Hiroshima Day

Today is the anniversary of the destruction of the city of Hiroshima by atomic bomb. Despite decades of protests and treaties nuclear weapons still exist on this planet, more than enough to kill us all many times over. It is abominable. Here I repost from 2009 my review of 'Hiroshima' by John Hersey.

The contents of John Hersey's book Hiroshima first appeared in the New Yorker in August 1946, the editors choosing to dedicate an entire issue of the magazine to the series of articles which he had been commissioned to write. The introduction to this slim volume describes the incredible response that the article received around the world and the impact that it had. The dropping of the first atomic bomb had huge political and historical significance. What this book is trying to do is put a human face on the event, to remind us that it was real people who suffered and died, and it is important to hear and remember their story as well.

I found myself reading it a little dispassionately, partly, on reflection, because it is written slightly dispassionately. Although John Hersey uses directly the accounts of the people he met he does not report their exact words but describes everything in the third person, so you get a disconcerting sense of being disconnected from the events. I feel everything about the story and the way it is told, and the public reaction to it, is a reflection of when it was written. Nowadays we have such instantaneous access to news from all over the world, seeing people's reactions to disasters in the most intimate of detail, practically being 'in the thick of' real events as they happen, but in 1946 this was not the case. During WW2 it might be months before a family learned of their loved ones' death, now every individual loss is announced on the evening news bulletin. To have such personal stories retold around the world only a year after such an event was much more startling then than it would be today.

Hersey tells the stories of six individuals in some detail, moving abruptly from one person to another to progress the chain of events. He describes first a brief background of their life and then what was happening to them in the period immediately before the bomb exploded. Then he gives us their individual experience of the moment of the explosion. You get a sense of how unexpected and unreal the experience was for them all, a white flash and then the blast hitting whatever building they were in, and of course the strangest little aspects of their situation that meant they survived rather than died. Then you have what they did in the minutes, hours and days that followed. Nobody knew what had happened, nor could any of them envisage the scale of what had happened, people mainly assumed it was an air raid (which they had been anticipating for some time), and it is not until months later that there is any understanding of the nature of the weapon used against them. 

I think the book tells us a great deal about Japanese society and people, the strange (to me that is) things people talked about doing or thinking about, or what was important to them in the aftermath of the bomb. There is no hysteria or panic, people help each other as much as they are able. Those who are uninjured bring food and water for others, one of the interviewees ferries people across the river to escape the fires, people just get on and try and do what needs to be done, faced with a horrific situation. And yet by the end of the day it is almost as if they become immune to the suffering of others and resigned to their own fate. In such a short space of time each of them witnesses such extremes of suffering that you can only assume you stop being able to take it in. No one complains; Mr Tanimoto describes the crowds of people who arrive at a park, many horribly injured, and they just lie down and wait patiently, in hope that someone will help them. Many, many of them die overnight the first night, of injuries or the first effects of the radiation sickness, but there is almost complete silence. The atmosphere in the description of this first day is quite eerie. 

I think the book gives a true picture and that the people involved were brutally honest, no one tries to make themselves heroic or to exaggerate their own personal suffering or loss. The other thing you notice is the total lack of self pity, that they accepted that their country was at war and that they themselves could be a target of that war, and that in effect they were suffering for their Emperor. This loyalty and patriotism was most strikingly shown when someone describes hearing the Emperor announcing the end of the war on the radio, and how important that was, because they had never heard his actual voice before. As a group there did not appear to be any lasting resentment or anger towards America, in fact, just as they stoically endured their suffering, they appear to dismiss as not so important the discovery of the nature of the atomic bomb, seeing it as just another part of war and not some especially evil weapon. It is as if we (in the West that is) have given it so much significance, but for the people of Hiroshima it was not viewed like that. They don't dwell on what is done but focus more on the future and rebuilding their city.

Being a student of politics I was very interested to learn about this event from a more human level. There is quite a mythology surrounding the dropping of this bomb, and the impact that it has had and the way it is presented in history does not tell the full story. I am left thinking that Hiroshima has become symbolic only of the worst that human being are capable of; there was most certainly horror and immense suffering, but there was also great human strength and resilience.

Stay safe. Be kind. Remember.

Joy and delight

 

Monty says to pick your sweet peas and more flowers will come.

So I did.

In other news Ady is being adorable and we can't wait to go and visit again.

Work is crap at the moment so am trying to focus on the lovely things.

Stay safe. Be kind. Focus on the lovely things.

Cucamelon joy

 

Although the first four cucamelon seeds all germinated they never grew beyond a couple of leaves and eventually withered (probably overwatered, it seems to be my downfall). Undeterred I planted a couple more seeds and waited. They germinated to much warmer temperatures and they have really taken off in the last week or so, enough that I built them little tripods to climb up. They have cute little tendrils that curl and grip. It says you can plant them out, but I am thinking wait a while to avoid the upcoming thunder storms. I hardly care if they fruit now, I am just so pleased they grew. 

Stay safe. Be kind. Persist in the face of disappointment.

More small joys

 

Much to my joy the sweet peas have finally flowered ... just these two, but there might be others lurking.

