Peace education in Hiroshima: How should we inherit the memories of atomic bombing?

I was born and raised in Hiroshima. I had lived in Hiroshima for 24 years since 1985. For people in Hiroshima, August 6 is a special day. At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the city of Hiroshima fell victim to the world’s first atomic bombing. The entire city was virtually leveled and thousands upon thousands of lives were lost. Many of those who managed to survive suffered irreparable physical and psychological damage. By the end of December 1945, when the acute effects of radiation had subsided, the bomb had taken approximately 140,000 precious lives [1]. The survivors still suffer the effects today.

Every year on August 6, almost all pupil and junior high school students in Hiroshima learn about damage by the bomb and about peace. I used to make a string of thousand folded-paper cranes praying for peace. It is true that we have to inherit the memories of atomic bombing, but this peace education has bad points. There are two reasons.

First, the contents of the peace education are too critical of Japanese histroy. “We Japanese were wrong.” “We should not have participated in the World War II.” “War is bad.” Teachers always make a commonplace remark every year. They never blamed the US for dropping the atomic bomb. It is true that Japanese strategy was so bad that a lot of people were killed in the war, but Japan could not help taking part in the war because all countries in East Asia had been colonized by Western countries except Thailand and Japan. Why are Japanese so critical of our history? That’s because Japanese were completely lost to the allied powers and Japanese were brainwashed by Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) after the war.

Second, we cannot learn about modern world affairs in the peace education. In order to discuss and think about peace properly, we have to learn about that. The most important thing is NOT memorizing that “war is wrong” but thinking how to keep peace in as many countries as possible. At present day, war is subject to capitalist economies. For example, the US companies made a lot of money in the Iraq war. Some people say that the US started the war in order to let munitions industry profit from war. Thus we have to look at not only good face of capitalism but also the bad face with critical eye.

In conclusion, we should tell children more objective history of Japanese war and modern world affairs in piece education. In addition, school hours for peace education should be increased because school hours have decreased in recent years [2].

References

[1] The Official Homepage of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/

[2] 広島平和教育研究所、「平和教育実態調査」まとめ:

http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~hipe/research/index.htm