Trip to Hiroshima -Rev. Shikama-

By the way, you can see the photos of our Hiroshima trip by clicking the "Slideshow" on top right of this blog.


OK, let's continue.

On Sunday, we attended a Sunday service at a local church, Hiroshima Church (United Church of Christ in Japan). It was Peace Sunday in the Church so they contributed the service for peace. The victims' names of the A-bomb who were the church member at that time were all called with their age, the day they died, the distance from the center of the explosion. They lost 33 members, age of 2-87. The sermon was given by Rev. Shikama who is the son of the Reverend at the bomb time.

After the service, Rev. Shikama gave his lecture about his experience and his wish for peace. I was deeply impressed with his story. His story came into the deep place of my heart directly. So I'll try to recollect what he said from my brief memo. It's not perfect but I want to try because I want to remember my deep appreciation for his lecture by writing down what I heard.


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It was Monday. Mr. Shikama, a junior high school student at that time, was supposed to go to the city hall and work as a volunteer with his classmates. Their work was to get rid of several buildings to avoid the spread of the fire. He was on his way to the hall. In the meantime, at the workplace, his class teacher asked one of the pupils to go to their school to tell some students to come to the place. The teacher worried if some students went to the school by mistake because it was Monday and some students were absent on the last weekend because of sickness or some other reasons. So, the student who was asked was going to school and met Shikama on his way. Then he asked Shikama to do his job for him. So Shikama changed his direction from the city hall to his school. It was a very fateful moment. If he hadn't met his classmate and hadn't been asked to go to school, he must have been at the workplace and ...... very highly possibly died of the A-bomb because all of them, ALL of the pupils, 220 on the second grade, and teachers working at the site died of it. This fact made him suffer a lot in his later life.


The A-bomb was dropped by unman parachute. I didn't know that. According to his classmates, who were not died right after the bomb but a few days later, the students thought it was beautiful and fun to look at the parachute dropping from the sky so they went outside to see it, not knowing the parachute killing them.


When Shikama arrived at the school, there were around eight classmates by mistake. He thought more people might come so they decided to wait for a while. They were in their classroom, then a boy, Mr. K, came into the room, saying "Good morning!", at the very moment, an enormously bright light, "as if the sun was dropped directly on us" (by Shikama), ran through them. At the next moment, nothing was there. Everything was collapsed. Then he realized he was alive. One of the desks saved him as a cushion. He guessed they were directly hit by a normal bomb, so he believed that somebody was coming to help them very soon, until he went outside.

He saw the mushroom cloud, a giant, enormous cloud in the sky. He heard people's desperate cry for help. He called the names of his classmates, miraculously, all of them, eight, were alive, only getting injured somehow. He thought they needed food to survive so he told the students to go back to the classroom to get their lunchbox. He too went back there and found something, looking like a wrapping cloth for a lunchbox, with gladness, he grabbed it and opened it. It was a head of Mr. K, who was coming into the room at that time, saying "Good morning" so cheerfully. He was dead. The distance between Shikama and K was just 2 yards. K just didn't have any cushion to protect him, such a small difference between life and death.

He thought about life and death as he was holding K's head in his chest. He thought of himself being alive.

The survived students evacuated all together to Yoshijima then Mr. Shikama left there to look for his family. His father, the Reverend of the church at that time, was at a blind school to give a sermon, his mother was at home next to church, his elder sister was at some volunteer work. Fortunately they got all together after a few days and went to a village for safety where two of his younger brothers had been. After a month, his sister passed away from the A-bomb sickness, saying "I'm happier than the people who were not with their family, dying all by themselves. I'm with my loved family. I'm happy...."



Mr. Shikama talked about a relation between human's sin and nuclear weapons. Japan is a victim if concerning only about the A-bomb, but it is also a victimizer if concerning about Sino-Japanese war or the Great War, having developed poison gass in its island sites. Wars are always about how to make weapons to kill many people at a time, desperately seeking for it, and developing it.... and a kind of the goal, as a ultimate weapon, might be the A-bomb, he said.

In this world, we tend to lose our hope for peace. We might give it up. Then there came Obama's speech in Prague about his intention for an abolition of nuclear weapons, appeared as a ray of hope, he said.

