7.9 Hiroshima:war and victimhood

Today is really a heavy day. We travelled to Hiroshima ad visited museum of the atomic bomb and victims. The museum brought me to the disaster and affected the way I perceive Hiroshima in the following days. This is a discussion on victimhood and war. 

The most striking exhibit to me is the section where clothes and things of victims are displayed. Especially a bento box which still has carbonized food in it. The narration simply said there is soy, rice, beans and some other food inside that box, but the boy never got to eat it. That short narration really resonated me. I couldn't help but imagine how myself as a primary school students, everyday just before lunch time, so curious and excited to know what today's lunch is. And I can tell, with what love and hope, his mother prepared that meal for him, how she hoped his son could have another happy day at school, finish everything in the box and come back, saying "tadaima" in front of the door. But that would never happen. With that simple excitement and hope, the boy died without even knowing what happened. There is no mentioning about his family, maybe there is no way to trace back. But I can imagine how desperate the family can be. Or maybe, no one left. Just like all the exhibits of clothes and letters in that section, this bento box shows the victims were once alive, living an ordinary life as we all do. Suddenly the bomb was dropped, and everything was over.  

Another exhibits is the story of family N and the girl who survived for another 10 years after the bombing. Those stories didn't stop when the bombing happened, but years later. When they "luckily" survived the bombing and recovered from injury. The damage is mentally and physically, and the suffering is enduring. The girl made it to primary school and made a lot of students there. Everything seemed moving towards a bright direction after the disaster, but suddenly she was diagnosed as leukemia because of radiation, and died eventually. This story is just so similar to the story in the manga. It is so cruel to once give hope to someone when they are in desperation, and when they recovered and believed in the future, take the hope away and throw them into that desperation again. In the story of family N, I was touched by the narration where the father once decided to commit double suicide with his son after his wife died. He did try to do so, but finally gave up because of his love for his son. However, he still suffered from the trauma and died years later, with scars on his body which never healed. Both the lasting mental and physical damage are revealed in the manga. The girl already began to pursue new future 10 years after the disaster, but died because of leftover of the radiation. She rejected love from the outside, because she thought she wasn't able to save people at that time, and she even began to get used to seeing corpse on her way. That made her feel guilty and always question herself if she deserves belong to this world.

All the stories and exhibits in the museum mainly focused on tragedy of normal individuals. That really makes me feel the pain and the sadness myself, since they are just like us and their life had nothing to do with the war. When I walked outside the museum, I saw the trees, the paths and the bridges, realizing 74 years ago, those were ruins after the bombing. Nothing is special nowadays, since we are now in a peaceful world, but the remaining dome still stands there, reminding everyone that history exists and people died, everything has already gone but everything is still alive. So I wrote on the message board, "wish for peaceful world".