Nagasaki Commemoration:
On Thursday, August 9 at 6 PM, the bombing
of Nagasaki will be commemorated outside Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N.
Charles Street. Participants will demonstrate in favor of the Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which was adopted by 122 countries at the
United Nations in 2017. This Treaty makes it illegal under international law to
develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile
nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
At 7:15 PM,
Paul Magno, a long-time activist who now lives at Baltimore’s Jonah House will
provide insight into the legal situation facing the Kings Bay Plowshares, seven
Catholic activists, including Elizabeth McAlister, who were arrested at the
Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on April 4, 2018.
They enacted Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” In
1984, Paul was a member of the Pershing Plowshares which did a disarmament
action at a Martin Marietta plant in Orlando, Florida. Also to be discussed
will be the Back From the Brink Campaign. Finally, Dr. Dick Humphrey will be
remembered. RSVP to Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net.
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Scars of Hiroshima
August
8, 2018
Vijay
Prashad
June
29, 2018
Newsclick
At the outskirts
of Tokyo, beyond light manufacturing plants and small farms, sits an
incongruous set of buildings. There is a traditional Japanese veranda near an
attractive house, besides which sits a large blue building. In that building,
on two floors, hang the soul of Japan – the paintings by Iri Maruki and Toshi
Maruki that are collectively called the Hiroshima Panels.
Not long after the
United States government dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Iri and Toshi
Maruki left Tokyo for Hiroshima. Their uncle and two nieces died in the attack;
Iri’s father died six months later. The Marukis – husband and wife – looked
back at the impact those months had upon them as they opened their family house
to the ‘bomb victims’. ‘We carried the injured, cremated the dead, searched for
food and water, made roofs of scorched tin sheets,’ they wrote. We ‘wandered
about just like those who had experienced the bomb, in the midst of flies and
maggots and the stench of death’.
Iri Maruki was
trained in the suiboku ink-and-water technique of Nihonga painting, a
combination of Japanese and European forms of art. Toshi Maruki was influenced
by European art, namely the work of Marc Chagall and Käthe Kollwitz. In the
ashes of World War II, the Marukis joined the Japanese Communist Party.
Committed to pacifism and socialism, the Marukis spent the rest of their life
documenting the horrors of war and the great human struggle to end suffering.
One Atomic Bomb’,
they wrote, ‘in one instant caused the deaths of more people than we could ever
portray’. And yet, their first of fifteen panels, produced in 1950 captures in
essence the massive destruction and trauma of that horrible weapon. The
painting is called Ghosts. The last painting – Nagasaki – was done in 1982.
Over thirty-two years, the couple painted these fifteen masterpieces,
explorations of the human cost of brutality. Each painting comes with a short
poem written by the couple. The poem for the first painting opens with this
powerful stanza,
‘It was a
procession of ghosts
In an instant all
clothing burned off
Hands, faces and
breasts swelled.
The purple
blisters on their skin
Were soon burst
and peeled off
Hanging down like
pieces of rags’.
Three paintings
came in a hurry, all in 1950: Ghosts, Fire and Water. Then, the next year, two
more. By 1955, they finished ten of their paintings. The tenth is important. It
is called Petition. It depicts the fight by the survivors – known as the
Hibakusha (explosive affected people) – to end the use of such weapons of mass
destruction.
The poem that
comes with that painting reads,
‘In Tokyo’s
Suginami Ward
A petition begun
to women
Spread all over
Japan.
Children, mothers,
fathers, old people
Workers of all
kinds –
Everyone signed.
For the first time
the people of Japan
Asserted
themselves with a silent cry.
A voice that
echoed throughout the land
A call for Peace’.
In Japan’s 1947
Constitution, Article 9 outlaws war as a means to settle disputes. It is a
powerful clause, one that should be in the constitution of each country of the
world. Japan was to have no army, only a Self-Défense Force. The following
year, in far off Costa Rica, the people emerged from a terrible civil war to
abolish the military. In 1949, Costa Rica’s Constitution adopted Article 12,
which outlawed the military. Costa Rica remains one of the only examples of a
modern state of some size with no military force and no membership in a
military alliance.
