Peace Education Program

Today I had the honor of listening to a presentation on peace education by Keijiro Matsusha, a Hiroshima survivor and, Tomoko Yanagi, the daughter of a Hiroshima survivor. The survivors are called Hibakusha, meaning "person exposed to radiation." Until recently, the hibakusha were discriminated against because of fears of radiation poisoning and disease. Even second-generation hibakusha had to hide that their parents were survivors of the attack because otherwise they could not find marriage partners. Parents were afraid to give their children permission to marry survivors (and survivors' children) because they were worried (correctly it turns out) that the radiation could harm future generations. Tomoko is a thyroid cancer survivor. As you can imagine, personal stories about the Atom Bomb are very powerful. People were in tears.

Matsushima ended his lecture by saying that Americans often ask him why he isn't angry at America. He indicated that this is a western thought, the winner and loser mentality. (This might ring true to those of you who listened to my Confucius Lives Next Door book talk.) He said that the US developed the bomb during war time, thinking of the Japanese only as enemies to be killed. Now, everyone knows the conseuqences of nuclear bombs and it would be unconsionable to detonate another one. I particularly liked the statement, "We are very angry at the A-Bomb but not at people. People are the same everywhere. We must work together to make peace, not hostility. to keep something like this from happening again." I particularly appreciated that after he said this, he turned on the projected map of the aftermath of the bomb on the city of Hiroshima and couldn't get the laser pointer to work. Several people rushed right up to help him, and he continued his presentation. I know this is a minor thing, but it reenforced the connection in my head that people really are the same everywhere.

Much that he said reminded me of the personal stories of Jewish Holocaust survivors. He talked about survivor guilt and about being so weak that he couldn't help others calling out to him. he spoke about his great fortune in surviving and about starting a new life after the war. He was resigned to the way the bomb had impacted his life. He said he's angry that peace education programs are not being supported in the schools and that he's worried that kids today are growing up unaware of the actual effects of the bomb on real people. He brought all these thoughts back to education. He said that after the bomb he still didn't think that the Japanese should surrender becuase he had been taught that the Japanese should never surrender. Education has the potential to change rigid views like this and to foster creative thinking and empathy.

I know that this video is a little grainy, but you can still hear his voice pretty clearly. He is describing coming out from under his desk at school after the bomb hit. I have bought the DVD of the presentation for the school. If anyone is interested in borrowing it, I will be bringing it back with me from Japan. I also have a copy of his telling of how the bomb affected him. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial also believes that it's important for children to hear the words of survivors. Several times, Matsusha and Yanagi said, simply, that it won't be long until there are no survivors left to tell their stories. The Peace Memorial is now building on a program that it has in Japanese. Survivors' descriptions of how the bomb affected them are being translated into English. As with the Japanese program, teachers can order the transcripts and have students read them aloud.

(The video was not uploading correctly to the blog, so I posted it on YouTube, then used the html code that YouTube provides to embed it in the blog; if you would prefer to watch the video on YouTube, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ypkabMs6So.)

I don't know if you noticed it, but in the middle, he says, "Thank Buddha." It was something that he said repeatedly when discussing his luck in surviving the bomb. It's so close to what I hear people say in the states all the time, but different enough that the first time I sat up and made a note of it.