suzanne Kamata

In late September, I visited Rwanda with a professor of Naruto University of Education in Japan and two Japanese graduate students. We traveled from Kigali, the capital city, to the Kayonza District, a rural area, to learn about the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi which necessitated peace education in Rwanda. In one month, around a million Tutsis and their sympathisers were systematically and viciously slaughtered by members of the Hutu ethnic group following government directives. This “final solution” was enacted via machetes and spears, often by classmates, co-workers, and neighbors. Just about everyone in Rwanda was affected by the horror in some way. Our driver told us that his father, sister, and brother were murdered at that time. Our interpreter, Claude Mugabe, was also a genocide survivor. He had been eight years old at the time, and he said that he remembered everything.

The animosity between two ethnic groups may be traced to the colonial period, when Belgians favoured the Tutsi, who typically had tall, slender bodies, high foreheads, and narrow features, for prestigious positions and privileges. Periodic violence against the Tutsis began in the 1950s and continues to this day, but Rwandans have made great efforts to ensure that the events of 1994 never occur again. We learned that Rwandan citizens are no longer required to carry identity cards indicating their ethnicity.

We visited a center which is a part of the Peace Education Initiative Rwanda. The three pillars of their program are peacebuilding and reconciliation, youth empowerment, and social economic development. We first gathered in tent where some photos of the massacre were displayed. Some community members, including those who had been alive at the time of the genocide and high school students, were gathered to share their thoughts and experiences with us.

Photograph by Suzanne Kamata

As birds sang and chickens squawked in the background, Mugabe explained some ways in which the people of his community have sought reconciliation, including sharing goats, building together, and working alongside one another. He emphasised that it’s important that everyone have their basic needs met. To this end, the community members fight against malnutrition, which can lead to diseases, through gardening vegetables and rearing animals such as goats and chickens, which provide milk and eggs.

Another important part of reconciliation, as we learned, is forgiveness. We heard moving –and often shocking – testimonies from both a victim and a perpetrator. We first heard from a woman who was a victim. She told us how she was harassed by her teachers after they learned that she was a Tutsi, and ultimately forced to drop out of school. She said that she spent some days and nights hiding in the bush. Her house was burned, and nothing remained. On April 9, she left her hiding place and sought refuge in the Catholic church. It was full, however, so she went to the cinema. On April 14, the Hutus attacked the church. Although the woman lost her sight, she said that she later received health insurance, and “Today we’re living in peace and harmony.”

Next, we heard from a man who was 30 years old, with a wife and two children, at the time of the genocide. He admitted that he had critical thinking ability, but he participated in the attack on the church, anyway, along with other civilians and members of the military. They were armed with machetes, guns, and grenades, and given thirty minutes to exterminate everyone in the church. They surrounded the church and opened fire, but they “succeeded” in killing only thirteen people the first day. He did not return the second day because his wife was sick. Later, he fled to Tanzania, but after being repatriated to Rwanda, he, like many others, was arrested and sent to prison. “I internalized what I did,” he said through the interpreter. He was filled with remorse. When he was released, he bought a cow for the victims, and asked for forgiveness. In the beginning, only 12 people were involved, but now almost 3,000 participate in peace education in the village.

In addition to these community activities, peace education is an important part of the school curriculum in Rwanda. As in Japan, where students go on field trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to learn about the atomic bombing of those cities, Rwandan students visit sites related to the genocide, such as churches which now serve as memorials to those who died. We visited two such memorials. In one, the blood-stained clothing of the murdered was stacked on the church pews, while their photos were displayed on the wall. There were glass cases full of skulls, some with bullet holes, or larger gashes caused by clubs or machetes, as well as coffins full of bones. Though graphic and disturbing, these exhibits gave us an understanding of this particular tragic event and of the horrors of war in general.

As I thought about the divisions among people in my own country, the United States, all of the hate-filled rhetoric spewing from the mouths of politicians, and the move to silence voices from outside the mainstream, I couldn’t help thinking that some of these measures might be applied there, as well. What if we truly acknowledged that past? What if we shared our bounty? What if we asked for forgiveness? For now, I will remember what I learned in Rwanda. I will cling fast to hope. 

Photographs by Suzanne Kamata

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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Categories
War & Peace

Looking for Peace

This painting/drawing is from artist Kichisuke Yoshimura, who said of it, “Their clothes ripped to shreds, their skin hanging down. On the riverbank I saw figures that seemed to be from another world. Ghost-like, their hair falling over their faces, their clothes ripped to shreds, their skin hanging. A cluster of these injured persons was moving wordlessly toward the outskirts.” Courtesy: Public domain

Almost eight decades after the Atomic Holocaust in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki, we still are looking for peace. These blasts destroyed humanity and the tenor of human lives. While nuclear treatise are still holding up, many parts of the world are warring over different issues… for borders we ourselves have drawn, for ideologies and pedagogies we ourselves have created. It has become difficult now to keep track of the terrors and horrors unleashed on unsuspecting citizens and innocents. There was a point of time, where kings settles their conflicts by fighting outside the cities with rules of war. But despite all the treatise and the deals, children are still dying in bomb blasts. Innocents are still being killed by missiles. One would have thought, humanity would have learnt from the past… But have we?

