One day, a big bomb fell on the city of Hiroshima
Mar 26, 2008 • News
I normally read Slate, a webzine with a leftist slant1, after I’ve exhausted all other important news outlets. The articles I bother reading are generally entertaining and sometimes downright interesting. Today, my attention was drawn to Ron Rosenbaum’s opinion piece titled Welcome to the Hotel Hiroshima with the tagline “Has the ground zero of the nuclear age become too ‘normal’?”.
Before I continue, I should mention that my focus was not Japanese history (particularly WWII and post-WWII) or politics, although the required classes I studied did include studies into these 2 topics. I have not pursued further information regarding politics aside from what makes it into domestic and international news sources, although I have maintained a fair amount of interest in pre-WWII history. Therefore, it would be difficult to comment on Rosenbaum’s political points regarding the atomic bomb.
Rosenbaum raises some good questions about why Hiroshima remains important in history and our psyche. Like countless other foreigners to the Peace Museum, he also highlights its awkwardly worded and factually wrong2 plaques. But his nitpicking on aspects of (modern) Japanese culture really does a disservice to his article. It’s almost like he mashed up a Grand Sneer3 travelogue with a historical commentary piece.
Must have atomic bomb to be authentic
Point 1:
…I found the room service menu listing an entree described thusly: “Hiroshima’s famous fried vegetable and meat pancakes.” Oh, so that’s what the city is famous for—the pancakes.
The atomic bomb is good for reminding people about war, technological power, and death. It’s not so good at selling food, which is probably why you don’t see it in TV food commercials. What did he expect the menu to say, “Hiroshima’s famous fried vegetable and meat pancakes…they’re mushroom-shaped, just like the atomic bomb!” or “Hiroshima’s famous fried vegetable and meat pancakes…only the atomic bomb makes ‘em crispier!”? Can’t the city be famous for more than 1 thing? Or is to sentenced to dwell on the morbid for eternity?
Point 2:
The bride was beautiful in a dark blue dress—life goes on and all that. But the city is cursed with irony: I couldn’t resist the words of ’50s horror-movie lingo intruding themselves into my consciousness: “Bride of Hiroshima!”
Up until this, I was willing to concede that Point 1 was a fabrication in my head, that Rosenbaum was genuinely surprised that Hiroshima was famous for pancakes. But why would a bride of today be cursed on her wedding day simply because she lives in a city that was destroyed by an atomic bomb? I failed to see the association and the humor because this, combined with his later criticism of the memorials and Point 3 below, made me believe that Rosenbaum would like Hiroshima to maintain a certain level of mourning - his assumption being that without it, people will forget.
Let’s put the real Sadako on top of the monument!
Point 3:
The irony is that Hiroshima has been rebuilt so successfully, mourned and memorialized so dutifully, that the raw horror Hersey captured has been museumized. The streets have been franchised. The Hiroshima Starbucks’ latte tastes the same as it does anywhere.But walking back through the predawn streets from the all-night Hiroshima Kinko’s, you can hear the whisper of hundreds of thousands of ghosts.
As Rosenbaum said himself, dismissively in his case, life goes on and all that. Hiroshima should not be criticized for becoming a “normal” city with its Starbucks and McDonalds and it shouldn’t bear the sole responsibility of serving as a reminder to the horrors. The US sentenced Hiroshima to death once.4 We shouldn’t do the same today.
Now that my cheesy line is finished, I would like to point out that all this, as well as 3 documents translated from Japanese to English, were written on a dual-language keyboard. If you’ve made it this far and don’t get it, read the first page of Rosenbaum’s article. Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the English language textbook used here. It’s the first sentence in a 3 page short story about the bombing of Hiroshima.
- Yes, I’m a moderate with liberal leanings but I don’t quite qualify for downright liberal [↩]
- Depending on which side you believe [↩]
- Shamelessly stolen from Terry Pratchett’s parody of the Grand Tour [↩]
- With or without good reason…it all depends on which version of history you were taught [↩]
Comments
I think so too but apparently Mr. Rosenbaum is not a fan of recovery.
Maybe it’s just me but isn’t the point of progress is to move on? Sure remembrance is fine but why the heck I want to be reminded and act like a sour & dour person because of event in the past.