Hiroshima in the Morning
Page 24
or the man who leans his shoulder against it.
He is standing, in a rain jacket and hat, and a white towel tucked
under the hat to protect his neck, in a soft warm rain,
on the wide muddy river—
he is leaning on water that sighs
when the rain hits it but otherwise doesn’t move.
The boat and the man are equally still.
They are worn, and veiled by rain, clothes, tarps, and towels.
There is a black dog sitting in the bow of the boat.
Behind them, there is a bridge, weighed
down with morning traffic.
Miniature cars for the narrow street.
They are narrow, high, like single serving loaves of Wonder bread.
They are lined up, stopped, yet revving with the energy
of the day just beginning.
They are going somewhere. You can feel it.
The cars link the twin flanks of boxy, concrete apartment
buildings that zigzag down each river bank.
Uninspired, downright ugly,
they would be easy to condemn if you didn’t know
that every single structure
had been shattered and burned in 1945.
Windows becoming scatter bombs,
beams becoming guillotines, beds turned into funeral pyres.
Wreckage covered in atomic ash, and then another layer.
This time, bodies. Flayed, ruptured, bodies that survived
for hours—powered mostly by shock and by habit
—before falling where they stood.
Women, babies. People once.
And in the shallow river they were
heading for, the river once so full of people desperate for a deadly drink
of water that you could walk
across their bloated bodies to avoid the fevered bridge ties,
there is now a man and a dog in a sampan.
Fishing for clams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I went to Hiroshima in June 2001 as a US/Japan Fellow to live for six months and to research a novel. I interviewed many survivors and spent a lot of time with the peace activists; the September 11 attacks exploded my world; my marriage unraveled. But just as memory records blame and relives joy in ways that others who were there may not agree with, this version of events is distinctly my own creation.
This narrative was written to explore how we tell our stories. The voices of the atomic bomb survivors are “fact”—culled from transcripts and translations from more thirty hibakusha testimonies. The rest I have recreated with deliberation: I have changed names, omitted extraneous details, and occasionally fiddled with the clock. Ami is a composite character—the consequence of having had so many different people help me during my time there, including more than ten interpreters. I am also sure that, over ten years, my memory has failed me. Ultimately, this memoir is best read as a reflection of who I believe myself to be as I write these words.
My deep gratitude to the US Japan Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs for the fellowship that became a life-changing opportunity. The generosity and assistance of the Hiroshima community was astounding and indispensable; I could not have begun my research there without the help and friendship of so many people, including Christopher Blasdel, Professor Kan Katayanagi, Keiko Ogura, Marie Tsuruda, Masumi Takabayashi, Hiko and Nancy Tokita, Mary Hamaji, Professor Rinjiro Sodei, Shoichi Fuji, and Kenji Mito. My wonderful guides, translators, and friends include Megumi Shimo, Mika Yoshida, Kazuko Enami, Stephen Outlaw-Spruell, Toshikazu Sumida, Noritoshi Narita, Shizuo Inoue, Michiko Yamane, and Keiko Miyamoto. I was also given great support by the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace, the Hiroshima YMCA, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Chugoku Shinbun, the International House of Japan, the American Consulate in Japan, the World Friendship Center, and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation. Also, in California, the Friends of the Hibakusha. More than thirty people shared their stories with me, including Hiromu Morishita, Keiko Murakami, Michiko Yamaoka, Nobuko Ueno, Isao Aratani, Dr. Hiroe Hamano, Dixie Setoyama, Yachiyo Kato, Dr. Fumiko Kaya, Yasuko Uemoto, Suzie Sunamoto, Tatsuko Yasui, Kosuke Shishido, Pierce Fukuhara, Mitsuko Yamamoto, Nobue Hashimoto, Mamoru Hamasaki, Pe Hak Te, Chieko Tabata, Hajime Tsukamoto, Dr. and Mrs. Takeko Nakayama, Chioko Kono, Violet Kazue de Cristoforo, Tokio Yamane, Mr. Kanaoka, Akira Nakano, Katsuko Kaimatchi, Tadashi and Sumako Matsuyanagi, Yasuhiko Taketa, Dr. Kohei Daikoku, Rev. Ryoga Suwa, and the others who asked me not to acknowledge them by name. I will never forget their courage and their honesty.
I have shelves full of books on Hiroshima, the internment camps, and the Japanese Americans. Here, I want to acknowledge two indispensible works that are referenced in this text: Where We The Enemy?: American Survivors of Hiroshima by Rinjiro Sodei who I had the privilege of meeting at Hosei University in Tokyo (Westview Press, 1998), and And Justice For All: An Oral History of the American Detention Camps, by John Tateishi (Random House, 1984). I first encountered the quote I have taken my title from in Carolyn Forche’s poem “Testimony of Light” (The Angel of History, Harper Perennial, 1994). The poem borrows it from Peter Schwenger’s book, Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
A book is more than its research, and a memoir is more than the life lived. It is born in the aftermath. To my family; to my family of friends; to my family of writer friends, and teacher friends, and student friends—to everyone who read this book in any of its many incarnations or helped bring it into the world, everyone who believed in me and lived with me while I wrestled it from life to art: thank you for your generosity, and support, and love. Although I can’t name all the people who have touched it with their grace and talent during the past decade, I would like to acknowledge Kenny Fries, Beth Kephart, Eloise Flood, Bino Realuyo, Tina Nguyen, John Searcy, Prageeta Sharma, Kate Moses, Ming Yuen-Schat, Majo Tinoco, Manisha Sharma, Jonathan Hadley, Pat Klesinger, Rebecca Brown, Elena Georgiou, and Douglas A. Martin. Abiding thanks to Ellen Levine at Trident and Amy Scholder at the Feminist Press, who loved it instantly, and all the others who helped bring it into the world. And finally, my lifelong gratitude to my parents, my children, and their father who not only had to live through this, but had to live through it with a writer.
Published in 2010 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org
Copyright © 2010 by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
All rights reserved
This publication was made possible, in part, with support from Diane Bernard.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rizzuto, Rahna R.
Hiroshima in the morning : a memory / by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-558-61668-3
1. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—Description and travel. 2. Rizzuto, Rahna R.—Travel—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. 3. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—History—Bombardment, 1945. 4. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—History—Bombardment, 1945—Personal narratives, Japanese. 5. Atomic bomb victims—Japan—Hiroshima-shi—Biography. 6. Pacifists—Japan—Hiroshima-shi—Biography. 7. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—Biography. 8. Rizzuto, Rahna R. 9. Rizzuto, Rahna R.—Family. 10. Japanese American authors—Biography. I. Title.
DS897.H5R59 2010
940.54’2521954—dc22
2010019658
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Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning