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The Courage to Hope
"Excuse me, sir."
Startled, I looked up to the left. The speaker wore black horn-rimmed glasses, a long-out-of-fashion tan suit, a white shirt, and a brown tie. His coal-black hair was slicked straight back with pomade.
I recognized him from the Atomic Memorial Mound and rose to my feet. "Yes?" I asked. At first glance he appeared to be about my age, perhaps in his late fifties or early
Sixties, but bland and diffident almost to the point of invisibility—that is until he spoke.
"Good afternoon," he said, bowing slightly and smiling."Please excuse me for break your peace."
Breaking what peace? I thought, but said, "That's quite all right, sir. May I help you?"
He smiled again and nodded, as if admitting the possibility. "But perhaps I may be of service to you." His voice was light but rich, resonant, as if somehow amplified.
I pointed to the empty chair. "Please. Join me." Though I wondered if the man might not be a local guide looking for work, I didn't care. I needed company.
"Thank you, sir." Bowing again, he sat, motioned to a waitress, and ordered coffee.
I stuck out my hand by way of introducing myself. When the man declined to respond, I quickly withdrew it, remembering the Japanese distaste for shaking hands. "My name is Leonard Bird."
"I am Mr. Tanaka." He smiled briefly, pushed his coffee cup to the side, placed his knotty hands flat on the table, leaned forward, and stared directly into my eyes. I blinked a
couple of times and returned the contact. "May I ask what brings you Hiroshima? Mr. Bird."
"Despair," I blurted, then shook my head to deny what I had just said and its pathetic, melodramatic tone. "I'm not quite sure. I've been here before, twice. I come in need, and in, ah, somewhat tremulous hope."
"Ah so. Deseka. I understand. Hope for what, Mr. Bird?"
At first the man seemed a bit too intent on peeling away my motives, like a CIA agent I once encountered in Belize City. I shook my head to dismiss the suspicion. Tanaka was far older than I'd first thought, probably well into his seventies. His pomaded hair was dyed, his face was a mask of fine lines, and his hands were gnarled by arthritis.
"Please excuse, Mr. Bird. Hope for what?"
Perhaps it was his age, perhaps his apparent interest, but I found myself trusting him. "I'm not quite sure," I replied, then poured out my ambivalence. "It has already been a very long day. I'm confused, unsettled. Many aspects of your park cut to the quick—horror, loss, despair, and, despite the despair, a deep commitment to peace. These things I see and feel, perhaps because I brought them with me."
"Yes. But it is the hope, Mr. Bird. Without hope we..."
"I don't feel it, and since I can't feel it, hope seems to be little more than an abstraction, like God or immortality."
Tanaka frowned and jerked back his head, as if my interruption had been a slap, but I continued on, far more upset than I had realized. "When it comes to the possibility for
world peace, my logic dismisses hope as little more than the sterile fruit of naiveté."
"Ah, yes, Mr. Bird. There is real truth in what you say. But that is only one piece of truth. I think maybe you look for hope in wrong places."
"Perhaps." I shrugged, then asked a question that probably struck Tanaka as being more flippant than I intended.
"Tell me, sir. Is hope something you carry in your toolbox?"
Seeming to ignore my question, Tanaka glanced around the room, then shut his eyes, frowned, and nodded. "Perhaps I should tell you something of myself."
"Please do."
"Yes." He blinked once and focused on his gnarled hands, which he'd locked together in front of him. "Most important are wife and daughter. I could never find their bodies."
"Excuse me!?"
"Maybe their ashes sleep in Atomic Mound."
"My God!" I interrupted. "I'm so..."
Tanaka frowned, shook his head, and continued. "Many in old neighborhood were too burned to recognize. Those first few days we cremate thousands nameless." Tanaka raised his gaze to meet mine, his eyes empty. "On Hiroshima Day, ten years after war, all nameless ashes move to Atomic Memorial Mound. That is why I visit, to feel close to wife and daughter. Once each month I come here from Osaka."
During Tanaka's toneless summary a chill crawled from my wet socks to the base of my neck. Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to take this old man in my arms and rock him against my chest, yet knew that his stiff, contained dignity would never allow such a familiar gesture. "I am deeply sorry," I mumbled, and reached out to cover his glacially cold hands
with my newly warmed ones.
