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by Laura J Peterson
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Armed with a map, a Japanese dictionary, and a healthy dose of adventure, my husband, Will, and I set out for the city of Nagasaki on a bleak November day. We drove south along a narrow two-lane freeway, weaving in and out of tunnels cut from the rocky hills, over the Saikai Bridge, made famous by the 1956 monster movie Rodan, and entered the Japanese countryside. The steely sky cast a gray hue over the scrubby trees and rice fields.
Soon we came upon three radio towers standing solemnly in the distance. These were the Hario Wireless Towers that transmitted the infamous message in December 1941 – Climb Mount Niitaka 1208 – that launched the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
We had visited Pearl Harbor the year before, when we had traveled to the island of Oahu for our friends’ wedding. Will and I, along with a cluster of college friends from the wedding party, stood on the deck of the USS Arizona Memorial and contemplated the horrors of the Japanese attack as we gazed into the waters below. Other visitors milled around deck, waving American flags or chatting with a group of veterans in uniform. Their presence made me feel connected to history, reminding me I was part of something bigger than myself, as we honored our fallen countrymen beneath the Hawaiian sun.
My emotions were much different as we drove past the Hario Wireless Towers. I was struck by how desolate the place felt. Ours was the only car on the road, a splash of bright blue moving across a monochromatic landscape. The three towers jabbed at the sky like daggers.
We passed through small towns that hugged the highway until the windswept countryside gave way to the bustling cityscape of Nagasaki. It was slow going as we navigated the crowded streets and dodged trams that occasionally intersected our lane. Nagasaki was a typical Japanese city with its shopping centers, pachinko parlors, and thriving businesses, but with one notable exception: There were no buildings older than 1945.
The Atomic Bomb Museum sat on a hill at the north end of the city. We parked our car beneath a sky heavy-laden with clouds and entered the museum’s dimly lit interior. Video screens played continuous accounts of A-bomb survivors. On the walls hung black-and-white photographs of battered landscapes with charred human bodies among the shattered remains. A tabletop exhibit displayed a human hand melted into a piece of glass.
Overwhelmed by the visual devastation, I turned away to read the English placards recounting the events leading up to the bombing. I learned that Nagasaki was not the original target for the second atomic bomb. The original target was the city of Kokura on the northeast coast of Kyushu. Due to cloud cover over Kokura on August 9, 1945, the B-29 bomber followed orders and headed to the secondary target: Nagasaki. The bomber crew almost abandoned this secondary mission due to poor weather, but a momentary break in the cloud cover afforded a clear target of the Mitsubishi Arms Works. At 11:02 AM, the second atomic bomb in history was dropped on Nagasaki, killing more than 60,000 people.
This event had intrigued me since I was a teenager. I remember my high school history teacher instructing our class to write a persuasive essay from a list of American history topics. One prompt had asked us to argue for or against the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. I had lingered over this topic longer than the others. Perhaps I had sensed, even then, an inexplicable tug toward this culture that was so unlike my own. But the gravity of the subject had also paralyzed me. I was just beginning to grasp the basics of American history and, like most teenagers, I tended to view life in black and white. I hadn’t yet developed the critical thinking skills needed to evaluate such a controversial issue, especially one that would force me to question the integrity of my own nation. These were murky waters I wasn’t ready to navigate, so I hastily chose a different, safer topic—something about the effects of Prohibition on the social morals of the time.
With time and maturity, my understanding of the world had expanded. A wide sea of gray now existed between those islands of black and white; and yet, I had never been forced to contend with this particular topic. Until now.
The US Navy had recently stationed Will—and consequently me—in southern Japan. We’d only been here a few months before I had a personal epiphany: Japan was more than my host country; it was my heart country. With my reserved personality and deep appreciation for order and beauty, I connected with this place in ways I hadn’t in my travels to other countries. I determined to learn the language and culture, to cultivate authentic relationships with the people I met, and to tour as much of the country as possible. The Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki had seemed like the obvious destination to begin our exploration. It didn’t occur to me that I might be wading into the very waters I had avoided earlier in life.
I stared at a black-and-white photo of the blast hanging on the museum wall. What if the clouds had held that day? Would I be standing in a museum in a different Japanese city? Would the war have ended on a date other than the one in our history books? Perhaps our Naval base would not exist and Will and I would be stationed elsewhere in the world. It seemed inconceivable that something as capricious as weather could have determined the fate of this city, world history, and my own personal story. In that moment, history no longer seemed like a series of impersonal events marching along a static timeline, but more like a tether linking the past with the present.