Showcasing the need for peace, we bring to you, recent poetry about the ensuing conflicts and some poems on the blast that killed innocents and maimed generations to come. We have an essay on an age-long conflict which does not seem to get resolved and the interview of a second generation Hibakusha who still suffers from the impact of the blast that had destroyed her mother’s world and left its imprints on the later generations. 

Poetry

At the Turn of the Century by Stuart MacFarlane. Click here to read. 

A Child in Gaza by David Mellor. Click here to read.

I am Ukraine by Lesya Bakun. Click here to read. 

Flowers Bloom Everywhere by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read. 

Commemorating Hiroshima: Poetry by Suzanne Kamata. Click here to read. 

Prose

‘When will we ever learn? Oh, will we ever learn?’ 

Ratnottama Sengupta, comments on the current situation in Ukraine while dwelling on her memorable meeting with folk legend Pete Seeger, a pacifist, who wrote ‘Where have all the Flowers gone’, based on a folk song from Ukraine. Click here to read.

How the Impact of the Hiroshima Blast Lingers

An interview with second generation hibakusha, Kathleen Burkinshaw. Click here to read.

Categories
Poetry

A Beach Novel with a Difference…

In Conversation with Suzanne Kamata about Cinnamon Beach, published by Wyatt Mackenzie Publishing, and a brief introduction to her new novel.

Suzanne Kamata

Cinnamon beach by Suzanne Kamata seems to be ostensibly a normal romantic novel but there is an aspect that makes it unique. It glues all colours of humanity together. Almost all the families in her narrative are of mixed heritage or multiracial. She has stepped beyond the veneer of race and nationality to highlight that all humanity has the same needs— for love, acceptance and kindness, irrespective of colour and creed, a gentle reminder in a world that is moving towards polarisation in terms of constructs made by human laws.

Set against the backdrop of the Cinnamon Beach, the narrative shuttles through two countries that she has called home — Japan and USA. There are autobiographical elements woven into the narrative but perhaps, they halt in becoming lived experiences. The protagonist, upcoming writer, Olivia Hamada, an American married to a Japanese, has lost both her job and finds her marriage in doldrums when she visits her sister-in-law, Parisa. Parisa is a renowned fashion designer, daughter of an immigrant Indian and has lost her husband, Ted, Olivia’s elder brother. It is a poignant story with Olivia and her deaf daughter, Sophie, falling in love with a star, Devon, and his son, Dante respectively — both persons of colour. Devon’s ancestors were brought in from Africa. So how mixed are the races – Sophie is half Japanese-half American and Dante is part African-part American!

The narrative start simply and gains nuances as it progresses. There are comments and conversations that introduce twists and turns to explore attitudes and prejudices.

At a point Kamata tells us: “She’d heard, several years ago, of a revolt at a liberal college cafeteria in protest of its serving sushi. And there was that dust-up over a reality TV star using the name ‘kimono’ for her new line of shapewear. Perhaps she had been wrong to ever go to Japan in the first place. But she had done it and she had gone and written a collection of short stories heavily inspired by events in her real life, and now, here she was.” The bias against Japan that led to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are hinted at conversationally – world events that conspired more than eighty years ago. Why do such biases still exist today when we have moved forward so much technologically?

When Olivia asks Devon why he never liked to talk race or indulge in activism, he tells her, “It’s just that I would rather build bridges than burn them.”

And he explains further, “Sometimes taking a stand on issues creates more division.”

Religious observances seem to be unboxed too with Buddhist, Hindu and Christian customs intermingled. All festivals become a celebration of love and acceptance. Her world is idyllic when it comes to interactions between the lead characters. Living in a city like Singapore, that does not seem an impossibility as many are of mixed origins. 

One would hope that the whole world will eventually learn that all these differences are only the colours of the rainbow, as shown in Kamata’s novel. The novel ends on a note of hope — hope for a new beginning and for love and for a multiracial relationship.  

Kamata’s style is fluid. The situations and events are so much a part of the lived reality that you can almost feel and see the characters come to life. Anyone can enjoy the novel, whether as a light read or to find the nuances that explore the need for the redefinition of societal norms. With her smooth and untroubled storytelling, Kamata leaves it to the reader to decide what they want to find in her storytelling. Nothing is coerced or made incomprehensible.

With a number of novels, short stories and poetry collections under her belt, as an award-winning storyteller, Kamata guides us through her world skilfully leaving us with a feeling of having made new friends and gained deeper insight into myriad colours of humanity. In this interview, she talks about her writing, her novel and beyond.

Tell us when you started writing? And how?

