Vision – Reflections on Hiroshima

I am back in Japan with the Japanese peace centers, marking this very important event in the global peace calendar. On 6th August 1945 Hiroshima suffered a statistically tragic loss of life in the earthquake – followed on 9th August by similar casualties in Nagasaki. The human and environmental impact of these bombs as just one example of strategically used nuclear weapons, had equally disastrous effects on the narrative of international relations. As I spoke briefly with the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, he told me “since almost all the hibakusha (surviving A-bomb victims) had perished, their broken souls lingered to remind the international community not to repeat that terrible day.” “.

In Japan, the humiliation of the nation and the declining status of the Hirohito dynasty until now, combined with the idea that the eternal spirits had abandoned them. The atomic bomb accelerated the nuclear arms race between competing superpowers, and (later) between regional enemies, and transformed international relations. I also interviewed the Mayor of Peace, an international organization sponsored by the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their spokesman said, “no one else should suffer like us.” Our Hiroshima-Nagasaki studies convey this message to future generations by exploring the realities of the bombings and the hibakusha experience. Currently, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Studies are being conducted at 78 universities, a third of them outside of Japan…”

In his speech expressing concern over Russia’s protracted war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip, Mayor Matsui added, “I know the world situation is increasing suspicion and suspicion between nations and the public belief that one must use force.” solving international problems”. His words echoed throughout the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, as the victims of the atomic bomb were remembered. The physical and mental impact, and the traumatic legacy of the post-WW2 atomic bomb, was felt beyond Japan’s territorial borders. Yet a review of academic IR scholarship suggests an alarming neglect of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days and a commemoration shrouded in political sensibility.

These actions are still the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. Scholars still debate the ethical and legal implications of bombing. The importance of Hiroshima is perhaps most felt in this international heritage – in making a memorial culture of peace, and Vietnam, and possibly now Ukraine – serves as a meeting point. The Hiroshima/Nagasaki days, while now enjoying great diplomatic prominence, remain a symbol of the past neglect of the peace memorial in the realm of international relations. In general, peace ceremonies are not visible in war memorials so that their potential to improve international relations is largely lost.

It is also sad that while municipal authorities around the world have been commemorating past wars, they have been allocating only a small amount of money to memorialize peace. Opening the “Peace Museum” in Chicago in 1981, its founding director, Marianne Philbin lamented that war memorials were everywhere while her country “didn’t have a proper museum dedicated to peace building”. For example, the museum has faced financial problems with the federal government. It has taken an independent initiative to advance the goal of a peace memorial and to show those (often intangible) pieces of cultural heritage that can form a “dictionary of peace”. Such a thing is appropriate in any part of the world but the challenge is stronger in countries with a tragic history like Japan. The psychological nightmare that plagued post-WW2 Japan, and cast a shadow over its reconstruction, is poignantly documented in Robert Jungk’s book, Children of Ash.

In Japan, prefectural governments and NGO initiatives have made the post-WW2 peace museum movement an inspiration to the international community and Hiroshima Day is their showcase. However, the construction of such a variety of “peace structures” in post-war Japan was not without controversy, reflecting (and sometimes emphasizing) fundamental political tensions. The spirit of Hiroshima/Nagasaki was at the center of this heritage pilgrimage. Often museum professionals have become very bold, sometimes even confronting state authorities.

Writing in August 2024, it’s hard not to be shocked by the Hiroshima/Nagasaki inspiration for the world’s peace memorial. First, it is the core of museums that clearly contain “peace” in their theme, and are dedicated to the education of peace through the visual arts. This will include the Peace Museum in Chicago (now a virtual project), the Peace Museum in Bradford UK, Oslo’s Nobel Peace Prize Museum, and more than fifty different museums around the world. Hiroshima and Nagasaki inspired new peace collections such as the Peace Museum Meeder in Germany, the Peace Palace in The Hague, the League of Nations Museum in Geneva, and museums of “public peacemaking” such as the Museum of the Olympic Games in Lucerne. This “family” of museums includes the search for peace “among people” as in the Yi Jun Peace Museum in Holland, its founder has been lobbying for another Peace Museum placed in a good place in Korea, to promote the reconciliation of Korea. At the core of this work, the apocalyptic vision of nuclear annihilation is why my recent visit to Japan heightens its importance in achieving international peace.

The flame of peace in Japan is fueling many “issue-based” movements that have been formed as a result of specific events. There are a number of Japanese museums of this type, such as Liberty Osaka, which focuses mainly on human rights; Tokyo Children’s Peace Museum; Nagasaki’s Shokokumin Museum and the Poison Gas Museum on Okunoshima Island and its “righteous appeal” against chemical weapons. Japan finds solidarity in museums (such as Yad Vashem in Israel or Washington DC’s Memorial Museum) and interpretation centers in former concentration camps (eg, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen in Germany, and Auschwitz in Poland). . In recent years, peace centers have been opened in the European war zones of Caen and Verdun. Just as the battlefields of Flanders were equated with the beginning of a new era of war, so Hiroshima and Nagasaki have taken a symbolic place in the nuclear age.

This image of peace museums in international relations is particularly evident in the revision of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum which opened for the first time in April 1996 and offers a powerful reinterpretation of modern Japanese history. The institute builds on its traditional predecessors who confined themselves to demonstrating the human impact of the atomic bomb. Predictably, the new museum has angered many on Japan’s political “right”. By admitting Japan’s military empiricism and nuclear war behavior, it angered Japan’s war veterans.

The ethereal atmosphere of Hiroshima/Nagasaki also inspires “story-based” peace memorial institutions such as the emerging forms of genocide museums such as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and genocide exhibits in Rwanda. the capital, Kigali and the capital of Burundi, Bujumbura. Hiroshima/Nagasaki is therefore being asked to visualize the horrors of a larger scale. While there was a peace museum tradition before the atomic bomb, Hiroshima/Nagasaki inspired peace museums around the world. Many “non-violence museums” – especially the many Gandhi museums that dot India and elsewhere – also depict the detonation of the Atom Bomb.

The issue of “making peace” goes to the heart of the debate about war guilt and social reconciliation. In contrast, the renovation of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in recent decades has shown that the progressive prefectural administration is willing to put peace rather than honoring the war dead, at the center of its international relations. By transforming its galleries, the new Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has become a refreshing vehicle for international relations. The museum is now a tool of international relations in Japan that identifies “soft diplomacy” that seeks to give international prominence to the days of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The expansion of the peace movement around the world is evidence of the ongoing discussion about “museums of war and peace” and the days of Hiroshima/Nagasaki are at the heart of that thinking.

Further Studies in E-International Relations