The long goodbye

This was written after reading the article: Up from Ground Zero, by Ted Gup, in the National Geographic, August 1995

 
When someone is bereaved, healing usually comes with the passing of time, or through faith in a religion. For some, grief may mingle with guilt at having survived while loved ones died, resulting in the bereavement being a prolonged and agonising affair. The bereavement of Mrs Shina Sonoda, a widow with four children living in Hiroshima, was to start in 1945.

The facts concerning what happened at Hiroshima at around 8.16 am on 6 August that year are well known. The pictures or films of the awesome destruction from the explosion of an atomic bomb have been seen by all, but we see at a distance; we are remote, not connected, only horrified observers of what we humans can do to each other; our feelings dependent on whether we had loved ones or close friends who suffered through the actions of the Japanese prior to the bomb.

I was in my early teens then and felt the Japanese had brought such disasters on themselves. When I married and became a father my way of thinking changed, often prefaced by the thought: How would I feel if my wife or children were in that position?

In a doctor’s waiting room recently I read an item about Hiroshima, which brought a personal aspect to the bombing, it went like this …

The air raid siren had sounded the All Clear as Mrs Sonoda’s daughter; Akiko again pleaded for the tin of tangerines to be opened, which her mother had promised she would open after an air raid sometime soon. Shima smiled as she gave her a hug: Not this time, Akiko, she said quietly. A few seconds later the bomb exploded reducing the city to a pile of rubble aglow with deadly radiation. Over 80,000 people died instantly with another 60,000 dead within the next 12 months.

As I read, the father part of me imagined I was there with my family. It was devastatingly real. I could see it! At the same time I recalled Winston Churchill, Britain’s Prime Minister at that time quoting Hosea, a prophet in the Old Testament:

‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’

Nothing humans can do can stop a whirlwind, we can only wait until it has passed, pick up the pieces and start again.

I imagined Shima in the midst of all that horror after the bomb. I saw her as a mother, ignoring her own needs, sobbing and searching frantically for Akiko. I heard her moans of disbelief and horror at the utter madness of our civilisation, wondering why everything all around her had been destroyed, yet she had survived and Akiko had not. All that remained was the image of her daughter in her mind.

Of course I could never really know what it was like for Mrs Sonoda, but as I read I did know that I could have been born Japanese. My name could have been Sonoda, then I would have been as they, thought and acted as they.

I read on. Tormented because she hadn’t found Akiko, she also deeply regretted that she hadn’t opened the tin of tangerines; it was such a simple last request after all. From that time on she knelt every morning at her Buddhist shrine. With her prayer she offered a tin of tangerines for the soul of Akiko and with the prayers her grief was eased a little each day.

Close to the dome of twisted steel and concrete, the picture most of us have of Hiroshima is the Peace Memorial Museum. The basement houses an index, each card detailing someone who died as a result of the bombing.

Ted Gup who brought the story of Shima Sonoda to light asked to see Akiko’s card. It records that Yoshiharo Agari was the one who found her crushed body. The card had been there for years. I don’t know if Mrs Sonoda ever went there to see those details, or ever will. If she does, her long goodbye may end at last in the city which is now called Peace.

Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)