I know that travel is a privilege, and that time, cost, family and work responsibilities, and physical and mental challenges can prevent many of us from travelling. But I am just going to put it out there … if you can visit Hiroshima, you should. And if you think this does not apply to you, because I have put the word ‘educator’ in the title, then think again. We are all educators – of ourselves, and of the adults and children around us – through the example we set, the way we conduct ourselves, and the impact we have on the world. So … what follows is for everyone.
As I was already in Japan for the Hakuba Forum last week, I planned a day on Monday this week to visit Hiroshima. As those of you who have visited already will know, it is a clean, modern city, well-planned and well-constructed, with useful underground walkways and a very efficient transport system. In the middle, however, there is an enormous space – a huge, solemn and poignantly beautiful Memorial Park. This was once a thriving business district, until 8.15am on August 6, 1945, when the bomb fell; now, it reminds anyone who visits of the pain and sorrow experienced by the citizens of Hiroshima. It is a space that is irrevocably dedicated to the active pursuit of peace, through generating a determination to ensure that we all commit to this kind of horror never happening again.
The Peace Museum is confronting; it describes in traumatic detail the almost unbearable reality of what happened in Hiroshima. I found it intensely harrowing to read the stories of survivors and victims, told through pictures and objects that belonged to them; the message is conveyed simply and powerfully – these really were just ordinary people, caught up in a sudden, unimaginable event that blew apart their lives. The museum makes it clear without doubt that the victims were not abstract figures in a history book, but people just like you or me: parents at work, children heading to school, young people trying to figure out what the future might bring for them. What I had not realised before visiting was that, on the morning the bomb dropped, thousands of high school students had been mobilised, alongside other citizens, to create firebreaks throughout the city in case of air raids, and so they were busy demolishing certain buildings. This meant that they were therefore out in the open and directly exposed to the blast; of the around 8,000 mobilised students, nearly 7,000 were killed instantly or died soon after from their injuries. As someone who has spent much of their life working with teenagers, this hit particularly hard.
When you stand beside the twisted remains of the former Industrial Promotion Hall (which you will recognise from pictures as the Genbaku Dome or Atomic Bomb Dome), which is only a short distance from the Hypocentre of the explosion, you can feel the eerily thin line between past and present. You look at the warped steel and broken walls of the Dome, and are reminded that this was once an ordinary office building in an ordinary city, around which ordinary families, friends, shopkeepers, teachers, and children lived and worked. Note that the bomb that destroyed it had a yield of about fifteen kilotons of TNT; today, nuclear weapons exist that are thousands of times more powerful; even the reinforced concrete of the Dome would be pulverised if one of today’s bombs was dropped. The scale of destruction now possessed by the human race in its arsenal of weapons is almost incomprehensible – and that makes the message of Hiroshima all the more urgent. We have to find a way to create a lasting human commitment so that this can never happen again.
We have not done particularly well in this quest since the A bomb was detonated over Hiroshima in 1945. While nothing quite meets the instant destruction (and subsequent years of pain and suffering) wrought by the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, countless wars have unleashed seemingly ever more sorrow. With geo-political tensions high, nothing feels more important at this moment in world history than that we forgive the past and move forward together – and that involves facing up to the past, recognising the harm that human beings can do to one another and to the world – and also realising and determining that we can make positive change happen, by starting at the roots of our behaviours, actions, beliefs and feelings.
Each of the thousands of historical micro-steps (many documented, many more probably not) that led to the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 was an opportunity to stop, rethink, and regroup as a human race; while we see the bombing as inevitable with the hindsight of history, in actual fact, we undoubtedly collectively missed countless opportunities at the time to make change, and we have done so since. The opportunity to commit ourselves to a peaceful coexistence with one another and the planet is not lost, however, I firmly believe, but it will take discipline and persistence, in pursuit of seeking to do what is right for all of us. I am as certain as I can be that this can be achieved only by embracing our diversity and recognising our shared responsibility to one another; and in order to have a fair chance of doing so, we need to focus and re-focus, every day, on this goal and be strongly reminded of what can happens when we don’t. This is where a visit to Hiroshima really, really matters.
On the Saturday before travelling to Hiroshima, I was part of a panel at the Hakuba Forum Festival, alongside Governor Shuichi Abe of Nagano and Dr Kiyohiko Igarashi of Tokyo University, chaired by Tomoko Kumamoto, Founder of Hakuba International School on the theme ‘Restoring Trust in Divided Times’. The conclusion we reached was simple but profound: if we are to restore trust, we must focus on building good people – and commit ourselves to behaving, thinking, and feeling, with the best interests of our fellow human beings in mind. This message, and the message of Hiroshima, is not one of vengeance or anger or retribution for wrongs done in the past; rather, it is a message of simple, constructive peace, which starts with the self. This message reminds us that peace is not built solely on political treaties but on the daily practice of decency, curiosity, humility, and compassion.
For an educator – or indeed for anyone who is in a position to shape the minds or hearts of others – this message deepens our sense of responsibility for the stories we tell and the values we transmit, and it compels us to ask how we model empathy, how we nurture global awareness, and how we help young people see beyond difference. It calls us to teach history honestly and courageously, but above all to teach how to be good humans – and how to help others understand that compassion and forgiveness are choices we must make every day.
There are other places in the world that hold similar weight to Hiroshima, I know – far too many sites of human tragedy and reconciliation, of loss and of learning. We do not have to look far to see this unfolding under our eyes across the world, now, still. Visit some of these places if you can, because they change you. They are places of intense sadness and grief, but they also spur in you a belief that hope and action matter, and that from the ashes of destruction can rise an intense determination to do better, starting with each and every one of us.
So – if you can visit Hiroshima, you should, not simply to witness the past, but to take its lessons into the future – into classrooms, workplaces, communities, and families. Read those stories and feel the weight of the horror. And then translate your sorrow and horror into a renewed and loving imperative to do your bit to make the world a better place – and to teach and guide others to do the same.
It is, after all, up to each of us …