Instantly Tanaka pulled his hands away and placed them on his lap. "Thank you," he said, again gripping my soul with his eyes. "You ask, do I have hope as one of tools?"
"Well," I stammered, "Yes. I'm sorry. But how could you?"
Tanaka shook his head. "For myself? No. Since war I live alone. When I allow my spirit drift, it always return August 6, 1945, and next days and weeks and months. For long time I think to kill myself."
When I tried to interject more condolences, Tanaka again held up his hand. "But hope for world? Yes! For others? For the future? Yes! Many, many years I teach history. Because I believe education, because I believe people can learn more. Yes, I have a little hope."
He cocked his head slightly, as if trying to assess me from a different angle, and turned the question around. "Tell me, please, Mr. Bird, why can you not feel hope in our Peace Park?"
I took a sip from my mug, set it back on the table between my two hands and stared at it a moment before again raising my eyes. "I don't know. I just returned. From my last visit, twelve years ago, I glimpsed it, I guess."
Tanaka nodded emphatically. "This good place to find your hope."
"Yes I guess I understand that, but..." I sounded like a fool but plunged on, talking as much to myself as to Tanaka "Certainly, yes, I see hope, but only here and there. Hope is not missing, I guess, but it seems so tenuous, hard to grasp.”
"Maybe that is nature of hope, yes?" Tanaka smiled. “At least you see. Yes, I think I might be of service."
Not quite sure how to respond, I clarified his ear her question "You ask me why I came back? An almost desperate yearning for hope. That and the need to find a new sense of direction. I seem, somehow, to have lost my way.”
"Ah, yes. I suspect many stories in your somehow.”
"Yes. Too many."
Tanaka nodded, glanced at his watch, then again seemed to change the subject. "You will still be Hiroshima tomorrow evening?"
"Yes I don't have to leave until Sunday afternoon.”
"Good. Then you can see our famous Hiroshima Flower Festival." Abruptly, Tanaka rose from his chair. "You will please meet me here five o'clock tomorrow evening. We will
talk more about hope and where you might find it.”
Somewhat disoriented by the abruptness of his declaration, I rose to my feet. "I will be here, Tanaka-san. -
"Good, Mr. Bird. Good." Tanaka bowed formally and walked away.
Almost as soon as he disappeared, I realized that something in my head had changed. Though I still felt alone, achy, and exhausted, my depression had lightened. I shook my head. I had just had a very direct conversation with a man who had lost everything, and I felt better? But no, not everything. The man seemed not to have lost his soul, and his words and presence had somehow nurtured me. I wanted to know more about him—his history, what he thought, felt, about the A-bombing, about the park, about life.
The next day, I met Tanaka as planned. In deference to his age, his status as a Hibakusha, and my respect for him personally, I arrived at the Sweden Restaurant ten minutes early, only to find him already seated. Other than a freshly starched white shirt, the old man was dressed as before. He rose from his chair, smiled, and refused to sit until I had taken my seat. After we greeted each other, he placed his hands flat on the table and again, in a very un-Japanese fashion, stared into my eyes.
“Yesterday I said maybe I can be of service. I have thought about that a little.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So have I.” He waited, smiling slightly, until I continued. “All right, I first came here in 1954, as a young marine. Almost exactly three years later, I was an involuntary, nuclear guinea pig...." I gave him a brief description of what I had experienced at Yucca Flat and concluded: "A few hours after the blast, unprotected by anything but a World War II gas mask, I stood within two hundred meters of ground zero.
I remember standing there with my buddies, trying to mask our fear with jokes, as clouds of irradiated dust swirled by." I stopped for a moment and nodded, pleased to be able to say
what I felt. "To some degree, at least, it is kinship that brings me here. That and my fears for my grandchildren. I feel strongly connected to this city and particularly to your Park for
World Peace."
Tanaka looked at me for a long time before nodding. "I am glad you have grandchildren. Your god has been good to you. I sorrow you had such meeting with A-bomb, and my heart sorrow more for America. But also, sir, you must know. Nothing you experience with your A-bomb, regardless of size, can compare what happen here and Nagasaki. You understand?"
