Kunyangwe isu takakurumidza kudaidza nzvimbo yekurwiswa kwe9/11 muNew York City "Ground Zero" - kamwe izwi rakachengeterwa kuputika kweatomu - vanhu vekuAmerica havana kumbobvira vabata pamwe nekubhomba kweatomu kweHiroshima neNagasaki kana nyukireya. zera ravakapinda.
Hapagoni kuva nomubvunzo kuti, sezvo kuputika kukuru kungapedza zvose, bhomba reatomu rakatambudza Cold War America. Mumakore iwayo, apo vadiki vaiona magumo enjodzi yenyukireya achichinjirwa mumabhaisikopo eB-horror, vanhu vakuru vaimhanyisa nyika yedu vakaenda pamusika mukuru wekutenga zvombo zvinopera pasi rose, vachivaka zvombo zvenyukireya zvakakura kusvika makumi ezviuru. zvezvombo.
When the Cold War finally ended with the Soviet Union’s quite peaceful collapse, however, a nuclear “peace dividend” never arrived. The arsenals of the former superpower adversaries remained quietly in place, drawn down but strangely untouched, awaiting a new mission, while just beyond sight, the knowledge of the making of such weapons spread to other countries ready to launch their own threatening mini-cold wars.
Muna 1995, makore makumi mashanu mushure mekunge bhomba rekutanga rasimuka pamusoro peAioi Bridge muHiroshima, zvakaramba zvichiratidza kusakwanisika muUS kubvumirana pane ngano yekugadzira nyukireya. Ko August 6, 1945, akanga ari mhedziso yougamba kuhondo yenyika yose here kana kuti kutanga kunotyisa kwezera idzva? Enola Gay, ndege yakadonhedza bhomba reHiroshima, uye bhokisi rekudya remwana wechikoro rakapwanyika kubva kuHiroshima harisati rakwanisa, zvakazoitika, kugara panzvimbo imwe chete yekuratidzira paSmithsonian's National Air and Space Museum muWashington DC.
Today, while the Bush administration promotes a new generation of nuclear “bunker-busters” as the best means to fight future anti-proliferation wars, such once uniquely world-threatening weapons have had to join a jostling queue of world-ending possibilities in the dreams of our planet’s young. Still, for people of a certain age like me, Hiroshima is where it all began. So on this August 6th, I would like to try, once again, to lay out the pieces of a nuclear story that, even after all these years, none of us, it seems, can yet quite tell.
In my story, there are three characters and no dialogue. There is my father, who volunteered for the Army Air Corps at age thirty-five, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He fought in Burma, was painfully silent on his wartime experiences, and died on Pearl Harbor Day in 1983. Then there’s me, growing up in a world in which my father’s war was glorified everywhere, in which my play fantasies in any park included mowing down Japanese soldiers, but my dreams were of nuclear destruction. Finally, there is a Japanese boy whose name and fate are unknown to me.
This is a story of multiple silences. The first of those, the silence of my father, was once no barrier to the stories I told myself. If anything, his silence enhanced them, since in the 1950s, male silence seemed a heroic attribute (and perhaps it was, though hardly in the way I imagined at the time). In those years, sitting in the dark with him at any World War II movie was enough for me.
As it turned out though, the only part of his war I actually possessed was its final act, and around this too, there grew up a puzzling silence. The very idea of nuclear destruction seemed not to touch him. Like other school children, I went through nuclear-attack drills with sirens howling outside, while — I had no doubt — he continued to work unfazed in his office. It was I who watched the irradiated ants and nuclearized monsters of our teen-screen life stomp the Earth. It was I who went to the French film Hiroshima Mon Amour, where I was shocked by my first sight of the human casualties of the A-bombing, and to On the Beach to catch a glimpse of how the world might actually end. It was I who saw the mushroom cloud rise in my dreams, felt its heat sear my arm before I awoke. Of all this I said not a word to him, nor he to me.
Pavavengi vavo vekare, zvisinei, baba vangu havana kunyarara. Aivenga maJapan nechishuwo chehondo. Akandiudza kuti vakanga vaita “zvinhu” zvaisagona kukurukurwa ku“vakomana” vaaiziva. Nhoroondo yakatevera - kugarisana kweAmerica kuJapan kana kubuda kwenyika yakakundwa semubatsiri - hazvina kuita sekumubata.
His hatred of all things Japanese was not a ruling passion of my childhood only because Japan was so absent from our lives. There was nothing Japanese in our house (one did not buy their products); we avoided the only Japanese restaurant in our part of town; and no Japanese ever came to visit. Even the evil Japanese I saw in war movies, who might sneeringly hiss, “I was educated in your University of Southern California” before they met their suicidal fates were, I now know, regularly played by non-Japanese actors.
In the end, however, I followed my own path to Hiroshima, drawn perhaps to the world my father so vehemently rejected. In 1979, as an editor, I published Moto usingakanganwiki, the drawings of Hiroshima residents who had lived through that day. It was, I suspect, the first time any sizable number of images of the human damage there made it into mainstream American culture. I visited Japan in 1982, thanks to the book’s Japanese editor who took me to Hiroshima — an experience I found myself unable to talk about on return. This, too, became part of the silences my father and I shared.
