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Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing Anniversary

By Bill Davis

Ten years ago, on the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an American delegation traveled to Japan for the observances there, marking the events themselves as well as a huge international conference opposing nuclear weapons.

With delegations from over 100 countries present, the program took on an added significance as the first meeting of an American peace delegation with their counterparts from Vietnam where the war for liberation had just ended.

The month I spent travelling Japan, meeting with the Japanese people and speaking of my Vietnam experiences was offset by the realization of standing at ground zero in two beautiful cities and beginning to understand in a real sense the death and suffering that atomic explosions brought there. Without malice or condemnation, members of Genseikyo, one of several Japanese anti-nuclear and peace organization, patiently led myself and other Americans through the cities and countryside of Japan meeting the Jibakusha, the wounded survivors of the bomb blasts and seeing the museums of death that no one who passes through can ever forget.

Among older Americans in the U.S. delegation there was a feeling of guilt; among younger member the feeling translated into a quiet rage and a determination. Anti-war and peace activists became anti-nuclear activists.

The meetings with government officials, marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, conversations with American GI's and Japanese students faded in comparison to the experience of being seated at a small table in Hiroshima with two Vietnamese veterans of the war. With nothing more dangerous than a bottle of beer between us, we never spoke but still communicated the horrors we had seen that day, horrors that for that brief moment offset the horrors and suffering that had been our common experience in Vietnam with the knowledge that this could have happened to and by us.

Nuclear proponents should be led through Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the children and grandchildren of the survivors; it wouldn't hurt them but it may save all our lives.

—Bill Davis
VVAW National Office