"I know that," I mumbled defensively, embarrassed that the man felt it necessary to make the point. "No. It is not the same. Yucca Flat changed my life in some major ways and set me down on another track, but from that track has come some good. Like you, I am a teacher, and I know that what I experienced at Yucca Flat—and here in Hiroshima—has had a good effect on what and how I teach."
Tanaka nodded. "Perhaps it would have been better for world if all Americans had go to Yucca Flat."
I shuddered. "I don't know about that. But I do know that it would be good for everybody in the world to come here. Yet... most of my countrymen spend a lot of time and money avoiding what they perceive to be morbid."
Tanaka shook his head. "My countrymen too. Maybe all of us, yes? We avoid important reality. Maybe it is your job help people see more clear." He squinted his already narrow eyes, as if appraising me, then smiled and continued. "If I may say so, Mr. Bird, your country maybe has too great power and too little wisdom. Now that America has won Cold War I hope your great power does not make you too proud and too blind."
"Me too, Tanaka-san. But... " I paused.
He raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"
"Wisdom sometimes leads to power. But how often has great power led to wisdom? Without a whole lot of pain for a whole lot of people?"
Tanaka again jerked a short nod and immediately changed the subject, as if the nod had said it all. "I will now tell you something about hope. Hope comes from belief that world
can change, if only by few people at a time. In our peace culture, we believe people can be taught to see new peace vision."
"But in time?" I asked.
"Your Jesus said we will never know the time until it comes. In the meantime we light our lamps. In Buddhism, too, light is necessary. It is important to shed a little light."
I shook my head. "I like to believe that, sir. What I try to do as a teacher is grounded in that belief. Change is possible! However..."
"Yes, Mr. Bird. No 'however.' Hope people can change is life raft. We must not let go. Also, I think maybe you have change."
I nodded, both sobered and amused to flash back over the past forty-five years to my delinquent teens in East San Diego, my suspension from school and the long tour in the Marines, and the meandering paths and detours I had since traveled. More, I thought about the mistakes I had made and the irreparable harm I had done along the way.
Tanaka seemed to be reading my mind. "Yesterday I told you about my family. I am sorry if I bore you, but may I tell you a little more about self?"
I raised my hands in relief and supplication. "Please!"
"I have not always been teacher. You should know, I was captain in Imperial Army. I am one of those who help my country destroy itself. In process we destroy many, many others."
"That is a very direct assessment," I said, embarrassed by Tanaka's candor and obvious sadness.
"It is also truth. In 1938 I return from three years in California, where I study American history. I had, excuse me for say so, felt too much rudeness from your countrymen." Tanaka's tone was flat, unemotional, matter-of-fact. "Because I, too, need to prove to world that we Japanese are no inferior to great white race, I join Imperial Army. After officer school I spend four years in China and do things to blacken my heart. In 1944
I was transfer Hiroshima, my family home."
At a loss for words, I nodded. Our eyes remained locked, and neither of us said anything for what seemed like a long minute.
"This, too, you should know. Certainly I wish you had not drop your A-bombs on us, but I no longer feel anger or bitterness. I think President Truman want to save American lives."
"Excuse me, sir?" I could not quite grasp the switch in topic, or Tanaka's apparent detachment from what he had just said. President Truman's decision had destroyed his life. "Of course he wanted to save American lives," I said. "Still...pardon me for saying so, Tanaka-san, but many historians and ethicists look at the question quite differently. Some Americans are horrified by our use of the bomb and the precedent we thus established. Even more Americans are appalled by what we did to Nagasaki just three days later. Some critics feel that we should have given your government more time to respond to the flattening of Hiroshima. However, given the horrific realities of battles to win Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the then perceived options... "
"Whether second bomb, or even first, was necessary I can not judge. But you must know, Mr. Bird, even after Nagasaki, general staff resist surrender. Had not emperor intervene and order surrender, war would have continue and you would have invade. Japan is very much mountain. War would have lasted a long time. I think maybe you learn that in Vietnam, yes?"
"Before invading Japan we would have dropped a third bomb. If necessary we would have built and dropped a fourth and fifth. That's how desperate we were to avoid invading
Kyushu that November."
Tanaka smiled. "You are good student, Mr. Bird. Yes, that is point. No leader in world would not have use.... Excuse me. Not just Truman. Any leader of any country would do same."
