The Hills of Nagasaki
I arrived in Nagasaki on July 25 late at night, having traveled for more than 24 hours from Geneva, where I had attended a few days of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference. Looking out of the window of my hotel room, I could see some lights and train tracks to my right, but being as tired as I was, I quickly shut the shades, and got ready for bed. When I awoke the next morning and opened the curtains, the view of the city, nestled among the sun-bathing hills, was stunning, with just a touch of the sea apparent beyond the port ahead. Two thoughts overwhelmed me: (1) That the buildings and all of the infrastructure I was looking at had been built since 1945; and (2) That these were the very hills that helped to prevent the Fat Man (code name for the Nagasaki bomb) from killing and harming as many or even more people than the Little Boy (code name for the Hiroshima bomb) did just three days earlier. Fat Man’s energy yield was higher than Little Boy’s: 21 vs. 15 kilotons.
My gracious hosts had cleared my schedule till noon, knowing that I’d had a long trip, so after a delicious and hearty breakfast, I decided to head outside and visit those hills. I walked along a main road, called Road 206, for a while, trying to take some selfies and wishing that I had a sunbrella (Word doesn’t think this is a word). Then, at once, as if called by the hills themselves, I took a sharp turn left and found myself almost immediately starting to walk uphill. I passed a small, charming park, with a garden and some playground equipment and then, climbing stairs replaced walking straight uphill. It soon became apparent that the hill I had chosen to walk up on, was a cemetery hill. For the next hour, I made it up 40 flights of stairs, according to my iPhone Health app, and wandered in and out of gated family monuments, elaborate final resting place structures that seemed to burst with love and respect for those whose remains were inside of them.
Hotel view
Selfie at the bottom of the hill
A family monument in the cemetery
Three highlights of my hill walk were the view from the highest point I was able to reach, all of the many winding paths, with stairs scattered all around that looked like they had been built before 1945 (suggesting that my cursory thought from the hotel window had been at least slightly wrong), and a visit to the Fukusai-ji temple. The entire temple had indeed been destroyed in the bombing, and rebuilt, alongside an aluminum alloy Bodhisattva statue named Kannon, standing at nearly 60 feet tall atop a spirit turtle. The small garden to the side had not just lotus flowers, but sunflowers too. I didn’t see a single person as I wandered in and out of this enchanted place.
Family shrine
A hilltop view
Fukusai-ji Temple
Sunflowers in the garden
Outside the temple
Cauldron statue
Temple garden
30th International Symposium for Peace
I was in Nagasaki at the kindest of invitations by the Asahi Shimbun, one of five main Japanese newspapers, as co-organizers of the 30th International Symposium for Peace, entitled: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition. Started in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings, the symposium has been taking place every year since, alternating locations between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the decades, the symposium participants have been some of the foremost nuclear disarmament and peace thinkers and activists, including many of the survivors of the atomic bombings – the hibakusha. This year’s symposium was to take place on July 27 and include a morning and an afternoon panel. I was to deliver the keynote address in the morning session and then participate in a panel with Batyrkhan Kurmanseit, a diplomat from Kazakhstan, another country impacted by nuclear weapons, two distinguished Japanese academics, Prof. Mitsuru Kurosawa and Prof. Seiko Mimaki, and Mr. Terumi Tanaka, hibakusha, Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo, and President of the Japanese Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. The afternoon session was to include keynote remarks by Prof. SangJung Kang, the first person of Korean descent to become a Professor at the University of Tokyo (and currently President of Nagasaki Wesleyan University), and another panel featuring the hibakusha, Ms. Shizuko Mitamura, and two young nuclear abolition leaders, Sari Kamiyama and Mitsuhiro Hayashida.
30th Annual International Symposium for Peace
Peace Park Visit
Upon my return to the hotel from the hillside walk in the blistering sun and ample humidity, I had lunch with one of my hosts, Tsutomu Ishiai, Asahi Shimbun’s reporter based in Tokyo, who was to moderate the panel that I would participate in the very next day. Our conversation quickly turned into a fascinating discussion of global affairs, current politics in Japan, and Tsutomu’s most impressive career as a foreign correspondent around the world, including in my homeland of Yugoslavia, during its breakup and warring years. Afterwards, we met all of the symposium participants in the lobby of the hotel to travel together for a visit to the Nagasaki Peace Park. I had already experienced the kindness and grace of my hosts, and as I met each of my fellow symposium contributors, I encountered more warmth, smiles, and affection from every single person. A special joy emanated from the two hibakusha, Mr. Tanaka, who is 92-years old, and Ms. Mitamura, who is 83 years old. Mr. Tanaka is a long-time Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors, and Ms. Mitamura, a hibakusha herself, has traveled the world using a special picture show to convey the imapact of the bombing on her life. Spending time with them over the coming day and a half, the sense I got each moment I glanced at or spoke with them, was that there was nowhere else they’d rather be and nothing else they’d rather do than spread their message of peace and nuclear abolition. This was deeply inspiring to me. If they can do this, then it is quite simply incumbent on all of us to do it too!
