Reflection 1

“My Hiroshima Legacy: A Story of My Mother & Aunt” by Michiko Yamaoka

Campbell Hall 100, 9/6/19 (Campus)

This lecture was profoundly moving. I’ve had a longstanding and strong opinion on why the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings were wrong and indicative of problematic wmd developments, but this new perspective helped me to consider the emotional components as well. For me, the broad subject is always enough to show the atrocity, but often I’m guilty of forgetting how individually traumatic it was for people affected. It’s easy to remove oneself from historical events because of a lacking tangible context, so basic human conditions in these events are often not talked about.

Seeing as this lecture was a recollection of a major global historical event, it’s pertinent to the realm of international affairs. It’s an example of how people actively make the choice to destroy communities through wars of attrition as a method of international interaction– a darker aspect of diplomacy.

Personally, this session was a reminder to me that not everyone is as informed of certain events that may seem obvious and important to other people. Many of the horrors commonly associated with these bombings are less known by American society (potentially from the justifying stance of teaching in our school systems), so to see people enlightened and moved, though by a troubling event, was reassuring.

In my American foreign policy class, we recently spoke about how individuals can have more retributive or humanitarian takes on foreign policy. That too can apply to the attitude of the WWI era, as well as how people are taught about the events nowadays, leading to their support of the US’s decision to drop the nukes– or their condemnation of it.

During the beginning of the presentation, the speaker mentioned that “Japanese people don’t blame Americans for the events”, and if I could ask a question of the speaker, I’d ask why she felt she had to establish that. This mainly bothers me because I feel that if anything it is more American society that should be apologizing for any ignorance, as opposed to the Japanese community feeling they should justify wanting to educate others.

Paper cranes were handed out after the presentation in commemoration