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This post, here amended, was first published July 25, and is about peace and the realities and consequences of war. See especially #1, programs for next week. Golden Rule, #2, and #4, #5 & #6 are new additions to the original post. .
- Hiroshima/Nagasaki: August 6, 1945, the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Four days later was Nagasaki. I’d invite your attention to the first section below about the annual Hiroshima Nagasaki Time of Remembrance August 5-8, 2024, in Minneapolis and St. Paul. It begins Monday. The details are here: HiroshimaNagasaki_2024 rev2 . This program has been ongoing since 1955 when St. Paul and Nagasaki became Sister Cities.
Directly related, two years ago, the St. Paul Civic Symphony premiered a new work commemorating HiroshimaNagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945. Orchestra member and former colleague Christina Clark sent the links with this explanation: “Hello – we performed this piece in May 2022 and finally finished editing the video clip of it with interviews as well as a video of the entire piece. Hope you can find time to listen to both (the interview piece is about 7 minutes, and the piece itself is about 20 minutes). The piece commemorates the horrors of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the internment camps here in the US, and the rebirth of hope and life after these events. At our final concert this season…, we played the 2nd movement again and gifted a tribute box to Takayuki Miyanishi, who is visiting here from Nagasaki. Takayuki-san is the leader of the Nagasaki Symphony Orchestra and the sister city committee in Nagasaki for the St. Paul-Nagasaki sister city relationship. It was great to see him again – most of us last saw him in 1998 when we traveled with 60 players and 40 family members for a week in Nagasaki with their committee and orchestra. Work for peace. Christina & Harley”
Of course, the issue of war and looming Armageddon will probably never end, but the conversation is essential if we are to survive as people worldwide.
Hopefully adding to the conversation, a short while ago I came across a newspaper column I’d kept from 1985, talking about a Japanese American interned in rural ND during WWII. The commentary is from the Grand Forks Herald, by Chuck Haga, and is the story of Harry Hayashi of Carrington ND: Hayashi Carrington WWII. You will find the article enlightening.
In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I wrote an op ed which was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 6, 1995. You can read it here: Atomic Bomb 1945001. At the time I wrote the op ed I didn’t know that another close family relative, August Berning, had been a Marine Captain, part of the deadly Okinawa campaign which ended a month or so before the Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
2. Golden Rule: Two years ago the Golden Rule sailboat embarked from Minneapolis beginning a ‘grand round’ of the midwest and eastern United States, lobbying for peace, and anti-nuclear. It completed its mission. This summer its route is the west coast of the U.S. All details are in its informative and attractive newsletter which appears here.). GoldenRule(3)2024
Golden Rule is a serious project and deserves your encouragement and financial support.
3. A Wake-up Call: If you have any doubt that fascism can’t happen here, devote serious time to listening to Rachel Maddow’s Ultra podcast, now in Season Two. I have listened to all of the episodes in both years (I think the total so far is about 13 in all, and I believe they are all still accessible). Now playing is Episode 7 focusing on Sen. Joseph P. McCarthy of Wisconsin. The series is absolutely chilling and eye-opening, beginning with the 1930s through the mid-1950s. Each episode is roughly 45 minutes. The last segment of this ’round’ airs starting Tuesday, August 6. There are several upper midwest collaborators: Charles Lindbergh, Wild Bill Langer, and the like. Our country had a very near miss with a fascist takeover…and we’re confronting the same right now.
4. Book Recommendation: On our long weekend out I started Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book “An Unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960s“. This is a very interesting book, an insider account primarily of the JFK and Lyndon Johnson years. Dick Goodwin was a speechwriter and in other ways integral part of both administrations, and Doris Kearns, who became his wife, later a Pulitzer Prize winning author, was part of the White House team especially for Lyndon Johnson. The book is heavily sourced, and of course, both Doris and Dick were in the thick of some extraordinary years. I noted Amazon has near 3,000 reviews and the books rating is 4.8 of 5 stars.
5. August 1, the Prisoner Exchange: As I was updating this post, and all day today, the news has been about the negotiated prisoner exchange involving a number of countries. The news will fill in all of the details. Personally, what I thought about was the difficulty of diplomacy and the utility of decent relationships and necessity of negotiations to craft agreements which are never perfect, especially among enemies with long histories. It is considerably different than a passionate argument among friends over coffee.