At the Peace Park, we first visited the Peace Statue. An impressive, enormous structure, the statue was designed and added to the Peace Park in 1955. As part of our group gathered for the photo, I was just so excited to be with everyone, that I blasted a big smile for the camera. The smile was soon to leave me for the remainder of the afternoon.
Symposium participants in front of the Peace Statue
Our young tour guide, a student from the Nagasaki University, explained that the statue cost a great deal of money at a time when people in the city were still suffering severely. Was the decision to build it the right one? This was one of the questions about Nagasaki that would come back to me again and again.
The Peace Park is rather large, and as we moved towards the Atomic Bomb Museum during the hottest part of the day, we passed several beautiful statues and a large water fountain. The day of the bombing was not just hot, but the heat from the blast and the fires that continued well into the night, helped make anyone whose body had not yet given up incredibly thirsty. The park and the museum have several water displays meant to symbolize the water that the victims yearned for so very much.
Statue in the Peace Park
With the Peace Park tour guide
Water fountain in the Peace Park
Statue in the Peace Park
Statue in the Peace Park
Peace Lantern gift from Oregon City
The next stop on our journey was the location of the hypocenter, marked by a monument. Some 500 meters above this point in the park, the bomb was exploded over Nagasaki. Our hosts had prepared a wreath for us to lay in front of the sculpture, and I was to carry the wreath alongside Mr. Tanaka and Ms. Mitamura, and place it on the stand. We were accompanied by Prof. Sangjung Kang and Mr. Batyrkhan Kurmanseit. As the five of us walked solemnly, I became overwhelmed by feelings of sorrow and longing. How could this have happened? And how can we make sure that it never happens again? As I placed the wreath on the stand, I felt deeply humbled as an American to be in Nagasaki, to be in the company of the hibakusha, and to be the one pretending that I had something to say to them about nuclear weapons. Shouldn’t I have simply been there to listen and learn?
Laying the wreath (photo by Tsutomu Ishiai)
Laying the wreath (photo by Akira Nakano)
Wreath delegation (photo by Tsutomu Ishiai)
At the hypocenter with Tsutomu Ishiai
At the hypocenter with Mr. Tanaka (photo by Tsutomu Ishiai)
At the hypocenter with Mr. Kurmanseit (photo by Tsutomu Ishiai)
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
We soon made our way into the Atomic Bomb Museum, a welcome reprieve from the heat and the humidity. I kept thinking it was appropriate that I was visiting in the summer and could experience the city in the kind of weather that Nagasaki had on that fateful day. In the museum, we got to spend a bit of time in a meeting room filled with gifts from different countries, sister cities, and political and disarmament leaders from around the world.
Gift to the City of Nagasaki from the Soviet Union
Gifts to the City of Nagasaki
Gift to the City of Nagasaki
We next received a tour from the Director of the Atomic Bomb Museum, Mr. Takuji Inoue. The exhibition halls were most impressive in the way in which they memorialized the bombing and its aftermath. The first exhibition hall we visited starts with life in the years before the bomb: photos of schoolchildren, people on the streets going about their day. And then, there it is. The clock marking August 9, 1945, 11:02 a.m., when the bomb exploded. We were next in a dark room that signifies the darkness that surrounded the city in the hours after the bombing. Countless photos revealed death and destruction, each in more than a thousand words. There was also the reconstructed portion of the Urakami Cathedral, a Catholic Church that stood near the hypocenter. Parts of the cathedral made it through the bombing despite the damage to everything else nearby. As we got to the display of the three dimensional map of the city with a simulation of the bomb explosion, the hills were once again on my mind.
But the museum does not just display the pain, suffering, and devastation of the bombing. It also has a section on the global hibakusha, as well as one on the nuclear disarmament movement. I hope that soon, they will add a panel on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. And that by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the bombings, the end of World War II, and the founding of the United Nations, the museum will be able to add a section on the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
Nagasaki before the bombing
The clock
Nagasaki before the bombing
Reconstructed Urakami Cathedral
Nagasaki after the bombing with visible remains of Urakami Cathedral
Painting of the Urakami Cathedral
Crane, the symbol of peace
Three-dimensional map of Nagasaki showing the location of the hypocenter
Looking at the bombing simulation (photo by Akira Nakano)
Preserved rubble
Devastating impacts of the bombing
Global hibakusha exhibit (photo by Tsutomu Ishiai)
Saturday, July 27
At my breakfast the next morning, I sat on the other side of the hotel building and got a fresh view of the Nagasaki hills. Sadly, I went to breakfast with a Japanese newspaper in hand (a treat for me, as I read the news online) and left my phone in the room on purpose. So I don’t have additional photos to share. But the view north was possibly even more stunning than the view south. This time, I was looking at the place above which the bomb had exploded. I was looking at the part of the city that had evaporated and been turned into a mushroom cloud, nearly 79 years earlier.