I have been writing since I was a child. I loved reading, so perhaps it was natural that I would start to make up my own stories. I got a lot of encouragement from my teachers and parents, which inspired me to continue.

How many novels have you written in all? And which has been your favourite?

I have written seven, including young adult novels and one for middle grade readers. At the moment, Cinnamon Beach is my favourite, maybe because it’s shiny and new.

You do stories for children too and poetry. Tell us a bit about those.

I subscribed to a magazine called Ladybug for my children when they were young. I decided to try writing a story and submitting it to the magazine, and it was accepted. Other stories, inspired by my children, followed. For example, my son requested a baseball story. My middle grade novel, Pop Flies, Robo-pets and Other Disasters is the result of that.

What is your favourite genre to read and to write?

I prefer to read and write realistic fiction. The age level doesn’t really matter. I personally read everything from picture books to middle grade novels to adult novels.

How did Cinnamon Beach come about? How long did it take you to write the novel?

This was my pandemic book. I wrote most of it within a year, which is unusual for me. It usually takes me about four years to finish something. But I had a lot of free time during the pandemic, when I was alone in my office, and I wrote. I was kind of obsessed with what was happening in the United States, where things were much, much worse than where I live in Japan. I actually made a visit to the US at the height of COVID-19 because my father broke his hip. So, my thoughts were turned toward South Carolina, where my parents and sister-in-law live. Also, I had been thinking about writing a multicultural beach novel for some time. I enjoy reading novels set at the beach, but they usually feature only white people. My family is very diverse, so when we go to the beach together there is a very interesting mix of cultures. I wanted the book to reflect that.

 What kind of research went into it?

As I mention above, I did visit South Carolina during the pandemic. I also talked about it with my sister-in-law, who is Indian American. She gave me some ideas and commented on the final draft. Other than that, I went for a lot of walks on a nearby beach here in Japan.

In Cinnamon Beach, you have woven in autobiographical elements. Tell us how much of it is from your lived experiences.

A lot of it starts with something true and then leaps into “what if”? I did lose my brother, but not during the pandemic. He died in 2019, and I attended his funeral, but what if he had died a year later, when travel restrictions were in place? Also, I did have a work experience similar to Olivia’s. I brought my story to a newspaper, but I found a new job before the story was published, and I asked that it not appear in print after all. But what if I had allowed it to be published? My daughter is deaf and she uses an app to communicate with non-Japanese users. As far as I know, she doesn’t have a secret boyfriend, but what if she did?

You have written of nepotism in a Japanese University. Is that based on your experiences, facts or is it fiction?

Olivia’s experiences at a Japanese university are based on mine. People often get jobs through connections in Japan.

Having been married to a Japanese for a number of decades, what are the cultural differences? How do you bridge them? Is that woven into your narrative?

There are so many! There are a lot of little ones, such as my husband’s expectation for homemade soup with every meal (which I find troublesome to prepare), and my expectation for some sort of celebration on my birthday (which is rarely met). And there are many greater differences. For example, I feel that people don’t take gender harassment as seriously in Japan as they do in my native country, or that they are unaware of what it means. Also, Americans are very forthcoming about mental health issues, whereas it seems more secret and shameful to talk about them in Japan. I don’t know that my husband and I have necessarily bridged our cultural differences, but I have accepted that we think differently about many things. Olivia is divorced, so she and her Japanese husband did not bridge them very well.

Are mixed marriages more common in Japan or America? Please elaborate.

Mixed marriages are much more common in the United States than in Japan. Marriages between Japanese men and Western women are quite rare. According to Diane Nagatomo’s Identity, Gender, and Teaching English in Japan, in 2013, less than 2 percent of the 21,488 marriages registered in Japan between a Japanese and foreign national were between Japanese men and American women. I doubt that those numbers have changed much.

Do such families — with Western, Japanese, Indian and black, exist outside your fiction? Please elaborate.

Certainly. The ethnic mix of the family in Cinnamon Beach is based on that of my own family. As another example, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is an Indian American married to a white man. Their daughter married a black man. Many children of my Western friends who are married to Japanese have partners who are of other cultures (neither Japanese, nor Western). I think Third Culture Kids tend to be very open to people from other cultures.

 What books, stories, music impact your writing and how?

In the case of Cinnamon Beach, having read beach novels by authors such as Elin Hilderbrand, Dorothea Benton Frank, Mary Alice Monroe, Patti Callahan Henry, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Sunny Hostin made me want to write my own beach novel. I don’t know that music influences my writing, because I write in silence, but it was fun to come up with a playlist of songs that related to the book.

Having said that, I love music and I have known people in bands. The music world is fascinating to me, and I have created musician or music-adjacent characters in other books as well. The character Devon was inspired by the Black American  Country and Western singer Darius Rucker. I knew him a bit in college, because he and his then-band sometimes practiced in the house next to mine. 

What are your future plans? What other books can we look forward to from you soon?

Next up in a short story collection, River of Dolls and Other Stories, which will be published in November by Penguin Random House SEA. And I also have an essay collection (mostly travel narratives) in the works. Will keep you posted!

Thank you for giving us a lovely novel and your time.

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to read an excerpt from Cinnamon Beach

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Poetry

At the turn of the Century

By Stuart MacFarlane

Art by Paul Gnash (1889-1946)
                  I

I wonder what people felt
at the turn of the century,
with Waterloo behind them now;
and the Crimea and the hundred wars
fought by men to prove
I'm not sure what.
I wonder what they felt 
as the thick black smoke of industry
cleared now on the skyline;
and there, for the first time, they saw
the blue sky, the sunlight shining through.
I wonder what they felt
when they saw their century slip away,
like a fine ship pushed out to sea.
And there, before them, the great unknown;
mile on mile of endless ocean.
Did they feel hope or fear, I wonder?
Or maybe both?
And, seeing the gravestones in the rain,
perhaps a sense of sadness, too,
for those who had not made it.
For many had lived, but many more had died.

                   

                            II

We survived the shock of the millennium,
with Passchendaele behind us now;
and Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam.
And, I wonder, as the years subside,
what we will feel
at the turn of our century...
With Iraq behind us now,
and Gaza and Ukraine and the hundred wars
yet to be fought by men to prove
I'm not sure what.
I wonder what we'll feel as 
the thick clouds of radioactive gas 
clear slowly on the skyline.
And there, for the first time, we see
the blue sky, the sunlight shining through.
I wonder what we'll feel
as our century slips away,
like part of a rocket jettisoned
silently in outer space.
And there, before us, the great unknown;
a thousand light years, bright with stars;
yet so very, very far away.
Will we feel hope or fear, I wonder?
Or maybe both?
And, seeing the gravestones in the rain,
perhaps a sense of sadness, too, 
for those who did not make it.
For many will live, but many more will die.

Stuart MacFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.                                                                                                                    

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Categories
Editorial

Other Echoes in the Garden…

“Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them…”

— TS Eliot, ‘Four Quartets: Burnt Norton’(1936)

Humans have always been dreamers, ideators and adventurers.

Otherwise, could we have come this far? From trees to caves to complex countries and now perhaps, an attempt to reach out towards outer space for an alternative biome as exploring water, in light of the recent disaster of the Titan, is likely to be tougher than we imagined. In our attempt to survive, to live well by creating imagined constructs, some fabrications backfired. Possibly because, as George Orwell observed with such precision in Animal Farm, some perceived themselves as “more equal”. Of course, his was an animal allegory and we are humans. How different are we from our brethren species on this beautiful planet, which can survive even without us? But can humanity survive without Earth? In science fiction, we have even explored that possibility and found home among stars with the Earth becoming uninhabitable for man. However, humanity as it stands of now, continues to need Earth. To live amicably on the planet in harmony with nature and all the species, including our own, we need to reimagine certain constructs which worked for us in the past but seem to have become divisive and destructive at this point.

Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister in the Canadian cabinet and former Premier of British Columbia, in his autobiography, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, talks of regionalism as an alternative to narrow divisive constructs that terrorise and hurt others. He writes in his book: “If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.” We have a candid conversation with him about his beliefs and also a powerful excerpt from his autobiography.

An interview with Professor Fakrul Alam takes us into Tagore’s imagined world. He discussed his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. He has brought out a collection of 300 songs translated to English. In a bid to emphasise an inclusive world, we also have a translation of Tagore’s ‘Musalmanir Galpa’ (A Muslim Woman’s Story) by Aruna Chakravarti. A transcreation of his poem, called ‘Proshno or Questions’ poses difficult challenges for humanity to move towards a more inclusive world. Our translation by Ihlwha Choi of his own Korean poem to English also touches on his visit to the polymath’s construct in the real world, Santiniketan. All of these centring around Tagore go to commemorate the month in which he breathed his last, August. Professor Alam has also translated a poem from Bengali by Masud Khan that has futuristic overtones and builds on our imagined constructs. From Fazal Baloch we have a Balochi translation of a beautiful, almost a surrealistic poem by Munir Momin.

The poetry selections start with a poem on ‘Wyvern’, an imagined dragon, by Jared Carter. And moves on to the plight of refugees by Michael Burch, A Jessie Michael, and on migrants by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Ryan Quinn Flanagan has poetry that suggests the plight of refugees at a metaphorical level. Vibrant sprays of colours are brought into this section by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saranyan BV, Jahnavi Gogoi, George Freek and many more. Rhys Hughes brings in a spot of humour with his mountainous poetry (literally) and a lot of laughter with his or rather Google’s attempt at automatic translation of a poem. Devraj Singh Kalsi has shared a tongue in cheek story about an ‘amateur professional’ — rather a dichotomy.