He thought about the meaning why he could survive, in other words, why God made him survive, he questioned God a lot of times, Why you chose me? Why? He suffered. He wondered God's will. What kind of mission God gave him to perform? He asked himself why he became a Christian. He was not going to become a ministry but after many twists and turns, he became the one. Now he is in his 80's, retired from the regular church based ministry and currently he is active as a traveling preacher.

Among his words, I liked his expression:
Our lives are borrowed from God. A kind of a rental for free.

Our lives might not be as dramatic as his, he said, but all of us have a dramatic lives if we look at not only our own lives but also our parents' or grandparents' or grand-grandparents'. Then you might find something dramatic and then you might think of the meaning of life, the secret of life. Our lives are gifts from God, His precious gifts. So we should use the gift for what we can do something meaningful. And he thinks we should not only talk about peace but make peace with all our might using a beautiful gift from Him. We should be the peacemakers, he said.


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I thought about myself after listening to his lecture.
I've been wishing for peace, yes, but have I tried to make peace really? I don't know, maybe not enough. When I think of peace in the world, a part of me would believe we can do it, then another part of me doubt it with despair because it's unlikely to happen in this world. Mr. Shikama taught me that we shouldn't give up anything even if it's unlikely to happen. Thank you, Mr. Shikama, for making me awake.


After the lecture Takao and I developed some friendship with the church people. A woman whose home town is Osaka came to us and gave us a book of war experiences by the church members. I read it on my way home on the train. There were tens of, perhaps a hundred of stories about war.... and every story is so impressive, coming from their deep hearts.

I learned newly that the survivors cannot speak out about their experience easily because it's too hard to remember the time. So many of them tend to shut their mouth for a long long time. Some of them passed away without talking anything about the war even to their family. They should be glad that they could survive but they cannot because they would even feel guilty of being alive for so many of people around them died at the time. Also, after a certain time since the war, Hibakusha (the victims of A-bomb) got discriminated against because of their experience. Speculations were around that if they could have babies normally or the A-bomb sickness could be picked up from them.... So they couldn't get married so easily, they couldn't get hired, they suffered a lot, then they learned that they should not reveal their experiences in order to lead a normal life. They would think they don't want their family to suffer from it so they would never talk about it to anybody.

They would feel guilty because they couldn't save people's lives on the day. They passed the places where people lying down dying, calling for help, they saw so many of them, too many of them. It was impossible for them to save the lives, impossible, so they might have gone to be feelingless..... to save themselves, they had no choice but made their blood frozen to save their own lives. None of us cannot blame them. Still they tend to blame themselves for not to be able to save the lives.....


I feel a great amount of pain when I think of those people..... I cannot understand exactly, no I cannot, but I feel it somehow, even if a part of it...


So I learned from listening Mr. Shikama's lecture and reading the stories that it's so precious and meaningful to listen to their stories even after 64 years from the end of the war, it never be rusty, because more and more people start to speak out after realizing their stories might die away and be buried if all of the experienced people passed away. More and more Hibakusha or war-experienced people start to speak out because they want to make peace, they never ever want to see the world where people kill each other.

I know it's often hard to talk about war with our close people, our parents, or our grandparents, I feel the difficulty with that, too. No matter with whom you talk to, it's so precious to be able to hear their stories. With great appreciation, we should listen to them whenever we have a chance. Then we can learn something, and we could relay the stories to the next generation. We might be the last generation who can listen to the stories directly from them.


Now I'm remembering the time I was in NY. I worked at a nursing home. I listened to many stories from the residents. I feel grateful for all of them who talked with me, who shared joy and sorrow with me, who even listened to me and encouraged me when I was down. I miss you a lot.....! And I'll never forget the time with you....!

There might be no victims or victimizer with any war. All of people might be the victims, no matter in which side they are, in what kind of status they are.... all people involved in it would suffer after a long time, perhaps for all their lives. We should make peace altogether, I know, but I don't know how to do it..... just I learned it and I'll try to figure it out.





I'm so glad we made our trip to Hiroshima at this time of the year.
Thank you, Hiroshima!