Hibakusha, those who were bombed

 

Seventy-five years ago today Nagasaki was destroyed with an atomic bomb.

At the end of World War II, 2 Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were obliterated. 

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber named after the pilot's mother, dropped Little Boy, a five-ton uranium explosion bomb, on Hiroshima.

Three days later another plane, jokingly named Bock's Car (after the plane's original pilot), dropped
Fat Man (a moniker supposedly given it in honor of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill), a more complex plutonium implosion bomb, on Nagasaki. 

In Hiroshima, Little Boy's huge fireball and explosion killed 70,000 to 80,000 people instantly. Another 70,000 were seriously injured. As Joseph Siracusa, author of Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction, writes: "In one terrible moment, 60% of Hiroshima... was destroyed. The blast temperature was estimated to reach over a million degrees Celsius, which ignited the surrounding air, forming a fireball some 840 feet in diameter."

Three days later, Fat Man exploded 1,840 feet above Nagasaki, with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. According to "Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered," a web resource on the bombings developed for young people and educators, 286,000 people lived in Nagasaki before the bomb was dropped; 74,000 of them were killed instantly and another 75,000 were seriously injured.

Those who somehow managed to survive call themselves Hibakusha, which literally means "those who were bombed." 

[ extracted from Frida Berrigan's Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki published on August 3, 2009 in TRUTHOUT ]

The photo above is the front cover of a New Directions book containing the poem, "Original Child Bomb", by Thomas Merton. The book was designed and illustrated by Emil Antonucci and published in 1961

For most of the years of this louie blog, I have in some way remembered and noted these days of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. These posts can be found HERE. 

Other louie postings on Nagasaki & Hiroshima are here:

Nagasaki - The Peace Statue (2019)

All the world shone with thy lightning and the troubled earth shook - Two Days in August (August 9, 2019)

The Bombing of Nagasaki: The Untold Story (2018)

Nagasaki (2018)

Nagasaki - The Winner is War Itself (2017)

Hiroshima & Nagasaki (2018)

Nagasaki Mary (2015)

The fruits of war - World Day of Prayer for Peace (2017)

Nagasaki - the sufferings of Christ (2015)

Feast of the Transfiguration (2015)

the bomb (2011)

Hiroshima 69th anniversary (2014)

Hiroshima - an anti Transfiguration (2015)

Hiroshima (2013)

The bombing of Hiroshima and the Feast of the Transfiguration (2009)

Shadow on the Rock (2017)

___

As of July 8, 2017, the United States has 6,800 warheads, according to data from Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris at the Federation of American scientists. 2,800 of them are retired, 4,000 are stockpiled, and 1,800 are deployed. The total number of U.S. warheads is second only to Russia, which currently has 7,000 of them.

PAX

 

 “I may be wrong about Pax, but keep feeling that through good poems and pictures, peace can travel.”
–Robert Lax to Thomas Merton, 1953

The image here is from the third issue of Robert Lax’s broadsheet Pax, which he published sporadically between 1956 and 1962, adding three new issues in 1985. 

Flash of Light, Wall of Fire

Patients being treated in a medical tent in Hiroshima on Aug. 9.Credit...Yotsugi Kawahara, courtesy Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

“Americans, when they think about atomic war, think about the mushroom cloud,” said Benjamin Wright, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin who helped curate “Flash of Light, Wall of Fire,” a new book of photographs about the 1945 bombings.
“Perhaps they think of a destroyed city, but it’s very much a bird’s-eye view,” Mr. Wright said by telephone.

The book, published this month by the University of Texas Press to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the bombings, attempts to change that. It includes images from more than a dozen Japanese photographers, starting with Mr. Matsumoto’s photo of a Hiroshima wall clock that stopped at the moment when a nuclear bomb detonated above the city in a flash of light.

From the NY Times article "After Atomic Bombings, These Photographers Worked Under Mushroom Clouds" (Aug. 6, 2020)

A young woman who survived the explosion at Minami-Ohashi, a mile south of ground zero, being pulled on Oct. 4 by her aunt on a cart over rubble-covered roads to Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. Credit...Shunkichi Kikuchi, courtesy Harumi Tago

A police station on Sept. 15 in Shimoyanagi-cho, Hiroshima. The clock stopped at the time of the bomb blast.Credit...Eiichi Matsumoto

be faithful

Former President Clinton, in his eulogy for John Lewis at the funeral yesterday, mentioned that Lewis had Merton's autobiography (The Seven Storey Mountain) with him, but apparently it was another Merton book, New Seeds of Contemplation.