We travel to Andaman with Mohul Bhowmick and further into Sierra with Meredith Stephens. Ravi Shankar travels back in nostalgia to his hostel and Kathleen Burkinshaw dives into the past — discussing and responding to the media presentation of an event that left her family scarred for life, the atomic holocaust of 1945 in Japan. This was a global event more than seven decades ago that created refugees among the survivors whose homes had been permanently destroyed. Perhaps, their stories are horrific, and heart wrenching like the ones told by those who suffered from the Partition of India and Pakistan, a divide that is celebrated by Independence Days for the two nations based on a legacy of rifts created by the colonials and perpetrated to this day by powerbrokers. Aysha Baqir has written of the wounds suffered by the people with the governance gone awry. Some of the people she writes of would have been refugees and migrants too.

A poignant narrative about refugees who flock to the Greek island of Lesbos by Timothy Jay Smith with photographs by Michael Honegger, both of whom served at the shelters homing the displaced persons, cries out to halt wars and conflicts that displace them. We have multiple narratives of migrants in this issue, with powerful autobiographical stories told by Asad Latif and Suzanne Kamata. Paul Mirabile touches on how humans have adopted islands by borrowing them from seas… rather an unusual approach to migrations. We have an essay on Jane Austen by Deepa Onkar and a centenary tribute to Chittaranjan Das by Bhaskar Parichha.

The theme of migrants is echoed in stories by Farouk Gulsara and Shivani Shrivastav. Young Nandani has given an autobiographical story, translated from Hindustani to English by Janees, in which a migration out of various homes has shredded her family to bits — a narrative tucked in Pandies Corner.  Strange twists of the supernatural are woven into fiction by Khayma Balakrishnan and Reeti Jamil.

In reviews, Parichha has explored Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told: Fifty Masterpieces from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. Somdatta Mandal’s review of Amitav Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories seems to be an expose on how historical facts can be rewritten to suit different perceptions and Basudhara Roy has discussed the Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry, edited by K. Satchidanandan and Nishi Chawla.

There is more wonderful content. Pop by our August’s bumper edition to take a look.

I would like to give my grateful thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless, especially to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our gifted contributors and our loyal readers. Borderless exists today because of all of you are making an attempt to bringing narratives that build bridges, bringing to mind Lennon’s visionary lyrics:

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Thank you for joining us at Borderless Journal.

Have a wonderful month!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Visit the August edition’s content page by clicking here

READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

Categories
A Special Tribute

Will Peace Come Dropping by?

Atom Nuclear Bomb Explosion- Illustration
“Atomic Landscape” Nagasaki, Japan 1946 Art by Robert Graham
Courtesy: Creative Commons

When in 1945, the Allied forces dropped atom bombs on August 6th in Hiroshima and on August 9th in Nagasaki, the Second World War drew Japanese aggression to a halt. But what was the impact on the lives of those innocents whose home, family and future changed forever? Their lives were wrecked — within a few seconds for no fault of their own. The impact clearly continues to ravage the second generation, as can be seen from the narrative of a hibakusha’s daughter who shares her travails while expressing her candid views on the recent movie, Oppenheimer, and the sale of ‘Boppenheimer’ products. She writes: “I live with it1 now having a chronic progressive nerve pain disease. My damaged immune system is attributed to my mother’s exposure to radiation from the atomic bombing.”

Are we forgetting that past, where two whole towns were decimated by atomic bombings with uncountable numbers of deaths and suffering handed down generations? Will we repeat the horrific story again to resolve issues as conflicts continue to ravage the planet with weapons, without considering their impact on the already felt climate crises? Will there be a replay of the bombing of 1945 to annihilate a people, their way of life and create suffering among all humanity? We may not be around to comment on the outcome!

Way back in 2017,  climate experts contended that in case of another such bomb blast, “The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs.” 

With that in mind, we hope for a world without wars. In this special edition, writings look for peace by creating awareness and suggesting alternatives. Kathleen Burkinshaw writes about the 1945 bombings and her perspectives on media packaging of mushroom clouds. We have a story from a soldier’s perspective during the First World War by the eminent Bengali poet, Nazrul, who fought in it as a soldier for the British army. Current conflicts show up in the writing of Ramy-Al-Asheq, who was born in a refugee camp in the Middle East. They move to Ukraine with voices of Lesya Bakun, a refugee on the run, and Ron Pickett, a US army veteran. Poetry on Myanmar in the past by Sister Lou Ella Hickman and a story of the Rohingya’s plight by Shaheen Akhtar brings the focus into civil wars within Asia. More poems by Don Webb and Michael Burch urge for peace through poetry. Awareness about conflicts that nonetheless impact an interconnected world are brought in with interviews with journalists who were in Afghanistan (Andrew Quilty) and Myanmar (Jessica Muddit) when the takeovers by the current regimes started. We conclude with a discussion for alternatives towards a better future with Anthony Sattin.