The Symposium
Back at the Atomic Bomb Museum, where we had returned for the symposium, my overwhelming feeling of humility returned in full. I knew that I could not do justice to the occasion, but I also knew I had to try. You can watch my remarks (starting at ~38 minutes) in the video of the morning session, including the panel discussion with Mr. Kurmanseit, Mr. Tanaka, and Profs. Kurosawa and Mimaki, moderated by Mr. Ishiai. You can also watch the afternoon session, including keynote remarks by Prof. Kang, the wonderful picture story show by Ms. Mitamura, as well as the panel discussion with her and Ms. Kamiyama and Mr. Hayashida. I was deeply touched and inspired by Prof. Kang’s remarks about the need for peace on the Korean Peninsula, Ms. Mitamura’s pictorial depictions of her memories of the bombing and the impact it’s had on her life, as well as the rich discussions in both panels. There was a sobering sense in having to address the enormous challenges that we face as humanity, but also a hopeful message from Nagasaki, the city that understands the true meaning of suffering.
Never again is the message of Nagasaki and its people. And the only way that we can make sure that Nagasaki is the last city to experience the direct use of a nuclear weapon is to abolish nuclear weapons.
Video of the morning session
Video of the afternoon session
Symposium participants
Speaking during the panel (photo by Akira Nakano)
With Sari Kamiyama and Seiko Mimaki
Food and People
I would be remiss if I did not say just how much I enjoyed the food while I was in Japan. Even the food on my Japanese airline – I had chosen the Japanese version of each meal – was a culinary experience. Everything from the presentation to the flavor was so exquisite that I kept wondering who was spending so much time preparing such marvelous meals. Thankfully, Tsutomu Ishiai told me that Japanese people don’t eat like that at every meal! And just like with Tsutomu, sharing my first meal with a Japanese person in Nagasaki, each subsequent group meal was also an intellectual delight, as I learned more from the symposium participants and Asahi Shimbun journalists and editors about Japan and its culture and the fascinating lives of my correspondents. Even on the morning I left Japan, I got to speak at the Nagasaki airport with one of the Asahi Shimbun editors. Our conversation turned to the breakup of Yugoslavia and I shared a soccer related story, about my son Micha, who at age 9, came up on his own with the “Yugoslavia team,” consisting of players from the now independent states that used to make up Yugoslavia. He then asked me about Dragan Stojković Piksi, the current Serbian national team manager, who spent nearly two decades in Japan as both a player and a manager. It turns out that Piksi is from my hometown Niš, where he started his career, and that I grew up with him as a household name. The conversation was a lovely way of remembering one of the many ways (athletics!) that bring us together across continents and cultures. We need more of that and far less division and conflict!
In every sense of the word, the absolute main highlight of my time in Nagasaki, was meeting all of the people that I was so fortunate to spend time with. My main host, Mr. Akira Nakano, who is an Asahi Shimbun journalist from Osaka, thought of every detail imaginable and communicated with me most kindly from the very first email when he invited me to speak at the symposium to our email exchanges after I had already returned to New York. He greeted me at the Nagasaki airport when I first arrived and insisted on accompanying me the morning that I left, even though I tried to convince him that I could handle the Nagasaki airport all by myself. On both car rides, we spoke about a range of topics, and it seemed that a smile did not leave his face once. His kindness is forever etched in my mind and my heart.
I hope to return to Nagasaki and Japan soon. I would also like to visit Hiroshima next time. This first visit was like falling in love for the first time and I expect to be in love with Japan for many years to come.
With hibakusha, Ms. Shizuko Mitamura
One of many delicious dishes I ate in Nagasaki
Outside of the Nagasaki restaurant
P.S.
I must also share that I loved Japanese toilets! I did not take any pictures of them (!!!), so you’ll have to trust me when I say that they really are amazing. When I returned home and started sharing stories with my family, my 13-year old son Nemanja told me that “Japan lives in the future!” He is right. And I can’t wait to go back to the future.
P.P.S.
One of the gifts I received from Mr. Nakano during my visit was the book The Postman from Nagasaki, by Peter Townsend; I promptly read the book on the 12-hour plane ride from Tokyo to New York. Part history of Japan and Nagasaki, and part biography of Sumiteru Taniguchi, who was 16-years of when the bomb exploded over his hometown, the book is essential to understanding that the atomic bombings were a crime against humanity and that they never should have happened. Sumiteru Taniguchi spent nearly four years in the hospital after being found by his grandfather just over a mile away from the hypocenter and spent the rest of his life dealing with numerous medical issues. He was fortunate to meet a wonderful and loving woman who married him despite the physical and mental marks that the bombing left on his mind and body. They were in turn fortunate to have two healthy children. But the experience of the bombing never left Mr. Taniguchi, not the least because his body carried many scars. He devoted himself to organizing the hibakusha and working for nuclear abolition, all the way to his death in 2017. If Mr. Taniguchi, and Mr. Tanaka, and Ms. Mitamura, and so many other hibakusha can do this, the rest of us have no excuse but to carry their mantle forward, all the way to a world free of nuclear weapons.
Asahi Shimbun articles about the Symposium
