Sara Eid sees how the hibakusha use their experience of Hiroshima to stress the significance of peace At 8:15am on Monday 6 August 1945, time stopped for the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The first atomic bomb in history spared no one who was in Hiroshima at the time. Within a few moments it had killed 80,000 people and injured 270,000, and had turned the cityto dust. It is estimated that the total number who had died of burns, radiation and related diseases by the end of 1945 reached approximately 140,000 people. The instant consequences of the atomic bomb were just one side of the coin; on the other side was the radiation damage the explosion inflicted on the body, damage from which the victims never recovered and that was passed down to the descendents of the hibakusha, as the survivors of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were known. This year is the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Japanese Foundation announced that this year's Japanese Film Festival, which comes to Egypt annually, would be called simply "Hiroshima" with the aim of keeping the memory alive as a reminder to the world of the atrocious consequences of nuclear weapons, and as a call to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all. The festival came to Cairo and Alexandria from the 21 to 27 October. Lectures, film and documentary screenings throughout the week were shown at the Sawy Culture Wheel, the Artistic Creativity Centre in the Cairo Opera House grounds and at the Alexandria Arts Centre with the bulk of film screenings taking place in the grounds of the Opera House. There was a high turn-out for the first of the Opera House screenings on 24 October. The audience was a mixture of adults of all ages, mainly Egyptian but also a few older Japanese men and women whose presence brought a measure of genuineness to the event. Whether or not members of the audience knew very much about the story of Hiroshima, the screening of both a documentary and fictional film, accompanied by a talk by author and psychiatrist Muhamed El-Maghzangi on the subject, touched the audience and would certainly have turned anyone away from nuclear weapons. The night opened with a documentary film entitled Hiroshima: A Mother's Prayer". Dubbed in Arabic to suite the majority of the audience, the documentary began with an elderly Japanese woman laying flowers on a memorial. She was a mother who has been searching for her son ever since he disappeared when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 65 years ago. The documentary featured video footage captured immediately after the bombing, including the evocative picture of the mushroom cloud ascending over Hiroshima. However the most distressing scenes were those of wounded mothers carrying their dead children after the bombing, of the piles of human casualties, of the children who lost limbs, and of who were blinded or suffered terrible burns. Many did not live two months past the bombing because their wounds went untreated due to the lack of medical resources. Scientists sent out to study the aftermath of the bombing found that many of the survivors had begun to develop white blood cell problems causing them to suffer sudden hair loss, chronic diarrhoea and bleeding. Many of the survivors, young and old, had developed leukemia. Not only this, but it was also discovered that women who were pregnant at the ime of the bombing had given birth to children with physical and/or mental deformities. There was no cure for the atomic bomb. In addition to the total destruction the bomb caused and the consequences on survivors, the documentary highlited certain global events that were sparked by Hiroshima. Because of Hiroshima, peace festivals began to be held around the world; because of Hiroshima, in 1982, the Pope knelt at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and called for world peace; because of Hiroshima, in 1985 the first steps were taken towards nuclear non-proliferation. In my opinion the blend of the distressing scenes in the aftermath of the bomb with the moving footage depicting the reaction of the world (such as the Pope's act) succeeded in explaining the gravity and atrocity of the atomic bomb. It also had the effect of arousing deep emotions in the audience. However, the documentarydid not quite tell the whole story of Hiroshima. It failed to address the question of why the United States took such a course of action in the first place. Not that it tried to justify what the US did, or indeed Japan's part in the war. Rather it took the event out of its context, and therefore I do not believe this documentary is sufficient to bring onr to understand the whole story of Hiroshima. Looking at the message I received from the documentary, perhaps it was a successful strategy to de- contextualise the bombing in such a way that an audience would not question the atrocity of the nuclear bomb. Consequently the message received is that commemorating the destruction of Hiroshima, and remembering all those that died and suffered from the immediate and long-term effects of the bomb, are the cornerstone of the movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons and for peace. Following the documentary Dr Makhzangi, who as well as being a novelist has written on travel and on scientific issues, gave a brief talk in which he expressed his admiration for the Japanese people and his understanding of what they had gone through, what they had overcome and what they has become today. He also expressed his gratitude to them in their humanitarian efforts to put a halt to nuclear weapons. He then went on to explain what he believes lies behind the "black fire" that nuclear weapons create, the black fire seen in Hiroshima in 1945 and then in Chernobyl 40 years later. The cause of this black fire, according to Dr Makhzangi, is the evil in human nature; it is immorality; and it is callousness. He justifies this by pointing out first that the orders were to burn down Hiroshima and "enjoy the ocean view"; second, the atomic bomb was named "little boy"; and third, the plane carrying the bomb was named "Enola Gay" after the mother of Colonel Tibbet, commander of the mission. To add to the insensitivity of the Americans, Dr Makhzangi added, in the aftermath of the bomb American scientists were sent to Hiroshima to study the consequences. Once they had gathered the necessary information they left the patients untreated. To Dr Makhzangi this immorality, callousness and insensitivity are the reasons why Hiroshima (and Chernobyl as well) must not be forgotten and therefore never repeated. The evening ended with a two-hour feature film by Japanese director Kiyoshi Sasabe, Yunagi City, Sakura Country, produced in 2007. Through the stories of two women, one in the past, the other in the present, the film illustrates the tragic effects of the atomic bomb through the generations. The first part of the story takes place in Yunagi City, Hiroshima, 13 years after the atomic bomb was dropped. Minami, 26 years-old at the time, begins to experience rare moments of joy when co- worker Uchikoshi falls in love with her. However, these moments of joy are continually interrupted by the memory of the death of her young sister just after the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which is typical of the emotional scaring the atomic bomb bequeathed to the people of Hiroshima. The young couple's love is short-lived when Minami herself falls ill and dies, also a victim of the atomic bomb. The second part of the film is the story of Nanami, Minami's niece, and takes place in Sakura, Tokyo, in the present day. One night Nanami follows her father as he takes a secret trip to Hiroshima, where the young woman finds out about her family history and her aunt's own personal story of the bombing. Because of this expedition Nanami can finally understand why her mother, who was also a victim of the explosion, died at such a young age, coughing blood. We also learn that Nanami's brother was rejected by the family of the girl he loved because they did not want their daughter to marry a descendent of a hibakusha out of fear that he might have a hereditary and fatal illness. By unraveling all these intertwined stories, the viewer is exposed to the hardships of the generation that lived through the bombing and the social stigma that was placed on the future generations just because they were their descendents. It also explains the physical effects of the bombing that ripped apart the lives of their loved ones through the decades after 1945. Nanami gradually begins to appreciate the significance of her own roots and the value of the peace in which she lives, a message she and all others like her must carry on.