The campanula flowered a month ago and I assumed that was it, but I dead-headed it anyway, and look, it has given me a second display:

The evening primrose continues to delight every evening. Each flower only lasts a day so we have to appreciate them while they last: 

I bought a couple of new things for the shady corner; a Sarcococca confusa by the window, which will grow quite tall and bloom in the winter, and a Brunnera Jack Frost (with the silvery embellished leaves) that will have blue flowers in the spring. The Brunnera has hairy leaves and I thought that might make it less appealing to the slugs (who have demolished the hosta almost completely), but they have already had a nibble:

Going to empty the recycle I found a pile of coloured glass pebbles, so I gathered them up and have made a bee watering bowl:

Now for the sad news: the slugs killed our beautiful passion flower plants, just days before it was going to bloom. I thought it had just wilted in the heat, but when I searched for answers one forum question mentioned slugs eating the stalk coating, and when I looked I realised that is what had happened. So we have swiftly bought a replacement, since dead plants are too depressing:

I have improvised some protection for the new plant, a barrier made from a coke bottle filled with, and surrounded by, crushed egg shells. And the slug patrols will be reinstated, having tried not to worry about them munching on the dahlias:

Stay safe. Be kind ... but not to the slugs.

International reading

 

When we go for a charity shop trawl I often find that I am coming across books I have already read, and so I tend to gravitate towards authors with foreign sounding names, and it has been an excellent way to come across some interesting reads (as I have frequently found with translated fiction in the past.) First up 'The Sickness' by Venezuelan writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka, translated by Margaret Jill Costa (who also translated Jose Saramago's 'Death at Intervals'). Illness makes people behave peculiarly sometimes: Dr Miranda cannot bring himself to tell his elderly father that he (the father) is dying. Along side their relationship is his secretary Karina, who starts a correspondence with a very persistent hypochondriac patient that the doctor is attempting to ignore. Having pretended to be the doctor and offered a sympathetic ear she finds herself sucked in deeper than she expected, or can cope with. Both situations meander through the book and resolve themselves with a little honest, human communication, and the whole story is a delightful insight into the human condition, both its strengths and its weaknesses.

"Andrés ought to go to his father, show him the x-rays, tell him the truth, tell him exactly what's happening; he should, moreover, explain that further tests are needed, that from now on, his relationship with medicine will become uncomfortably close, so close he'll grow to loathe it; he should go to his father and tell him that it's hopeless, that there's not a thing they can do about it, that he has cancer and doesn't have much longer to live. How much longer exactly? Medical calendars tend to be vague: not much longer. Which always means less.
But he doesn't do any of these things. Postponing duties, especially when those duties are painful ones, is also a temporary way of surviving. The poet William Carlos Williams was also a doctor. He wrote: 'Many a time a man must watch the patient's mind as it watches him, distrusting him ...' Andrés didn't know how his father would react when he found out the truth. He distrusted both his and his father's minds because he wasn't at all sure about himself, about how he would react once he'd told his father the truth. He'd decided to confront the situation, however tragic, head on and talk to his father; but when the moment came, he didn't know how to, he felt invaded by thousands of tiny fears that raced around his mind like trapped lizards and always led him to postpone that duty yet again: he should talk to his father, but not just then, later." (p.43-44)

'The Panda Theory' by Pascale Garnier (no translator credit), who was apparently a very prolific writer. This is a curious little story about a stranger arriving in a small town, who both resists and invites being befriended by the locals. His presence is not explained explicitly but hints are dropped about a traumatic past. He seems like a lovely but troubled character trying to find solace. The slightly grotesque characters around him become more beautiful under his gaze, they are somewhat enchanted by him. I allowed myself to be sucked in, and then he just drops you in it at the end. Curiously satisfying. 

"Madeleine's face appeared through a fog of cigarette smoke. She had changed her hair, which was now held back on either side with combs. It suited her, made her look younger. Just behind her stood Rita, her badly lipsticked lips stretched in a crooked, timid smile.

'You look like you've seen a ghost. Shall we get a table? The bar's too busy.'

Rita instinctively headed over to the same table that she had shared with Marc two days earlier. Force of habit. The three of them sat down and José served each of them a glass of champagne.

'It's on the house! And there's more where that came from. Gabriel's like a brother to me. Just tell him whatever you want and I'll be right over.'

The women sat side by side, the curly little hairs on the backs of their necks visible in the mirror behind them. Madeleine raised her glass.

'I'm not sure what we're celebrating, but cheers!'

They clinked glasses. People are fragile. Hard and fragile, like glass." (p.86)

Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese writer, and 'Thirteen Months of Sunrise' (translated by Elizabeth Jaquette) is a delicate little collection of stories. I say stories, but it feels like anecdotes would be a more accurate description. It is like you are sitting beside her on the bus and she is just recounting something that happened to her, or to her friend. Nothing much happens in any of them, life is just happening, they are little windows on life. Here, 'A woman asleep on her bundle' describes a young girl's fascination with a homeless woman:

"She was always clean, never smelled bad and often glistened from the way she oiled her legs and hands. I often saw her moisturise, and sometimes I glimpsed her washing her clothes at the tap in the mosque before hanging them in some Good Samaritan's courtyard, either inside or in the open air. Opposite the mosque's eastern door, there was a walled-off area covered with hessian and plastic sheeting that was home to two scraggly neem trees that spread scant shade beneath them.

The woman changed her position as the sun moved. In the morning she sat on the north side of the wall, in the neem tree's shade, and in the afternoon she sat at the base of the wall on the east side, where shadows of the trees and building advanced towards her. At night she sometimes curled up there, while other times she disappeared. Some people supposed that she slept in the mosque, while others guessed that she went to a courtyard across the street, to shelter from the rain like anyone would. Either way, she always reappeared shortly afterwards like a rainbow." (p.43-44)

Stay safe. Be kind. Read something foreign.

Evening Primrose Delight

 

Evening primrose, doing its thing, delightfully.

New View

 

From my bedroom window; next door has some geraniums and lilies but mostly there is concrete.

The other way there are a couple of overgrown shrubs, but again mostly concrete.

But it is lovely to look straight down and see another view of what I have created.

Stay safe. Be kind. Try and see things from a different angle.