Spring 2020 newsletter of the International Thomas Merton Society

Merton at the Selma March      
March 7, 2020 marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, a key turning point in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans. A little-known detail about that event was that Thomas Merton was present both in spirit and in word. Leading the march was 25-year-old John Lewis, chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who was expecting to be arrested for participating in this “illegal” demonstration and came prepared for jail, with a backpack containing a toothbrush and toothpaste, an apple and an orange, and two books to read while incarcerated, one of which was Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation. ...

For the complete reflection see https://johnlewis.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-john-lewis-pope-francis-address-congress

At the October 2019 wake at the U.S. Capitol for another African American congressman and civil rights icon, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley encountered Rep. Lewis. Recalling having been told by Lewis on a previous occasion about New Seeds in his backpack, and “Remembering our affinity for Merton, I ask the congressman, ‘What do you think Thomas Merton would say to us as Americans today if he were alive?’ After only a brief moment of reflection, he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘“Be faithful.” He would say, “Be faithful.”’ And so it is,” O’Malley concludes: “the clock ticks on, and the reputations of some men soar even as their abilities vanish before our eyes. But some things never die. Some ideas refuse to be buried. Justice. Dignity. Generational progress. The truth that we are all in this together” – ideals shared by the civil rights leader and the monk whose printed words accompanied him on that historic day fifty-five years ago, and whose spirit, Lewis believes, continues to summon Americans to be faithful to their truest principles and their best selves.

HT: Jim Forest & Patrick O'Connell

if Thomas Merton could find his way and keep his faith and believe in the future, he, John Lewis could too ...

In a funeral eulogy delivered today in Atlanta, former President Clinton spoke of Lewis' humanity, strength and his unwavering belief in a future without racism. His eulogy included a reference to Thomas Merton:

Then, there was Bloody Sunday, he figured he might get arrested. And this is really important for all the rhapsodic things we believe about John Lewis, he had a really good mind and he was always trying to figure out how I can make the most out of every single moment. So he’s getting ready to march from Selma to Montgomery, he wants to get across the bridge. What do we remember? He cut quite a strange figure: He had a trench coat and a backpack. Now, young people probably think that’s no big deal but there weren’t that many backpacks back then. And you never saw anybody in a trench coat looking halfway dressed up with a backpack. But John put an apple, an orange, a toothbrush, toothpaste to take care of his body because he figured he would get arrested. And two books, one by Richard Hofstadter on America’s political tradition to feed his mind, and one, the autobiography of Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic Trappist monk who was the son of itinerant artists making an astonishing personal transformation. What’s a young guy who’s about to get his brains beat out and planning on going to prison doing taking that? I think he figured that if Thomas Merton could find his way and keep his faith and believe in the future, he, John Lewis could too.

Good Trouble

John Lewis called Pope Francis' 2015 address to Congress 

"one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard in all my years in Congress...It was amazing that the Pope mentioned the Selma-to-Montgomery march because...I carried one of Thomas Merton's books in my backpack"

Here is the full statement from John Lewis:

"The Holy Father, Pope Francis of the Holy See, delivered a powerful message to Congress and the American people today. In his humble, gentle way he used his authority to encourage us to simply do what is right to protect to dignity of all humankind.

"He said: "All political activity must serve and protect the good of the human person and be based on respect for his or her dignity ... Politics is ... an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good.

"These words and ideas speak to the center of our work as member of Congress and to the importance and vitality of our roles as individual citizens. Pope Francis delivered one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard in all my years in Congress. I loved the way he used the life and work of President Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton as the basis for his lesson for all of us.

"Though I was reluctant to openly shed tears, I cried within to hear his words. I was deeply moved to realize I had a connection in some way with some of those he mentioned. When TIME magazine, years ago, did a story on "living saints", they actually included Dorothy Day and I in the story. Also Thomas Merton was a monk whose words I studied during non-violence training in the Civil Rights Movement. It was amazing that the Pope mention the Selma-to-Montgomery march because during the first attempt to march to Montgomery, now known as Bloody Sunday, I carried one of Thomas Merton's books in my backpack.

"Pope Francis spoke to the heart and soul of Congress and America. It is my prayer that members of Congress will heed his simple call to respect the dignity and divinity of every human being then we would be better servants of the American people, this would be a better country, and a better world."

#RIPJohnLewis #GoodTrouble

Gethsemane

While looking for something else, I came across this photo of an old post card. This is how Gethsemane looked when I was a child, and how it looked when Merton was there. A single road led to the front gate; we parked the car on either side of the road. We walked down the path on the left to get to the Church. The little door to the left of the main door led to the gift shop, where we browsed the holy cards. There was a sign over an interior door in the gift shop that read "no women allowed". I remember a "God Alone" sign, but I thought it was over the main gate.

Things were always quiet at Gethsemane, and I liked going over there, even though I never knew quite what to make of it.

This is me with some friends standing before the Church in Nov. 2019. The monks are more open to women and the public now, while still protecting the silence and solitude.