August 6, 1945 Hiroshima: For Those Who Came, But Could Not Stay
Aug 6th, 2009 | 22 responses
FOR THOSE WHO CAME,
BUT COULD NOT STAY
While you and I were being born,
growing “in the little bread oven”…
as it was often said back then…
there were other little babies
across the world,
suddenly thrust
into real ovens,
and they were not allowed to grow any more.
Don’t tell me that that is the past
and none of our concern.
This is in cellular memory,
and we are here
to make certain that we speak
for those who were born and
who died before they could speak.
Don’t tell me that we have nothing to do with
what happened 57 and 65 years ago.
We know the 14th century too, and the plague.
We know of the Argonne and Ardennes,
and what happened there.
We know about Bataan and Armenia, and
about everything that has happened that never
should have happened if only a few more,
if only a few more could have awakened sooner.
Don’t tell me that was then and this is now;
Don’t get me started.
When we were being made,
there were other children being unmade
all across the world.
When you see the so-called ‘baby-boomers,’
remember they were the ones who survived.
Out of millions and millions
conceived and not yet born,
out of millions and millions born at that time.
the little ones walking and talking
all across the world,
we are some of the few children
who were not murdered,
who were not butchered
the very year we were made.
And all this counts for something important beyond time.
Were we not conceived in the war
during the midst of fire and explosions
and our fathers not coming home
and our grandmothers, our grandfathers wishing
they could jump into a grave somewhere themselves?
Were we not born in the midst of endless
flashing of fire in order to carry
the peace messages of
the begging dead?
No one of us still alive arrived without
a message, a set of exhortations.
It is not by accidental alchemy
that so many
of our generation are against war.
It is not by accident
that so many went to war
and want no more war ever again.
We were conceived in the midst
of blinding light, death everywhere.
For every ten born and killed there,
one
on this side
survived.
This counts for something,
a great and important something.
Wake up!
Some say there are so many of us:
So many boomers, the media says.
But if you are awake, you know
we are the few, not the many.
We are the few,
the very very few.
And the voices of the innocent dead
who ask to speak through us
cannot rest if we remain silent.
__________________
CODA
This poem was written to try to say a more clear and true fact about my generation’s precious lives than has previously been seen, defined or valued in pop culture. I think there is an over-arching and guiding archetypal motif attached to the destiny of each generation. I know the premise of this poem to my bones— that we of this particular generation were allowed, let to survive for a reason; that our child lives were some of the few that were spared worldwide during a time when innocent children were slaughtered wholesale worldwide. We survived. I believe this is why so many from this generation feel and know that our work is dedicated toward conciliation till the day we pass from this world. The flash of the bomb is upon us. The flash that killed so many of our generation across the world, but… and… also awakened others– the living amongst us– for life.
…. Argonne and Ardennes, Bataan and Armenia… are Western European, Philippine, and Asian sites of bloody battles and genocides during the 20th century.
Here too is a strong article Shinichi’s Trike & The Lessons Of War by Shaun Mullen, remembering this day and his vital journeys to the site Hiroshima. The photo at the top of this article is from his website. His article begins:
Shinichi Tetsutani loved to ride his beloved tricycle outside his house in Higashi-Hakushima-Cho, a neighborhood in the Japanese port city of Hiroshima.
Shin-chan, as his family called the three-year-old, was doing just that on the morning of August 6, 1945, when there was a brilliant flash in the sky.
The boy was about a quarter mile from the hypocenter of the detonation of the first nuclear weapon to be used in anger, the consequence of a frightening new technology that its creators were all too aware would change warfare — and civilization — forever by wreaking unimaginable death and destruction.
Shin died that night, one of about 140,000 people to perish… and… three days later, 74,000 people died from a second atom bomb dropped on Japan… But, Shin’s young father felt his little son was too little to be buried far from his family, and grimly wrapped his child as best he could in the ritual way, and buried his child along with his tricycle, in the earthen shelter behind where once stood their small home.
Forty years later in the summer of 1985, Shin’s father, now an old man, undertook the ritual preparations… and gently dug up Shinichi’s remains, transferring them to the family’s gravesite. The tricycle, as you see it above, was donated to the Peace Memorial Museum by the Tetsutani family, in honor of their boy and the others who died in the sudden flash of deathlight.
22 Responses to “August 6, 1945 Hiroshima: For Those Who Came, But Could Not Stay”
[the voices of the innocent dead]–
War is man's greatest inhumanity. We should also remember Nanking.
Let's not forget about the savagery inflicted by the Japanese on the Korean, Chinese and Filipino peoples. As well as their treatment of American POWs. Let's not forget about the alternative to dropping the bombs, an invasion of mainland Japan which would have caused a million more casualties, American and Japanese both. Let's remember both sides of this.
Dr. cpe, thank you for reminding us of your generation and the powerful impact Hiroshima had on values toward peace and social justice and above all NO MORE WAR!
