Remembering Hiroshima: Education not War

The main people chanting are Young ladies Against Lies.
The group grew out of work by Flyaway Productions and
Oasis for Girls. Their own video of the event is also on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA7VEXuP6Nk

The main website for CODEPINK is:
http://www.codepinkalert.org

Barefoot Gen uses simple animation but is quite intense;
watching it over dinner is little difficult because of the
depictions of the suffering. Serious films with this level
of agony are not usually produced in the US. The pre-bombing
backgrounds of Hiroshima are beautiful, though. (They are by
Kazuo Oga, who later heard from former residents that the
images were not accurate. Oga's style did boost more famous
films, including My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. A
light weight documentary on Oga is available on Blu-Ray.)

There is a book and short film version of Hiroshima No Pika.
Toshi and Iri Maruki, a wife and husband team made, many
murals of war devastation. They both went to Hiroshima
to tend relatives soon after the US bombed the city. They
found that the US censored discussion of the bombing and
that nobody was coming forward to talk about the bombing
in Japan. They decided to name their first mural "August 6"
to avoid problems with the US occupation government.
People in Japan appreciated their work but no other people
seemed to make images of the bombing. They decided to keep going,
and eventually had enough murals for a dedicated gallery.
Toshi later added images such as a depiction of WW II
atrocities perpetrated by Axis powers. Their original work
also includes the killing of America POW's in Hiroshima after
the bombing. For many years Japanese textbooks included
one of the Hiroshima murals.

The style of the Marukis was that Toshi would paint an
image and her husband would wash it out. This began out of
a lack of a cooperative spirit but eventually produced
images that a feeling of texture and depth. This is
included in the DVD for Hiroshima No Pika. Susan
Sarandon reads the book. The story part of the DVD is
minimal but the documentary portion is quite interesting.
It doesn't explore why the US dropped the bomb but Toshi
describes Truman as being in hell. She also describes
the people who saw the devastation as being in a living hell.

Many descriptions of the bombing describe glass shards
embedded in the victims. The depiction in Barefoot Gen
uses some artistic license but glass fragments seemed to
have a nasty way of stabbing people.

The film Hiroshima Mon Amour is by the director of the
early Holocaust documentary Night and Fog. In Hiroshima
Mon Amour Alain Resnais looks at punishment and violence
at the war's end. It has similarities with Merry Christmas
Mr. Lawrence.

John Hersey's book Hiroshima was quite influential in
the years following the bombing.

Americans are welcome in Hiroshima but if you speak Japanese
you can understand some grumbling. I heard from one
former US navy sailor that some people in the US military
have been antagonistic toward the annual memorial. Considering
the carnage, Japan is quite welcoming to Americans.

Thanks to an acquaintance from Japan for the calligraphy,
which reads "Hiroshima."

(Other notes to follow...)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Hiroshima
• SF
• CODEPINK
• Young Ladies Against Lies
• Iraq
• War

[titaneagle37]

There are much better arguments against nuclear weapons other than their use in WW2. Bombing Japan with atomic weapons actually saved more civilian and military lives on both sides.

[BloodofPatriots]

He's right. Check out what the Japanese did on Okinawa to the civilian population, the fanatical resistence of the Japanese military, and the plan Ketsu-Go, the complete mobilization of Japan to fight a war of attrition against Allied invasion. Estimates at the time said that Ketsu-go would have resulted in 1,000,000 allied deaths and 3-5 million Japanese deaths. When you compare Ketsu-Go casualties with that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no wonder Truman decided to nuke them.

[laughingtiger123]

More people died in one night of fire bombing Tokyo than did in both atomic bomb drops. People are hung up on the nuclear aspect of it. There is total denial of their atrocities during the war by many japanese people.

[mi622na]

Im very happy their action as a japanese.

No more war! No more atomicbom!

[CalicoVall]

BloodofPatriots's got the right idea. Though I hate war probably more than most of you, I realize that war is a part of human nature that comes from fear and anger than anything else. My sencerest wish is that such a thing will never happen again, but it is our job to make sure it doesn't.

[xaedrek]

A nuke in titaneagle37's town would have saved the internet from it's most stupid comment of the year.