Non-Fiction

Mushroom Clouds and Movies: Response from a Hibakusha’s Daughter: Kathleen Burkinshaw, a second generation victim who suffers nerve disorders from the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where her mother watched her own father perish, responds to the recent media packaging of the event. Click here to read.

The Refugee and the Other, an excerpt from Ever Since I Did Not Die by  Ramy Al-Asheq, translated by  Isis Nusair. Click here to read.

Poetry 

I am Ukraine by Lesya Bakun, a refugee from Ukraine. Click here to read.

Wars and Rumours of War, a response on the war in Ukraine by Ron Picket, a a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. Click here to read.

My Visit to Myanmar in 1997, a poem about peace in the land where Buddha flourished by Sister Lou Ella Hickman. Click here to read.

Philosophical Fragments by Don Webb, an anti-war poem. Click here to read.

Poetry for Peace by Michael Burch. Click here to read 

Fiction 

Hena is a short story by Nazrul from the perspective of a soldier during the first world war, translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor.  Click here to read.

The Magic Staff is a poignant short story about a Rohingya child seeking refuge by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.

Interviews 

A discussion about Afghanistan, with journalist Quilty who went back to Kabul as Taliban entered the city. Click here to read.

Keith Lyons talks to Jessica Mudditt, who watched from within the country as the Myanmar Junta took over. Click here to read.

Could there be a way out of this world wide unrest? A discussion with Anthony Sattin as he explores concept of brotherhood unique to earlier times, when borders were not this well defined. Click here to read.

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Hiroshima after August 6th, 1945
Hiroshima after bombing
Courtesy: Creative Commons
  1. the impact of the atomic bomb ↩︎
Categories
Slices from Life

Mushroom Clouds & Movies: Response from a Hibakusha’s Daughter

Will I see the Oppenheimer Film? 

Kathleen Burkinshaw writes…. 

Will I see the Oppenheimer film? My answer – NO! I have no issues with the director, Christopher Nolan, as a person, nor toward the talented actors.

Do I hope people who haven’t considered nuclear weapons a current threat before, will now make nuclear disarmament part of their conversations (along with the demons plaguing a brilliant physicist during/after he developed the atomic bomb for our country’s war effort)? Yes!

That said, I don’t need to see Oppenheimer because I know how the story ends-even if they weren’t brave enough to show that in the movie itself.

I’ve needed some time to process my emotions after reading reviews, interviews, and social media posts. I discovered that Oppenheimer, even with 3 hours screen time, dismissed the rest of the story.

Spoiler alert — the bomb killed members of my family. My mother was 12 years old on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. She watched her beloved Papa die, lost her friends, and her home. 145,000 people died within the first 5 years of the bomb being dropped. And, not always mentioned — thousands survived only to carry the emotional/physical scars their entire life, unintentionally passing it on to their next generations-as my mother did to me.

The novel tells her mother’s saga as a survivor of the Hiroshima blast
Kathleen Burkinshaw and her mother(left)
Photos provided by Kathleen Burkinshaw

So, I find it appalling that neither the death, injuries, nor damage from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs were depicted. Not to mention the omission of victims who suffered/continue to suffer from the Trinity test, despite filming the explosion for Oppenheimer in New Mexico!

Oppenheimer is not the first film about Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombing that I’ve avoided. I can’t even listen to the specific chapters depicting the bombing in the audiobook for my own novel, The Last Cherry Blossom (TLCB) — it’s no fault to the lovely, talented narrator. But researching and writing those chapters devastated me. I’ve read a short section of the bombing to students for more than 11 years, and I cry every time. I still hear the agony in my mother’s voice, her sobs each time she shared the horror of that day. I can still hear her screams as she relived them in her nightmares — nightmares that lasted her entire life. Just as she couldn’t unsee it, I can’t unhear the pain in her voice.

Greg Mitchell’s headline for his Mother Jones article,‘Oppenheimer’ is a Good Film that Bolsters a Problematic Narrative, also touched on another issue for me. Mitchell described the lone narrative used in the movie about dropping the atomic bombs, “… an officer who insists the Japanese won’t surrender otherwise, … a host of American soldiers will then have to die storming the country’s beaches…reminded of how savagely the Japanese have fought to the last man in other circumstances.”

Why is this problematic? It’s false. There were many complicated reasons involved in the decision to use the atomic bomb. To me, the American/Allied soldiers who fought, gave their lives especially in the last two pivotal Pacific battles, won the war. The atomic bombs were just science experiments and a warning to other countries.

This issue has been argued by many scholars*. Yet rather than debating the ‘why’, what matters now, in 2023 is showing the Hell that the atomic bombs (along with the mining/testing of nuclear weapons) unleashed 78 years ago. 

I realise that Oppenheimer depicts a “singular dramatic moment in history…”  a phrase referenced to Nolan on motionpictures.org post.

