AYAMACHI: The Hiroshima Lesson
In 1978, Richard Yamasaki was one of 42 youths to win a JACL-Japan Airlines cultural heritage fellowship for a seven-week stay in Japan. There, he visited Hiroshima, the city where his grandfather lived before coming to the U.S.
Below are his observations originally printed in the Dec. 22-29, 1978 P.C. issue.
During my time in Hiroshima, I learned of the existence of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), which is part of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.
Overnight accommodations, which were located in a dormitory adjacent to RERF, were arranged through Chris Ando, a fellow Sansei traveler, whose uncle had just started his work at the Foundation. Just the brief exposure to the RERF facility alone made me realize that the damage caused by the A-Bomb dropped 33 years ago was not over with. Research is still being conducted today.
The day in Hiroshima included a visit to the Peace Memorial Hall, Memorial Museum, and A-Bomb Dome. Although there are a number of people in the world who would rather forget about what happened August 6, 1945, including many Japanese, the Hall and Museum contain technical and visual accounts of an event which I knew very little about.
Within the Memorial Hall, a short film was shown which contained close-ups of the facial and body burns of many A-Bomb victims who sought help at nearby hospitals, several of whom eventually died days after they were filmed. The film also contained footage of the unbelievable devastation caused to the physical environment taken within days after the disaster. A sea of debris was all that remained near the bomb's epicenter where houses and buildings once stood.
Contained in the Museum building were displays of various remains of the bomb explosion. Twisted glass bottles melted by the bomb's tremendous heat, clothes torn to shreds by the blast, and keloids (scar tissue) preserved in glass jars were among the remnants for visitors to view. These objects plus enlarged black and white photographs of scarred victims were like parts of a puzzle which, when mentally assembled together, gave a more complete and detailed picture of what went on the day of the blast and shortly after. In all, an estimated total of 200,000 Japanese were believed to have been killed by the heat, blast, and radiation.
Previous to the Hiroshima visit, I never took the initiative to become knowledgeable of the details of the A-Bomb explosion because I had always viewed it as just another historical event which had little to do with the "important" activities going on today in the U.S. It is in relation to persons holding the same perspective as mine that I saw the existence and perpetuation of the Memorial Hall and Museum as vitally necessary. Educating persons to the pain and devastation caused by the A-Bomb is extremely important, not only in terms of building awareness of the A-Bomb catastrophe but also in terms of warning persons of the extreme danger of nuclear weapons which are presently possessed by nations.
During the past few months since that disturbing yet enlightening day, it has been very difficult to forget what I personally saw and felt in Hiroshima. For my own sake, I hope that such deep impressions will cause me to critically evaluate the political issues attached to nuclear arms possession and development by a number of countries today. The necessity of such evaluation would have never been evident to me had I not visited Hiroshima and if the U.S., Soviet Union, and other countries did not continuously pursue efforts towards developing and building more sophisticated nuclear weaponry since the day of the two A-Bomb blasts in Japan. It is quite clear that the U.S. has never stopped to deeply reflect upon the destruction it caused and also has not looked beyond all its military rationales for the stockpiling of nuclear arms.
The U.S. now possesses 1,054 Titan and Minuteman ICBMs as well as 656 Polaris and Poseidon missiles on 41 nuclear submarines. Each Titan ICBM has the capability of delivering a 5- to 10-megaton nuclear warhead up to a distance of 7,000 miles. A 10-megaton warhead unleashes a force 500 times as powerful as the A-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. According to Pentagon estimates, a hundred nuclear weapons targeted for Russian sites would kill a minimum of 37 million people. The U.S. now possesses over 9,000 nuclear warheads.
One of the latest developments in missile weaponry is the cruise missile. This jet-powered aircraft is equipped with a guidance system which allows it to fly at such low altitudes that it cannot be picked up by Soviet detection systems. The probability of hitting its target is almost 100 per cent.
William Perry, the U.S. Defense Department's research chief, reported that even if the Soviet Union were to develop a system of detecting early model cruise missiles, the U.S. could overcome the system by making modifications in the size, speed, and electronics of the missiles at a rate much faster than Soviet defense changes could be made.
It is scary and depressing to think that these weapons will be used sometime in the near future. As the proliferation of arms has increased and as the U.S. and Soviet Union have continued to invest in arms production, the probability of nuclear arms use has increased to such an extent that their use is almost assured.
It is just a question of when and where.
The materialization of a mutual agreement calling for the total disarmament of nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely. The power of the Bomb today commands too much of the respect of nations to give it up. Even if there exists absolutely no intention on the part of individual governments to use nuclear arms, their possession serves the purpose of being used for political and economic leverage.
There is much to be learned from Hiroshima, but perhaps it is way too late. The wrong lessons have already been learned.
The power of the Bomb has been seen and diligently developed since the day it was first tested. Nations have failed to learn and to recognize the insanity and madness of such efforts. While the goal has been the insurance of survival, changes for the world's total destruction have increased as a result. Weapon technology has become so finely turned and so sure-fire that the outcome of nuclear warfare can be accurately predicted to leave no winners.
In a recent L.A. Times article, Leonid Brezhnev amply stated that if Russia tangled with the U.S. in such war, "There will be no more U.S. But we will still get it in the neck."
Ayamachi - the error - has already been repeated.
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