The point about a
membership in a military alliance is essential. Iceland has no military, but it
is an active member of NATO. Japan’s lack of a formal military should also not
be seen as an absence of militarism. In a treaty with the United States in
1954, Japan essentially allowed the United States – which had been occupying
the country – to discharge the military responsibilities of the state. US bases
in Japan as well as an overwhelming presence of US troops would continue in
perpetuity. There are more US troops in Japan than there are members of the
Japanese Self-Defence Forces. These bases – including on Okinawa Island – hold
nuclear weapons.
Japan’s peace
constituency - which included labour unions, women’s groups and the Communists
– took to the streets against Japan’s subordinate position to US imperialism.
On May 1, 1952, people took to the streets of Tokyo to confront the view that
Japan should become the aircraft carrier for the United States. The police met
the protestors with violence, leaving Bloody May Day in the lore of Japan’s
left imagination. It was such protests, led by workers, that fired up the
imagination of artists such as Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki, but also their
peers – Ikeda Tatsuo, Ishii Shigeo, Nakamura Hiroshi, Yamashita Kikuji and
others.
In 1957, a
46-year-old woman – Sakai Nakano - went to a firing range in Gunma prefecture.
She was collecting the shell casing to sell as scrap. Specialist 3rd Class
William Girard of the US Army shot her to death. Girard was found guilty in a
Japanese court but was allowed to leave for the United States on a suspended
sentence. Nakamura Hiroshi’s ‘Gunned Down’ from 1957 captures the spirit of the
violence and the outrage it provoked. These were commonplace incidents. They
inflamed the spirit of the people.
Yoshihiko Ikegami,
former editor-in-chief of Gendaishiso, is telling us about the
upsurge in the 1950s. Protests took place before the imperial palace, in a
square that was known as the People’s Square. As these protests took place, Iri
Maruki and Toshi Maruki worked on their Hiroshima Panels.
One more panel –
Floating Lanterns – from 1969 depicts the peace movements’ custom of
commemorating August 6 – the day of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima – by
floating paper lanterns in rivers and lakes. Other paintings by the Maruis
emphasised protests for nuclear disarmament – not only of weapons, but of
nuclear power plants. Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s destruction by
the 2011 tsunami was foretold by those who protested against nuclear power and
nuclear weapons in people’s square and in the Hiroshima Panels.
Ikegami takes us
to the controversial Yasukuni War Shrine at the centre of Tokyo. This is a
place where – it is said – the souls of the warriors now rest. In 1978, a
thousand war criminals had their souls enshrined here. This is the heart of the
controversy. Those who want to take Japan full-scale into military force
worship the war dead, including the war criminals (most of whose activities
were part of Japan’s brutal occupation of the Pacific Rim and of China).
Emperor Hirohito refused to visit the shrine from 1978 to his death in 1990
because of the presence of these criminals.
In 1970, the
Masukis took their panels to California for an exhibit. They were asked about
Japanese atrocities in China. This was at the time of the US war on Vietnam.
The question marked them. They returned home and painted the massive ‘Rape of
Nanking’. It is a powerful image, a repudiation of the war criminals and the
wars of Japan. It is flanked by a painting of Auschwitz and another of the
Minamata disaster (when a chemical factory leaked mercury into the Shiranuhi
Sea and poisoned animals and humans). Brutalities of war and money framed the
violence of Japanese military actions. It is a warning to Japan.
Japan’s Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine. He wants – with American
encouragement – to return Japan to be a military power. Washington sees this as
a check on China.
Ikegami leads us
to a statue of a kamakazipilot inside the Yasukuni complex. People
have left offerings before this statue of a young man who would have boarded a
Japanese Zero jet and crashed into an American ship. The futility of the action
was clear and yet it was encouraged. There is an echo here of Abe’s hostility
to the peace moves in Korea and to the rise of China. Rather than find Japan’s
place in this new order, Abe – the grandson of a war criminal (Nobusuke Kishi)
– wants to assert Japan’s muscularity. This is quite opposed to the noble
feelings of the Hiroshima Panels.
Outside the
gallery, on a table sits a series of petitions. They seek a different Japan. A
Japan dreamed about at the edges of the Hiroshima Panels.
Vijay Prashad, the
author of numerous books, is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research (thetricontinental.org) and is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books
(leftword.com).
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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