Kathleen Burkinshaw’s Grandfather & Mother. Photos provided by Kathleen Burkinshaw

But what about that same singular dramatic moment in the lives of Hibakushas (atomic bomb victims)? Because of that moment, I witnessed the frightening effects of my mother’s PTSD throughout my childhood — such as her hours in a darkened room holding the few pictures she had left of her loved ones.

I live with it now having a chronic progressive nerve pain disease. My damaged immune system is attributed to my mother’s exposure to radiation from the atomic bombing.

Before my last thought, I must mention that I began my mission to educate students about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (and why my mother finally let me tell her story to students) 14 years ago, because my daughter (then in 7th grade) was so upset when she heard students discuss that “cool” #mushroom cloud picture.

She asked me to speak with her class about the PEOPLE under that famous mushroom cloud, like her Grandma. My mom finally gave me permission to discuss it. She realized these students are future voters and should know why nuclear weapons should never be used again.

I wrote TLCB not just to honor my mom, my family, and all the atomic bomb victims. I also wrote it so that readers could connect with the people in Hiroshima during the last year of WWII – to show that the children in Japan loved their families, worried what would happen, cried over lost loved ones, and wished for peace-Allied children were feeling and wishing the very same things. We must connect with the humanity under the famous mushroom clouds, so not to repeat the same horrific mistake. Students in my daughter’s class weren’t being cruel, they needed a connection.

And I must say, I’ve had the privilege of making this connection with thousands of students around the world. It’s these future voters/leaders’ compassion and empathy that gives me hope that peace and nuclear disarmament could be achieved.

Photos provieded by Kathleen Burkinshaw

You might understand then, why I’m furious about the “Boppenheimer” /”Barbenheimer” memes. Believe me, the irony of two movies so polar opposites premiering the same day hadn’t escaped me.

However, I’ve seen pictures of Barbie and Ken dolls in the cute pink convertible with the mushroom cloud behind them, swimsuit Barbie with sunglasses standing in front of a PINK mushroom cloud, and the worst – the mushroom cloud wall art. Yes, it exists,and it is NOT “…beautiful within the chaos…”

Under that mushroom cloud are 80,000 people that died immediately or within hours that day-like my grandfather. Many people evaporated from the extreme heat of that blast-with only their shadows left to prove their existence. No family should ever have to experience that ever again.

One final thought, followed by a final question. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the strength of 15,000 tons of TNT. Even so-called low yield nuclear weapons (which is an oxymoron) have a strength higher than that. So, the next time a nuke is used it could be 800,000 people dead in a large US city, in one day. Tell me, would you want someone selling mushroom cloud art after your family members are killed under that same cloud, now that you know the rest of the story?

*Suggested reading: ICAN, Did the Atomic Bomb End the Pacific War? by Paul Ham, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, ‘Oppenheimer’: A Masterpiece Missing a Piece, by David Corn,Mother Jones WB Responds to Japan’s Outrage Over Barbenheimer Tweet

Click on the link to read an interview with Kathleen Burkinshaw

Kathleen Burkinshaw, the daughter of a hibakusha, is the writer of The Last Cherry Blossom, a book that has been adopted by the UNODA as Education Resource for students and teachers to sensitise the world about the suffering involved in the atomic bomb blast. She first wrote and published this article in her own blog.

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Paean To Peace

Recalling Hiroshima & Nagasaki

“I was three years old at the time of the bombing. I don’t remember much, but I do recall that my surroundings turned blindingly white, like a million camera flashes going off at once.

Then, pitch darkness.

I was buried alive under the house, I’ve been told. When my uncle finally found me and pulled my tiny three year old body out from under the debris, I was unconscious. My face was misshapen. He was certain that I was dead..."

-- YASUJIRO TANAKA/ LOCATION: NAGASAKI/DISTANCE FROM HYPOCENTER: 3.4 KM, AFTER THE BOMB, https://time.com/after-the-bomb/
The two atom bombs that ended the Second World War. (1939-1945) Courtesy: Creative Commons

Recalling the incidents of 1945 — when two bombs were dropped in the name of peace destroying towns, populations and a way of life of innocents who had nothing to do with the aggressive invasion of the power-hungry, instilling suffering for generations to come, and justifying the whole incident in the name of peace — should have taught humankind lessons that we would never forget. When I read about the incidents, the horror of these make me shudder. Even the sky changed colours. The Earth grew barren as life on it writhed to an untimely halt, some wounded towards a painful end and some dead. Some of our species suffered  in the most horrific ways. For some death lingered with pain. For others, life lingered with pain —  both emotional and physical. Has that all been forgotten or erased from our minds? 

Given the current global atmosphere, we perhaps most need to pray for peace: peace, to alleviate hunger; peace to be with loved ones; peace to have access to resources at a reasonable price so that all of us can afford to live in comfort. And yet the wars rage…

As we move ahead this year, poetry around war has proliferated in our pages, showing why we need peace. Today, in this issue we bring to you writing that looks for peace as well as our older pieces describing the horrors of the atom bomb in Hiroshima. 

Poetry 

Poetry for Peace by Michael R Burch… Click here to read. 

Oh, Orimen by Manjul Miteri, translated from Nepali by Hem Bishwakarma…Click here to read. 

Commemorating Hiroshima: Poetry by Suzanne Kamata …Click here to read. 

Prose

An interview with nuclear war survivor’s daughter, author Kathleen Burkinshaw, who continues to suffer the aftermath of the Hiroshima blast that only her mother had faced and has written a book, The Last Cherry Blossom, describing the horrors of the war, life before it and after. Click here to read. 

Can Peace come Dropping by... An essay by Candice Louisa Daquin, contextualising the current global issues and exploring peace. Click here to read.

No Nuclear War (1987) by Peter Tosh (1944-87)
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Author Page

Suzanne Kamata

Recipient of a number of prestigious awards, Suzanne Kamata represents the best in the mingling of the East and the West. Her writing flows well and is compelling — exploring areas that are often left untouched by more conventional writers. Kamata has lived in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan, for more than half of her life. She is the author or editor of 14 published books including, most recently, The Spy (Gemma Open Door, 2020), a novella for emerging readers; the middle grade novel Pop Flies, Robo-pets and Other Disasters (One Elm Books, 2020) which won an American Fiction Award and was recently released as an audiobook; and Indigo Girl (GemmaMedia, 2019), winner of an SCBWI Crystal Kite Award and named a Freeman Book Awards Honor Book, as well as one of the Best Children’s Books of 2019 by Bank Street College. Suzanne has a poetry book called Waiting forthcoming in January 2022 from Kelsay Books.

Interview

In Conversation with Suzanne Kamata

Click here to read.

Poetry

Commemorating Hiroshima: Poetry by Suzanne Kamata

Click here to read.

Book reviews

Suzanne Kamata reviews Iain Maloney’s Life is Elsewhere/ Burn Your Flags. Click here to read.

Gracy Samjetsabam reviews Suzanne Kamata’s The Baseball Widow. Click here to read.

Gracy Samjetsabam reviews Suzanne Kamata’s Indigo Girl . Click here to read.

Book Excerpt

Suzanne Kamata’s The Baseball Widow. Click here to read.

Suzanne Kamata’s Waiting. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

Suzanne Kamata’s column on Japanese culture and life. Click here to read.

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A Special Tribute

Peace in the footsteps of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Courtsey: Creative Commons

The mother of a soldier once told me she did not agree that winning a war was a solution to peaceful living. She said, “If our army kill the enemy, some other mothers lose their sons; some other wives are widowed; some other children lose their fathers…”

Her summation of the war seems like an accurate description of the current day scenario. While politically the bombs that killed 140,000 in Hiroshima and 74000 in Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August respectively(1945), destroyed two cities, ended the Second World War (1939-1945) which claimed a total of 70-85 million lives over six years and led to the celebration of VE Day (Victory Europe Day), can we afford such horrors of violence and annihilation again? This is a question that remains in the grey zone as nuclear non-proliferation looks like agreeing to peace because the terror of war frightens. Will we ever have a world where peace is loved for the sake of what it brings and not for the fear of annihilation?

Writers in this special commemorate the horrors of the atom bomb and write their plea for peace. While American-Japanese writer, Suzanne Kamata, and Manjul Miteri of Nepal explore victimhood, Michael Burch talks of the Enola Gay, the legendary bomber that dropped “Little Boy” and annihilated a whole city. He reflects on the testing that continued on Bikini Island and further to ‘maintain peace’. We also have the words of Kathleen Burkinshaw who continues impacted by this terror — though it was her mother who was the hibakusha or survivor of the bomb blast. We round up this section with Candice Louisa Daquin’s reflections on peace and the reality as it is.

Poetry

Commemorating Hiroshima: Poetry by Suzanne Kamata that brings to life August 6th and the impact of the bombing on the victims and the devastation around them. Click here to read.

Oh Orimen! A poem in Nepalese about a victim of the blast written by a sculptor, Manjul Miteri, who while working on the largest Asian statue of the Buddha in Japan visited the museum dedicated to the impact of the blast. The poem has been translated to English by Hem Bishwakarma. Click here to read.

Mushroom Clouds: Poetry by Michael Burch that reflects on Enola Gay and the Bikini atoll. Click here to read

Prose

Surviving Hiroshima

Kathleen Burkinshaw is the daughter of a woman who survived the Hiroshima blast. Burkinshaw suffers neural damage herself from the impact of the bomb that her parent faced. She has written a book called The Last Cherry Blossom recounting her mother’s first hand experiences. Her novel has been taken up by the United Nations as a part of its peacekeeping effort. She has been actively participating in efforts to ban nuclear weapons, including presenting with Nobel Laureates. Click here to read the interview.

Peace: Is it even Possible?

In the post second world war scenario, Candice Lousia Daquin explores war and peace through history. Is peace possible? Click here to read.