We moved on to the last room of the museum, a refuge of white light within the otherwise dim interior. Colorful displays charted the course of the atomic bomb’s development from its conception to its consummation as a wartime weapon. The English text was saturated with anti-nuclear rhetoric.
The one-sided narrative disturbed me. Having grown up in Washington state, home of the decommissioned Hanford nuclear production complex, I felt unnerved by this exhibit that failed to mention the modern-day benefits of nuclear energy. But after the devastation I had just witnessed, I was beginning to understand the fear in a new and palpable way.
Will and I exited the museum and walked to the adjacent Hypocenter Park. We stood at the center of the crater-shaped hypocenter, the exact spot where the bomb had been dropped. A vertical post read, “Ground level at the time of the blast.” It reached as high as my chin. My insides felt as hollowed out as the ground beneath me.
We wandered over to the edge of the crater and stopped before the statue of Sadako Sasaki. Having read the story of Sadako as a teenager, I knew she was Japan’s iconic symbol of all that was lost when the atomic bombs devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sadako was a twelve-year-old girl who had survived the blast in Hiroshima but suffered from leukemia brought on by the subsequent radiation. She believed she would be granted one wish if she succeeded in folding one thousand paper cranes, so she set about folding cranes during her stay in the hospital. She died before she could reach her goal, but her friends and family rallied to complete the thousand cranes. Her statue is perpetually decorated with streams of colorful origami cranes, folded by school children who visit on field trips. Standing before her statue that day, I yearned for my own square of colored paper and the skill to fold it.
Will and I drove home in silence, each of us lost in thought. A whirlwind of emotions tore through me as I pondered the age-old question: Did the end really justify the means? The dropping of the atomic bombs had brought World War II to a decisive finish, but was it necessary to kill so many civilians, to destroy hospitals and schools along with ammunition sites, to forever mar the physical landscape of a place that didn’t belong to us?
After seeing history from the Japanese perspective, I couldn’t help but grieve. I thought about my new friend Tomoe and my English-language students and my boss Kidera-san, delightful people who had shown me nothing but kindness. It was hard to imagine their forefathers as our enemies. If I had known their predecessors and seen their faces, would I have condoned the dropping of the bombs? No way could I have done it. My soul felt heavy, burdened by the decision my country had made to hurt so many.
But then another emotion stirred. The landscape outside the car window blurred and faded, replaced in my mind’s eye with war footage of the Battle of Midway, the fierce fighting at Guadalcanal, and the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. Images of US soldiers dying at Pearl Harbor flickered across the screen of my mind. I had recently read about the Bataan Death March and the Rape of Nanking, hideous incidences of Japanese wartime ruthlessness. I had learned about the inhumane treatment of POWs by a people unwilling to abide by the Geneva Convention. Was it right to let such atrocities continue when America had the means to stop them?
All my historical knowledge came flooding back. Americans and their Allies had suffered greatly for victory in the South Pacific. The Japanese had been high-stake players who had refused the Allies’ call to surrender. The Japanese government had equated surrender with dishonor, even while its cities smoldered, its people starved, and B-29s swarmed overhead. There was no doubt in my mind that a lengthy invasion of the Japanese mainland would have prolonged the war and taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers.
I knew the facts, but now I had seen the faces of the dead and the bodies and the carnage. I had heard the stories of the survivors. I had stood at the hypocenter of the blast in the depths of that manmade crater. Was it really the right decision to cross that line, to be the first to use atomic weapons against humanity?
My thoughts followed a circular route back to my pre-museum convictions: There had been no good choice. America’s actions had brought the war to an unequivocal close. It was a decision that rang true for me, despite the devastation it had caused to my host country, this place that was beginning to feel like a part of me.
The shores of black and white were no longer in sight. The waters before me were murky and turbulent. And yet, they didn’t scare me as they had before. There was an honesty to the ambiguity that beckoned me forward.
Was it possible to embrace the victory and simultaneously grieve the loss?
Yes, that’s what it is to be an American in Nagasaki.
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Laura J Peterson made her writing debut as a travel writer for The Best Places to Kiss books (Beginning Press) and eventually became managing editor of the series. She was a contributing author to Her Fork in the Road: Women Celebrate Food and Travel (Travelers’ Tales), and her essays have appeared in online publications such as Wanderlust-Journal, TheRavensPerch, and The Redbud Post. She recently completed a middle-grade historical novel set in ancient Japan.
Laura spent three years teaching English in southern Japan while her husband served as a dental officer in the US Navy. She and her family currently live outside of Seattle, where she enjoys hosting friends from around the world and discovering the best places to eat sushi in the Northwest.
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