"Then how can you remain so stoic... ?"
"Please, listen. In circumstance, Truman had no choice. He had to use bomb. To believe otherwise is fool's job. To spare your country more dead and wounded, President
Truman would have drop another A-bomb. I agree. He had two goals: gain from Japan total surrender, and save American lives. Your A-bombs accomplish two goals, yes?"
It upset me that Tanaka seemed so coldly logical in his analysis of Truman's decisions, though I tended to agree with his arguments. "With all due respect," I started.
Tanaka held up his hand. "It is not our purpose to settle debate. We do not have tools—or wisdom. That is not our work, is it?"
"No." I was relieved to move away from what had become an academic subject. "The future will be determined by what we humans do now, here and now, in the present."
Tanaka smiled, as if he had completed a simple lesson with a difficult student. "Yes, Mr. Bird. Past shed confusing light on present. Again, necessary to shed a little light, ne! Maybe
that is why we become teachers.”
I chuckled. "It sounds good, though maybe a little self-serving."
Tanaka shrugged. "I have for you another truth. I think maybe it is also promise."
"Please."
As he had done the afternoon before, Tanaka rose abruptly from his chair and grabbed his raincoat. I pushed back from the table and almost leaped up.
"Excuse me," I said, trying to suppress the panic in my voice. "I thought... "
"Please excuse. I tire easy, Mr. Bird. I must rest now."
"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to keep you."
Tanaka bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, then held his hand up to his chest, raised his index finger straight up, wagged it twice, and said, "Tomorrow I think you will open your eyes to different truth, and find your hope. I think maybe you just need open eyes a little wider. See all the flowers." And with that instruction, he smiled again, bowed, and turned away.
For a moment or so after Tanaka disappeared, I stared in the direction of his retreating back. Though he walked ramrod straight, like the Army officer he had once been, Tanaka walked slowly, stiffly. I counted backward and forward from |1938, the year Tanaka claimed to have returned from his disillusioning years in California, and figured that he must be close to eighty. I beckoned the waitress to bring me a cup of hot chocolate. I wasn't sure what Tanaka had given me, but it certainly wasn't what I had expected.
In the years since that conversation, I have come more fully to understand that how one judges President Truman's decision to drop Little Boy and Fat Man depends more on
one's viewpoint than on any major disagreement about the facts. Did America's decision to unleash the dragons of nuclear warfare alter the shape and tenor of the world, perhaps
forever? Yes. Did the decision save hundreds of thousands of American lives and innumerable Japanese lives as well? Probably. Did it immediately put an end to further carnage in Asia and Oceania and bring our boys home? Obviously.
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman seldom mentioned winning the war without yoking that win to the blood of America's youth and the need to staunch the flow. The popular journals divided their content between the war news (always censored), and features designed to buoy homeland morale. Increasing numbers of mothers and wives hung single or double or sometimes even three-star flags in their front windows, a blue star person or daughter or husband at war, and a gold star for one killed in action.
I remember walking home from school one day some time late in the war. Tommy
Allen was with me. We had spent half an hour in detention because of something to do with a game of marbles. Tommy's brother was in the Navy, somewhere in the Pacific. As we hopped up onto Tommy's front porch, we saw his mother's hand reach in front of the lace curtains. She removed the flag with the blue star. A moment later her hand, shaking, reappeared to hang a gold star.
The following day, I walked to the Children's Peace Memorial, unprepared for what
proved to be my final encounter in Hiroshima. After three days of rain, the sodden origami cranes had bled most of their color.
A few old people and half a dozen families stood in small clusters or sat along the low wall that frames Sadako's memorial. A boy wearing white shorts and shirt and carrying a string of rainbow-colored cranes approached the already deeply piled offerings. Several other children waited to place their own strings. They stood silently or talked in quiet tones, to their parents and siblings.
As I watched the slow procession of offerings to the soul of twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki, who had folded her cranes and died of radiation sickness so many years before, I thought of the prayer carved at the base of the memorial by another middle school student many years later: "This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in this world." I thought of all the other students of Sadako's generation, some killed by the blast and fires, others living for ten or twenty years before finally succumbing to radiation poisoning. As this new generation of young people placed their wreaths of fresh hope, I inhaled the perfumed beauty of Children's Day and prayed for my grandchildren.
