No more hate, the war is over

One day, a Citrus College student said to me: “I hate you because you Japanese killed my grandfather.”

This was the first time I had been attacked by an American who hates all Japanese people. I was so sad that he was judging me based solely on my nationality and the events of World War II, which ended 36 years before I was born.

I am a Japanese student from Hiroshima, a city famous for having been devastated in 1945 by an atomic bomb attack.

Usually I feel a little bit nervous when I talk with Americans about World War II.

When my Citrus College classmates say America will never forgive the Japanese for attacking Pearl Harbor, I feel that what they really want is to justify dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese military made a surprise attack on Hawaii, killing 1,177 people. The next day the United States declared war on Japan.

As evil as the Pearl Harbor attack was, it is important to note that 380,000 people were killed as a result of the two atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some Americans argue that dropping the atomic bomb was the only way to end the war.

However, many Japanese feel the number of Japanese civilian deaths could never be justified.

I don’t want to blame America. These are just the facts of what happened 64 years ago.

Since I was born in Hiroshima, I am connected to these events.

My grandfather was a medical officer in Japan, and his oldest brother was a naval surgeon in Guadalcanal Island. At that time the island was completely surrounded by the American army, and he starved to death there.

My grandmother lived in Yamaguchi, not far from Hiroshima, where her sister lived. Three days after the atomic bomb was dropped, my grandmother went to check on her sister.

Luckily she had survived, but on her visit to Hiroshima, my grandmother was exposed to the radiation still in the air. As a result of this exposure to nuclear fallout, she couldn’t breastfeed her children. My grandmother said thousands of times that Hiroshima was hell on earth.

My grandparents passed away few years ago, but before their deaths, they told me many stories about the war. They hated America so much until they died.

My father was born in 1946 when Japan was occupied by American armed forces. The Japanese people were very poor. He remembers begging for chocolate from the American soldiers.

I learned many things about the effects of the atomic bomb by studying textbooks. In the Atomic Bomb Museum located in Hiroshima, there are grotesque wax figures that depict the victims of the bomb. Their skins appear to be melting like a long sleeve, and they stand like zombies. These images have made a deep impression on my mind. Thousands of human beings were hideously burned. Their burned-out faces scare me in nightmares.

Although I was born in 1981,  I am still traumatized by the thought of the atomic bomb.
It is time to tell the whole truth, take an objective view, and present the pathetic facts of this war to today’s children.

In the 1930s, Japan had gone down the wrong path under militarism. During the war, Japanese people were not allowed to express anti-war ideas. Military leaders forced the people to sacrifice everything to the war effort. 

If a mother heard about her son’s death in battle and she cried, she was accused of being unpatriotic. Government radio kept broadcasting propaganda about great Japanese victories in spite of its losing battles.

I think Japan was like a run-away car with no brakes. Finally, the Japanese military fought by kamikaze (suicide corps) that sacrificed the pilot’s life as a weapon.
Countless civilian lives were lost during the war.

Wars make people crazy. Everyone was driven by the feeling of “kill or be killed.” In wartime, terrible atrocities happened, but we cannot solve problems through revenge. We should forgive each other and find the best way to avoid these mistakes for future generations.

Someday I want to be a guide for foreigners at the Atomic Bomb Museum and a translator at the Itukushima Shinto Shrine, which is one of the most beautiful places in Hiroshima, Japan. My message will be frank and factual.

The awful war happened, but it is over. Now we have to think about how to achieve peace for all nations.