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More than six decades have passed since the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; this month marked the 63rd anniversary of the events that changed the history of modern war. And the A-Bomb survivors’ drawings and paintings continue to teach us about atrocity, empathy, and ultimately, humanity.
Lynne Soraya and Satoshi Kanazawa recently provided enlightening and provocative commentaries on the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Like many people, I read about the bombings as part of a history or political science class covering WWII. It wasn’t until the first year I worked as an art therapist when I traveled to see an exhibit of drawings and paintings by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I finally began to grasp the impact of these events. Those drawings and paintings forever changed what I thought I knew about trauma and war.
In 1974, 77-year-old Mr. Iwakichi Kobayashi walked into a television station in Japan with a painting of what he recalled about August 6th, 1945. The image was his memory of seeing people burned by the atomic bombed dropped on Hiroshima that day. As a result, the television station decided to put out a call for drawings by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to “draw a picture of the A-Bomb.” What followed was unexpected: More than 2000 drawings and paintings were submitted to the station. Half were sent by mail; the remainder of the images were brought to the station by the survivors, who arrived over the next two years as if on long-awaited pilgrimages. The drawings and paintings were created on the backs of calendars, paper used in sliding doors, and sheets torn from notebooks. The majority of the images included written explanations, often on the pictures themselves.
This collection of now famous drawings and paintings by hibakusha (A-Bomb survivors) is now housed in the Peace Memorial Museum and pieces from the collection form a traveling exhibition from time to time. They also are the subject of a book, Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic
Bomb Survivors, an account of what happened and a catalogue of images of the mushroom cloud and aftermath of fire, black rain, and radiation.
While the images made by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki each capture a different moment in time, they also mirror the individual and collective “felt” memories of man-made disaster. It is a stunning example of how implicit memory—also known as sensory memory—is still present in trauma survivors even decades after direct exposure to war, terrorism, or disaster. It only took Mr. Kobayashi’s single painting and a request to those who were until then silent to provide the catalyst for a torrent of visual memories and nightmarish narratives to emerge. Those stories remained untold for close to 30 years, materializing as vividly as if the events depicted happened only moments ago. When trauma happens, people express what the mind and body remembers, sooner or later.
Trauma theory aside, viewing these images makes it impossible to disconnect ourselves from the pain, torment, and misery of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, long after the events and long after many of the artists have died. They stir the empathy that Soraya asks of us, dissolving that which is “different,” “foreign,” or “abstract” and revealing that which is undeniably universal – suffering. Ultimately, these images challenge us to find our own sense of compassion, and in the end, compel our own confrontation with humanity.
Next post: Katrina Happened, Children Still Draw -- Three Years Later
© 2008 Cathy Malchiodi
http://www.cathymalchiodi.com
