They Were Singing. The Children of Nagasaki Were Singing!
Sometimes terror and hope can be bound up as one.
I was in Japan last month. An opportunity arose to spend a day in Nagasaki, site of the second atomic bombing of August, 1945. So I decided to go. In my own feeble and fumbling way, I hoped – or did I resolve? -- to achieve some measures of empathy and contrition for the sheer horror and terror and unspeakable suffering.
On the day of my visit, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum was packed with people. It was well appointed: artifacts and photos and exhibits and carefully curated explanations abounded. But I found myself feeling hollow and numb. Somehow I could not relate to any of it.
I trudged – or perhaps stumbled? – out the door and into the adjoining garden. Meticulously groomed, it was filled with statuary and monuments gifted to the city of Nagasaki by nations and people from throughout the world.
Listlessly, I walked – or did I shuffle? – through the grounds. Draped under – or perhaps smothered by? -- a sullen November sky, the sculptures seemed to be merely drab and inanimate forms. Or were they shapes without form? They were cold – cold beyond cold, I thought, in ways that only bronze and granite can possibly know. I was just like them. I was devoid of feeling.
Suddenly -- singing. Were my ears deceiving me? I thought that I heard singing in the distance!
Singing it was. The lilting voices of a children’s choir were taking flight. The children of Nagasaki were singing!
It was then that I realized that my quest for meaning and understanding was not to be through the museum. My pilgrimage for forgiveness and atonement was not to culminate in the garden. Redemption was to be had through the children.
Sometimes terror and hope can be bound up as one. The children of Nagasaki taught me that.
So perhaps it will be children who help us back away from the precipice. Perhaps it will be children who guide us from the abyss.
The children. The children. We dare not betray the children.
Photo credit #1: Geopolitical Economy Report
Photo credit #2: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists