When Lawrence says that "it seems likely to me it was always going to be
used on a real city", this suddenly strikes me as probably true. But how
much my mind, felt as nerves, wants to resist this thought.
My grandfather, who was part of a fishing co-operative, was on a fishing
boat and saw the Nagasaki bomb, and he said, in retrospect I think
cryptically, when I was little and was in Japan visiting my family there,
that he remembered the sight as an example of what "light can do".
I often read that Japan has not been agonised by a national guilt as Germany
has. From time spent in Japan, I think there is the sense that as the state
was not democratic, people felt that a regime and its militarism was imposed
upon them. The documented actions of that military do cause shame.
Some of the best writing on Hiroshima is by Kenzaburo Oe, his essays
'Hiroshima Notes', acutely aware of the need not to turn Hiroshima into a
symbol.
I can't think of any poetry that I like in English which addresses the
bombs, though I can think of Carolyn Forche's in The angel of history, and
that other quite well known one called The Enola Gay (by someone who appears
in anthologies but I can't remember his name). Though peripherally there is
William Stafford 'At the bomb testing site' and also Millen Brand 'August 6,
1945'.
A line from Sankichi Toge (trans. by Miyao Ohara), from his poem carved onto
the memorial in the Hiroshima peace park, won't leave my mind:
Give me back myself
Best wishes to all Poetryetc,
Edmund
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