A Very Serious Day

The most moving and profound session of our first week was without doubt learning about peace education efforts taking place now in Japan surrounding the events of August 1945 when atomic bombs were dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a sad irony that this session was taking place just as North Korea was announcing its intentions to test nuclear weapons. As painful as it is to learn in detail about these past events, we know that peace education efforts nurture the seeds of a better-educated world and assist us in our understanding of the effects of nuclear weaponry during World War II and today. We heard from three people who have particular relationships to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Koji Ikeda is 89 years old, Chairman of the Yokosuka Disabled Veterans Association and a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima. Twenty-eight years old in 1945, he was holding his young son in his arms, in his backyard, at the time of the bombing, not understanding, of course, the nature of the blast that caused a great whiteness around him. I will not attempt to convey in this blog the depth of emotion in his straightforward story, told with a fact-defying gentleness. He shared every moment of that day – his feelings, the injuries of his wife (who was out of the house obtaining ice for their icebox), the aftermath of the bombings in the days, months and years following. Tomoko Yanagi, a senior high school teacher in Hiroshima and a second-generation bomb survivor, spoke of growing up with a father who was 14 years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing and subsequently dedicated his life to nonviolence and peace education. She claims to have only fully understood the meaning of his efforts when she became an adult (her father spoke little of his actual experience in the bombing in order to protect his daughter from the discrimination against persons who may carry radioactivity in their bodies); she wishes to carry on her father’s message in order to increase people’s understanding of the effects of using non-conventional weapons. She herself lives daily with the impact of radioactivity on her health. Migiwa Ishitani is the daughter of a man who, at age 13, survived the Nagasaki bombings, became a professor of ethics and a Quaker, was continuously involved in peace education, and opposed the military tax in Japan. It was a privilege and a humbling experience to hear these inspiring testimonies. I pledged to myself to learn more about how much about the August 1945 bombings is included in Brookline’s Facing History As Ourselves curriculum. Please take a moment to explore the two links in the righthand menu explaining more about peace education in Japan.


Koji Ikeda