And a quote from book entitled SGI President Daisaku Ikeda's Addresses in the United Sates: June/July 1996: “the great Norwegian folk poet Arnulf Overland (1889-1968) who fought against the Nazis during World War II who writes: A people can be conquered, but their freedom of spirit can never be destroyed, nor their thoughts ever bound! Only those without weapons possess an inexhaustible wellspring; only the spirit triumphs!” Your words remind us that your SPIRIT calls us to remember the importance of peace and social justice and NO MORE WAR.
Thank you for your powerful poem and words of wisdom!
Mariposa
Dr e., thank you for that beautiful poem. It had actually slipped my mind that today is the anniversary of that terrible day 64 years ago. Thank you for reminding us. Sometimes remembering is the most radical thing one can do. Thank you.
Thank you so much, dr e. You have felt it all, and shared it with us
Dorian
Wow !!!!!!!
Too bad the poem, moving as it is, is not informed by actual history rather than magical history.
you'd have to have an actual factual opinion vanderleun, not just your own 'magical' thinking as a comment.
Poetry, vanderleun, isn't SUPPOSED to be about history.
Although I support the use of the bombs to end WWII, and even though it can't even be called the worst thing to happen in that war, I think the imagery serves a valid purpose. It was the first time we ever annihilated that many people in such a short time. War is the worst thing we can do, and anything that serves to bring people to reason rather than violence is a good thing in the end. Lets face it, no two nations with nukes have ever gone to war.
When was the last time you could say Europe was free of war for a 70 year stretch? Sure, the major powers have come within a hairs breadth of it, but no one has taken the plunge. And before you think its not the imagery, remember WWII was started not long after WWI, which at the time was the war to end all wars. It took something a bit more horrific, something the people at home could identify with, to really bring about lasting peace through fear.
BTW, I should've said this earlier since I write poetry too. This is a really good piece of work.
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I think our grisly fascination of the atomic bomb is that it's the ultimate symbol of War, a product of countless manhours of effort to erase an equally countless number of lives and dreams. For individual bombs and air raids, despite there being thousands and thousands of them, you could still dream that it could miss, and you could live, and that you could rebuild afterward. In the atomic bomb, there's only a singular flash and cleansing shockwave and heat, as directed and discriminate as a hurricane or an earthquake. And even if you do survive, Pestilance and Famine come right behind War in the form of deadly fallout.
So while it may seem strange to consider, we hold the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in higher regard than that of Dresden or Tokyo or Moscow or London or Pearl Harbor because they have shown us in horrible detail of the price of total War in the future.
one such as Dr. E with eyes open often see from another perspective. . . .it is a strange thing. . .a holy thing. . .a blessing that some have even felt as a curse at times. . . when the heart is close enough to all of these, and those too, the mind and the arms grow big enough to embrace every child, every mother, every father beyond what was playing on the latest version of good guys and bad guys in the small world. . .
so often they say what others can only hear deep down, through lines of poetry that slip in through the small cracks in our hard head, or perhaps the words massage an old scar tissue that remembers us what it is to be humankind. . .often they gently nudge and whisper, “wake up sleepy heads.” . . . .it is not about who is right or who is wrong. . .
poetry in small black print on white page may be one of the last breaths of subtle color and blazing light too often forgotten beside the latest model of big flat screen digital color “gizzmoe” TV that has never been so full of black and white programming. . . .
thanks for you Dr. E. . . .
[...] August 6, 1945 Hiroshima: For Those Who Came, But Could Not Stay (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
I felt this poem was speaking to me, and I am so ashamed of a choice I made years ago.
There is something about a child that makes everything new again. I think it must be their innocence.
Can we also remember that 9 million German women and children were systematically murdered often in the same death camps used by the Nazis. Millions of German women were gang raped repeatedly
The intentional firebombing of German cities took a toll as great as Hiroshima and was directly targeted to produce mass casualties.
Lessons about the horrors of war? No!
No one remembers the 17 to 20 million Chinese, Burmese, Malay, Indonesians and other people that were systematically killed by the Japanese in Southeast Asia in creating and maintaining their Southeast Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Two atomic bombs stopped that horrific carnage.
all too true.
“The intentional firebombing of German cities took a toll as great as Hiroshima and was directly targeted to produce mass casualties.”
Let us also remember the Japanese and Germans started the war. A war of conquest for them. A war of defense for the Allies.
On days like today, I hear the cries of anguish, that rise from the depths of my soul, for even at this late date connected to the shocking misery inflicted on gentle, quiet, unsuspecting innocence. Nothing can mask the shame I feel for the pain and suffering handed out under the pretence of my protection. Who decided I need protecting from precious children? The mere thought of what happened the day that life on earth changed forever saddens my heart. Your poem and thoughts give me hope that there is still some goodness and beauty in the world. Thank you.
[...] Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes brings the poetry at Moderate Voice. Two posts from Greg Mitchell about the press and Hiroshima, here and here [...]