I have been haunted by Hiroshima since living there with my husband and son in the early 1960’s. Once one has seen how a nuclear weapon can destroy a city, vaporize those near the epicenter, and cause radiation disease in the survivors, one is a witness. You want to let everyone know of the danger of nuclear weapons with the hope that they demand that the weapons will be banned by all nations.
With that hope I wrote Return to Hiroshima with the renowned Japanese photographer
Eikoh Hosoe in 1970. And then fifteen years later we returned again to
write A Place Called Hiroshima. We showed how on the surface this bustling
port city was now thriving, but most of the survivors, known as hibakusha
(explosion affected people) were in and out of the Atomic Bomb hospital.
We revisited the Peace Museum, where we saw photographs of charred bodies in makeshift first aid stations, and the shadow of the man who had sought refuge on the steps of a bank.
We went to the Peace Park with the children of the Folded Crane club, who had raised money to build a statue to Sadako Sasaki, the Anne Frank of Hiroshima. Her death from delayed radiation effects twelve years after the bomb fell seemed to symbolize the inhumanity of nuclear weapons more than all the scientific facts about them.
On August 6, the day of the bomb, Hosoe photographed the thousands of people who sat in the Peace Park to commemorate what had happened there. And I made the note: "Hiroshima does not belong only to the past. It belongs to the present and the future as well. And it no longer belongs only to the Japanese, but to all the peoples of the world."To begin with ―
This place you’ve come to see called Hiroshima
Is no one place.
There are many places, each bearing that name.
One is located in the past.
One in the present.
One in the future.
Understand ―
The legendary place that you seek
Is not located on a map.
It is a state of mind.
Still you return over the years looking for Hiroshima.
And always you ask:
How will I know when I arrive?
Is there anything still there?
Is there anyone who can remember?
Is there anyone who can forget?