SUBMITTED BY: KarenHob@aol.com
Subject: COMMENT: Enola Gay controversy, another view
Johnathan Beard said: ....The museum
stated its purpose: "to serve as a symbol of Nagasaki and its
efforts to bring about lasting world peace."
I was in Nagasaki in 1990 and visited the then-existing atom-bomb museum.
Although the photos on exhibit were graphic, the accompanying text was, IMO,
not inflamatory in any sense of the word. There were many comments that
seemed to express the idea that the bombing was regarded simply as one of the
"fortunes of war" and therefore not an event for which one should place
blame. That same day we visited the peace park and there was an anti-nuke
demonstration at the main monument --- Japanese families sitting peacefully
on the ground around the statue and holding signs saying, more or less, "Stop
nuclear proliferation."
Nagasaki is a hilly city like San Francisco. The bomb was aimed at the
munitions/war materiel production facilities there and was pretty much right
on target per word of mouth info we got. It fell in a section that was sort
of 1/3 of the way up on the slopes that reach the harbor (most of the
manufacturing plants were near the harbor) and the blast was pretty much
contained by surrounding hills -- the damage did not spread as far as it
might have laterally and a lot of the historic parts of the city were
virtually undamaged. The cathedral at ground zero is rebuilt and a
beautiful chapel is next to it with a lot of the bomb debris (porcelain
shards, glass, stone) incorporated into its structure in a beautiful relief
mural. All of the monuments in this area seem to express peace and hope, not
hate.
I was struck by the balanced emphasis on both sides in the war and on peace
and understanding in Nagasaki. The exhibit brought home the horrors or war
without yelling "it's all your fault" at anyone. Hiroshima's display seems
more adversarial -- as if meant to promote continued anger over the bombing
of innocents for no reason at all.
By the way, Nagasaki is well worth a visit for its general history as well as
the atomic bomb displays. And the people there seem more "mellow" than in
cities like Tokyo or even Kyoto. I think that October is when they have a
festival that is one of the best in Japan. There is a parade (procession)
of old "floats" shaped like the ships of the first Europeans, like whales and
dragons and whatever and they are carried by crews that go through ritual
antics along the way that must be great fun to watch (we saw a film of the
procession in the festival museum). There is also a theme park near Nagasaki
that commemorates the years of European settlement there with a beautifully
reproduced european naval vessal as a permanent exhibit. There is a
Chinese temple that is extraordinary -- it is actually considered "foreign
territory" and has a Chinese history museum attached that contains treasures
from pre-history through more modern times. Nagasaki is also the "hotbed" of
Japanese Country and Western music and there have been festivals there with
US and Japanese singers and musicians attracting huge crowds from all over
Japan.
For those of you who are interested in Japanese armour, medieval weapons and
such things as the contents of an officer's campaign chest there are fine
displays at the castle at Himeji and at the Black Castle at Okayama. When I
saw those displays I was struck by how short the armor for the front of the
calf of the leg was. Later I noticed that drawings of Japanese nudes seemed
to have very short legs for the torso size and wondered if it was simply
artistic emphasis. However, my visit included several athletic festivals at
Japanese high schools and when I saw the young athletes I realized that the
typical "type" was long waisted and short in the legs. At least on Kyushu
Island. After making that observation the armor was less puzzling.
Karen Hobbs
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