Kuita nyaya kusvika pari zvino, zvingaite sezviri nyore. Zvizvarwa zviviri zvinotarisana mugomba rehondo uye chiito chakazviparadzanisa. Ndiyo nyaya yatinoziva tese. Uye zvakadaro, pane hunhu hwangu hwechitatu uye kunyarara kwechitatu - mukomana wechiJapan akanyura mukuziva kwangu mushure mekusavapo kweanoda kusvika makumi mana emakore makore mashoma apfuura. Ini handichayeuke - handitombofungidzire - kuti iye neni takaiswa sei mune imwe nguva pakati pemakore ekuma1950. Kufanana neni, shamwari yangu yechinyoreso yekuJapan inofanirwa kunge yanga ine makore gumi nerimwe kana gumi nemaviri. Kana takapanana mapikicha, handichayeuki chiso chake, kana zita hariuye mumusoro. Kana ndikakwanisa kuyeuka ndichiita zvekuseka ndichinyora kero yangu pazera iroro (“New York City, New York, USA, Planet Earth, the Solar System, the Galaxy, the Universe”), handiyeuki ndichinyora yake. Ndakanga ndatoziva panguva iyoyo kuti nzvimbo inonzi Albany rakanga riri guta guru reNew York State, asi Guta reNew York rakanga richiri kuratidzika kwandiri kuva pakati penyika. Munzira dzakawanda, ndakanga ndisina kukanganisa.
Kunyange dai aigara muTokyo, shamwari yangu yechinyoreso yokuJapan ingadai isina kuva nefungidziro dzakadaro. Kufanana neni, hapana mubvunzo kuti akanga aberekwa muHondo Yenyika II. Zvichida mugore rake rokutanga roupenyu akanga abviswa mune rimwe ramaguta akatsva eJapan. Kwaari, hondo iyoyo ine ngwavaira ingadai isina kuva yeuko. Dai akaenda kumabhaisikopo nababa vake muma1950s, angadai akaona Godzilla (kwete US Air Force) achibvisa Tokyo uye angadai asina kurangarira makore iwayo akaoma ehupfumi ekutanga ekugara kweAmerica. Asi panguva iyoyo aisagona kuzvifungidzira ari pakati pechisiko chapose pose.
I have a faint memory of the feel of his letters; a crinkly thinness undoubtedly meant to save infinitesimal amounts of weight (and so, money). We wrote, of course, in English, for much of the planet, if not the solar-system-galaxy-universe, was beginning to operate in that universal language which seemed to radiate from my home city to the world like the rays of the sun. But what I most remember are the exotic-looking stamps that arrived on (or in) his letters. For I was, with my father, an avid stamp collector. On Sunday afternoons, my father and I prepared and mounted our stamps, consulted our Scott’s Catalog, and pasted them in. In this way, the Japanese section of our album was filled with that boy’s offerings; without comment, but also without protest from my father.
Takatsinhana netsamba, isina kana imwe yadzo, kwegore kana maviri, ipapo ndiani anoziva mhindu yangu (kana yake) yatikunda; zvichida vakomana vanopikisa chete ndivo vanogona kunyora tsamba. Chero zvazvingava, iyewo akapinda munzvimbo yerunyararo. Izvo chete zvino, ndichirangarira nguva idzodzo dzakanyarara dzepedyo apo ini nababa vangu takashanda pamaalbum edu, ndinoona kuti aivepo kwenguva pfupi uye pasina kurukurirano muhupenyu hwedu. Akavapo nokuda kwedu tose, zvichida, munzvimbo isina kujeka iyo kunyarara kunogona kugadzira. Uye zvino ndinoshamisika dzimwe nguva kuti rudzii rwezviroto zvenyukireya izvo baba vangu vangave vakave nazvo.
Nokuda kwedu tose mupfungwa yakati, Pasi rakabviswa panzvimbo yaro pana August 6, 1945. Panguva imwe chete iyoyo, hondo yababa vangu yakapera uye hondo yangu—Hondo Yemashoko—yakatanga. Asi mumaonero angu, zvinoita sekunge zvakapusa kupfuura izvozvo. Nekuti isu nemukomana iyeye takaramba tichigara munyika imwe chete kwenguva yakareba, tichigamuchirana uye tichishongedzana kunyarara.
Bhomba richiri kumhanya senge fissure, asiwo seyazvino inokwezva - kubatana kwakavanzika - kuburikidza nehupenyu hwedu. Rendi yayakabvarura munhoroondo yakanga yakadzika uye kupatsanurwa kwezvizvarwa, zvichipiwa zviitiko zveavo vaikura kumativi ose ayo, zvakadzika. Asi chero nyaya yaizofanirawo kubata nzira, zvakadzika nekuoma kunzwisisa, umo mataigara mazviri pamwe chete mukurwadziwa, ruvengo, rudo, uye zvakanyanya kunyarara.
In this sixty-first year after Hiroshima, a year charged with no special anniversary meaning at all, perhaps we will think a little about the stories we can’t tell, and about the subterranean stream of emotional horror that unites us, that won’t go away whether, as in 1995, we try to exhibit the Enola Gay as a glorious icon or bury it deep in the Earth with a stake through its metallic heart. For my particular story, the one I’ve never quite been able to tell, there is a Japanese boy who should not have been, but briefly was, with us; who perhaps lives today with his own memories of very different silences. When I think of him now, when I realize that he, my father, and I still can’t inhabit the same story except in silence, a strange kind of emotion rushes up in me, which is hard to explain.
Tom Engelhardt, anomhanyisa National Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("mushonga wenguva dzose kune vezvenhau"), pakatanga kubuda chinyorwa ichi, ndiye muvambi we iyo American Empire Project uye munyori we Mugumo Wekukunda Muitiro, nhoroondo yekukunda kweAmerica muCold War, Mazuva Ekupedzisira Ekudhinda, novel, uye mumatsutso, Basa Risina Kupedzwa (Mabhuku eNyika), muunganidzwa wekutanga weTomdispatch kubvunzurudza.
ZNetwork inopihwa mari chete kuburikidza nerupo rwevaverengi vayo.
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