August 6, 1945 Hiroshima: For Those Who Came, But Could Not Stay
by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Managing Editor of TMV, and Columnist
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 and 75 years ago.
We know the 14th century too, and the plague.
We know of the Argonne and Ardennes,
and we know what happened there.
We know about Bataan, Nanking 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,
not bombed nor burnt
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.
The late Shaun Mullen also wrote about Shinichi’s Trike & The Lessons of War, remembering this day and his vital journey to the site Hiroshima.
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 [and mother], now [elderly], undertook the ritual preparations… and gently dug up Shinichi’s remains, transferring them to the family’s gravesite. The tricycle 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.”
¡Even the freakin’ stones cry out!
Dios te bendiga Shinichi, and all the dead and injured. Dios te bendiga all. All of us.
Dr. E.
Filed Under: Education, Health, Media, Places, Politics, Religion, Society, War
Tagged With: atomic bomb, baby boomers, Death, death toll, debt of honor, duty, Emperor of Japan, Hiroshima, Japan, Japanese, Japanese people, Massacre, Nagasaki, precious lilfe, radiation sickness, Truman, USA WWII, War, war memorials