Communities Andrew Tanabe
World studies student reports from Japan
During the spring 2011 semester, Marlboro senior Drew Tanabe is doing his World Studies Program internship at the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation in Japan, helping with research and exploring the link between peace and environment. He reports from Hiroshima on his internship, the memories of atomic-bomb survivors and the nuclear disaster currently gripping northeastern Japan.
On the international internship
Part of the atomic bomb picture portrayed by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, which runs the Hiroshima Museum, A-bomb dome, Peace Park and international conference center, includes United States military history. I have been able to offer my native English to help research military documents, talk with researchers and museums in the U.S. and contact English speaking hibakusha (HE-bach-OO-sha), or A-bomb survivors. I am also working with a member of the foundation to create a model of "Peace Culture." Since the bombing, Hiroshima has worked to eliminate nuclear weapons and promote world peace, communicating the reality of the A-bombing through survivor testimony and artifacts.
On A-bomb survivors
I have met and become friends with hibakusha, peace activists, doctors, young artists, anti-nuclear power advocates, city officials and even religious leaders. One day I was in a car and the driver was a retired Mazda employee who survived the A-bomb when he was about 10 years old. While we were talking and driving through the city, he would occasionally pause. Once he pointed out the window and said, "That phone booth, over there—that is where my aunt and uncle died, carrying my cousin on their backs, trying to flee the fire." Ten minutes later he paused again. "See that radio tower? From that tower my father made the first radio transmission of the A-bomb disaster. He estimated about 170,000 dead. No one believed him, but eventually they sent the message to Tokyo." Experiences like that remind me of the personal element. There are still people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who remember that day all too well and all too personally—people who can look out the window and see the rubble and fire in their minds whenever they drive downtown.
On Peace Culture
But as we approach 70 years after the bombing, most of the hibakusha will no longer be able to tell their stories. So what is the next step? How do you get from the idea that atomic weapons are inhuman and world peace is good to the actual elimination of nuclear weapons and the realization of world peace? Some people in Hiroshima think the next step is to create a self-sufficient world that is more environmentally friendly in order to reduce tensions and the possibility of conflict. By transitioning to a clean energy economy, creating local food systems and creating new opportunities for people to interact through art, trade and local cultural events, Hiroshima is working to pioneer a new Peace Culture.
On the current nuclear crisis
Around the time I was first talking with people about how peace relates to the environment the earthquake and tsunami hit. Over the next week, as the Fukushima issue blossomed into a full-scale nuclear disaster, I immediately connected nuclear issues with Hiroshima. Where else is a nuclear disaster in the world's only A-bombed country more potent than in the world's first A-bombed city? I began to meet with groups that were reacting quickly through sending emergency aid to the stricken northeast. What became evident very quickly is that Japanese citizens do not often connect nuclear weapons with nuclear power. Interestingly, I think this sentiment is particularly strong in Hiroshima.
One hibakusha commented that he wasn't too worried about Fukushima. "When I think of Hiroshima after the bombing, I see the scorched plain, smoldering fires, rubble, twisted pipes spewing water into the air. When I watch the news from Fukushima I see an abandoned power plant." Later that week a younger city employee laughed when I mentioned solar or wind energy. "Well, I think we need nuclear energy. Japan is a small country. We don't have many resources."
In December 2009, Drew reported from Copenhagen on his experiences at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in a Vermont Public Radio interview.