Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki with WILPF
by Suzanne Reinhold, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Professor Roy Tamashiro spoke to a group of 40 at the annual remembrance of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dr. Tamashiro is a life-long peace scholar and activist. In his presentation, titled “Hiroshima / Nagasaki Remembrance: Finding Peace, Making Peace,Living Peace,” he recalled his first, and most unforgettable visit to Hiroshima at age 17 with his Boy Scout troop. As a third-generation, Asian-American (sansei) about to reach draft age in the midst of the Vietnam-American War, his experience visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum was profoundly moving.
He describes having an emotional meltdown in which he could not speak to anyone for three days. Out of that experience, he decided to register with the Selective Service System as a Conscientious Objector when he turned 18. In retrospect, he believes that this first visit to Hiroshima was a defining moment in his life. The title of his presentation was not just about an annual remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has been an almost daily reference point in his life and his work. Dr. Tamashiro described examples of projects that illustrated this theme of Hiroshima / Nagasaki Remembrance: Finding Peace, Making Peace, Living Peace.
As Professor in the Multidisciplinary Studies Department at Webster University, St. Louis, his scholarship spans multiple disciplines, including developmental psychology, educational foundations, curriculum and pedagogy, international and global studies, peace and conflict studies, and educational technology. As a peace scholar and peace educator, he is a member of the Board of Directors for the ASIANetwork Consortium of Colleges and Universities and of the International Society of Educational Biography and he serves on the Advisory Board for the International Network of Museums for Peace.
Dr. Tamashiro nominated Hiroshima survivor Koko Kondo to receive an honorary doctorate at Webster University in May of this year, and Ms. Kondo, a graduate of American University, spent a week in St. Louis, receiving her doctorate at the Webster graduation held at the MUNY, telling her story at Webster, lunching with St. Louis WILPF members and friends at the History Museum, and pitching the opening ball at a St. Louis Cardinals game. Baseball is extremely popular in Japan. A New York-based Japanese sports reporter somehow learned of Koko’s visit and brought a team here to video tape the lunch and Koko’s opening pitch. The Japanese have a tradition of remembering the bombings each year at a baseball game by playing John Lennon’s Imagine while fans hold peace signs. Professor Tamashiro has written about Koko Kondo’s life-changing experience of letting go of hatred when she saw tears in the eyes of the co-pilot of the Enola Gay on a This is Your Life television show which honored her father, a Methodist minister who was an ambassador for peace and reconciliation. Koko’s father was one of the five residents whose lives were chronicled by John Hersey in his book HIROSHIMA. Professor Tamashiro presented his paper “My God, what have we done?:” The Intersection of Personal & Societal Transformation during Koko’s visit to Webster University and also at the International Society of Educational Biographers Conference in April, 2014. Co-pilot Robert A. Lewis wrote those words in his journal when he viewed the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.
Professor Tamashiro was an integral part of The Global Forum on the Future of Nuclear Weapons, a live webcast and video conference held in March, 2010, between the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a historic first time meeting between the museums representing the parties involved in the first use of nuclear weapons.
His other research has focused on museums for peace, Vietnam’s war memorials and museums, peace, philosophy and Japanese youth, following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Disaster.
Following the potluck dinner, Jasmin Maurer, director of the Peace Economy Project, read a statement from the mayor of Hiroshima. The mayor mentioned the discrimination against the atomic bomb survivors, who are called “Hibakusha”, in the story of how Koko Kondo was divorced by her first husband just a month after her marriage, when her husband’s family demanded that. Bias against survivors in employment and marriage was widespread.
Eight organizations co-sponsored the annual observance of the atomic bombings of Japanese civilians: the Ethical Action Committee of the St. Louis Ethical Society, Citizens for Global Solutions, St. Louis Friends Meeting,Veterans for Peace of St. Louis, Peace Economy Project, Women in Black of St. Louis, Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the Sunday evening peace vigil at the St. Francis Xavier College Church.
Mary and Jerry Wuller and Mark Frederichs, two of the leaders of the peace vigil, cancelled the weekly half hour vigil, as in previous years, so that persons could attend the annual commemoration of the atomic bombings. Mary, Jerry and Mark, along with Bill Ramsey and Hedy Epstein, and many others, have kept the vigil going every Sunday evening, from 7:00 to 7:30 pm, since 9/11.
Remembering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is for peace activists sort of like going to the church, synagogue, mosque, temple, ethical society or atheist or agnostic group. It is an active meditation on the horror of the killing of victims of war both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and everywhere, in the past, and now. We mourn the loss of the many civilians in Japan, possibly 180,000, including those who died instantly and those who suffered painful deaths from radiation sickness and those, both civilian and military, who die in continuing wars today, because leaders fail to resolve conflict.
The group ended the evening by floating candlelit boats in the pond outside the Ethical Society of St. Louis, which offered its premises for the event for the third year, at a reduced rate. For many years, St. Louis Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom held the event at Lewis Park in University City. Now-departed long-time St. Louis WILPF peace activists Eldora Spiegelberg, Florence Johnson, Dorothy Poor, no longer active members including Joy Guze and Gretchen Felix, and current active members including Joyce Best, Mary Jane Schutzius, Joan Bottwinick, Ginger Harris,Jane Mendelson and Yvonne Logan, and others, have continued the event annually with their time and contributions, as have numerous other WILPF chapters, both in the United States and around the world. Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a tangible way to remember the power of one and the power of joining together to speak truth to power, as Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom approaches its 100th year in 2015 and follows the legacy of Jane Addams and other great women.