A girl in her early teens carrying a strand of flamingo-colored cranes detached from her parents and approached Sadako's memorial. Dressed in a blue and green plaid skirt |and green blouse, the girl moved with assured grace. She bowed her head to pray, placed her cranes with a touch of elegance, bowed again, then turned on her heel and floated back
to her parents.
Then a bespectacled man approached, walking slowly, with obvious effort.
Around his neck the old man wore a string of jade-green cranes. Rather than his anonymous brown suit, Tanaka wore a long-sleeved shirt; sharply pressed khaki trousers; and a green-and-blue plaid tam-o’-shanter. I smiled broadly, delighted by his timing.
Using both hands, like a Tibetan lama removing a silk khatak, a sacred scarf, to bestow upon a pilgrim, he removed the strand of green paper cranes from around his neck and placed it around mine. "We think is time for you make offering to Goddess of Peace and pray for all children, those lost, those living, and those not yet born to troubled world."
"But these are your cranes," I protested.
"Yes, they are mine,” Tanaka said. “Every year I fold cranes to bring this
place on Children's Day. My hands always hurt, so is hard to do, but when I fold paper I think of wife and daughter. I try not just think about their deaths so many, many years ago. I think also of joy we have together when daughter is born, and joy we have later, in last few months of war, after I come home from China. Heart warm again when I see families enjoy life. Please, Mr. Bird, accept my offering of hope for new world and good life, and all our new children."
"Thank you, Tanaka-san. Thank you very much!" I had been on a ragged emotional edge ever since making the decision to return to Hiroshima. Tanaka's gesture fused disparate
threads of hope, fear, and sadness. Unable to hold back my tears, I turned away, approached the bronze boy and girl, bowed, and placed Tanaka's gift atop the piled thousands of others. I thought of Sadako, whose seemingly fruitless faith had inspired this monument and its countless pilgrims. I thought of friends who have lost children, one to sudden infant death syndrome, one to leukemia, two to suicide, and two to automobile accidents. I thought of the tens of thousands of children who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of the millions of other children lost this century in seemingly endless legions of increasingly horrific wars. "Please," I prayed.
After a while, Tanaka spoke. "Please, you remember, Mr. Bird, we must not allow selves be discourage. We know what sadness is, which maybe help us more appreciate happiness when it touch us. We live in hope—as you must. People who lose all hope just give up. They surrender and die. That is why I come Peace Park each month. That is why I fold cranes for Children's Day. And that is why you must go home and fold cranes."
Though not quite sure what I was agreeing to, or how I might proceed, I nodded and bowed. "Thank you, Tanaka-san. I will fold my cranes."
Skies remained mostly clear for the trip back to Yokohama. Comfortably alone in my seat, I spent the hours reflecting on the last few days and the creeping despair I had finally managed to stem, though not eliminate. The despair was and remains macro, in many ways abstract, impersonal, connected to the larger world. And, of course, there is much in the Hibakusha's Peace Park upon which despair can feed. For a very few moments, I allowed my mind to stand again before the dioramas of the A-bomb Museum. Like a bore tide, despair rushed back, brief but consuming.
Rather than dwelling on the darkness, however, as I had earlier in my journey, I thought mostly of the people I had met, and I thought again of Mr. Tanaka. Through strength of spirit, love of children, and a vision of a possible future, the old soldier had somehow integrated his despair. Like the city he obviously loves, Tanaka-san is a phoenix. He helped me see the yin-yang qualities of hope and despair through a less opaque lens. Though sometimes inevitable and unconquerable, despair is a slough in which one
wallows and ultimately suffocates. Hope is a beacon that, however weakly it may sometimes shine, leads us toward life.
That frail beacon encourages us to act in good faith. The sun was setting over the mountains of central Honshu, bathing the houses and terraces in the soft, warm glow of early
evening. Everywhere color sparkled in the clarity of late light. I mumbled a psalm of gratitude and supplication to the gods. Hope may ultimately prove to be nothing but a thin reed in a howling wind. Yet it endures. And because it endures, hope requires us to work for peace and against nuclear proliferation, whether the proliferation be domestic or foreign. We hope and we work, as we have always known but too easily forget, for and through our children
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