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)