Deals such as today’s percolate slowly and quietly sometimes over years, and when they happen often catch us by surprise. Whatever one thinks of this deal, or that, who/what was won/lost, the fact of the matter is that in one way or another we are all part of a massive community encompassing an entire planet, divided into a complex network of states, led by a diverse lot of leaders who have achieved their position in all sorts of different ways.
Pick 10 random folks you know and see how hard it is to come to consensus on any most important issue. It is a wonder that our system of nations works at all, but as the agreement that came to fruition today shows, it is possible to solve problems without missiles or bombs. We need to practice this personally and wherever we live.
6. Personal Political Opinion: If you know me, or follow this space at all, you know where I stand politically. I will go into more detail after the Democratic Convention (August 19-22, Chicago) and on or before Labor Day (September 2). The election is Tuesday, November 5. In the interim, I will continue writing on whatever happens to be of interest. Have a good August. YOU are “politics”, period. We all are “politics”. Get informed and involved.
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7. Gaza/Israel/Hamas: The Minneapolis StarTribune gave an entire page in the Thursday STrib about Prime Minister Netanyahu at the U.S. Congress [July 24]. That is only the beginning of news which continued as he visited President Biden and Vice-President Harris, etc., etc. I do not pretend to have any new insights. However, recently I came across an old file of mine, from 2008-09, labeled “Gaza”, relating to troubles there in 2008. This was 15 years ago.
At the time I submitted a personal opinion op ed to the Star Tribune, which was not printed, but I did keep a copy and informed others about it at the time, and more recently as well. FYI, here is the personal opinion at the time: Gaza 2008-09. I make no pretense, then or now, of being an expert on the tragedy which is Gaza, except that it is a tragedy, and it will never be solved if either or both ‘sides’ assume they will win everything in the long term. This is more a congressional than a presidential issue. The U.S. policy is very long-standing and not necessarily productive or correct. Just my opinion.
[See comment from SAK below]
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8. Finally, a German witness to the ending of WWII: Tuesday’s post included a brief comment from myself: “…today we lunched with our 98 year old German friend, days ago returned from several weeks in her home country. She’s extremely concerned about our country, as are her native countrymen and women, should the previous president be returned to office. More later on that.”
Here is the “more later”.
We had a very good visit with our friend, which verified what I say above, and which included something I was aware of from earlier conversations, but not to the extent revealed at our lunch.
Near the end of the war, as an 18 year old in 1945, our friend was assigned to be a typist in an office in a city about 70 miles from her home. Basically the pool she was in was simply relaying coded messages – it was a steno job. She was fast and accurate.
During her just concluded visit she went to the city and saw the actual building in which she worked, and the ‘three windows’ to the outside. The outside landscape included the local Dom (Cathedral).
She remembered that one of the stenos was removed summarily for presumed spying for the enemy. She left and was never seen again. Someone else, apparently connected with the local church, told someone they needed to look out for themselves because time was short for the Reich. The individual was arrested and summarily and publicly hung in the yard in front of the Dom.
The war ended shortly thereafter. She walked the 70 miles home, hiding in the woods and nearly starving. She wanted at least to be home. Her father, who was not a Nazi, had been conscripted. They last saw him months before, and never heard from him again. They presume he was killed or died, probably in Russia.
Her memory of 80 years before was powerful and concise. Since I had heard parts of this message from her in previous years and in writing in her book, she came across as credible.
I’ll never see ‘three windows’ quite the same again….
COMMENTS (more below)
from SAK: Many thanks I really enjoyed that “Hiroshima” page & intend to reread it more carefully: so much there from books to music & articles about the past & present. Thanks again.
Recently I happened on this page which is about the countdown to Hiroshima.
Towards the bottom one finds “Newer Post” & by clicking that one can move forward one day at a time to that fateful day.
You also mentioned the Gaza war. That links with an article I found by a French philosopher, Paul Ricœur. He was influenced by his Christian upbringing as well as by Christian & non-Christian philosophers. The article is available here in French: Perplexités sur Israël. I have translated it to English, by using translation aids but then correcting some errors etc. Here: Perplexities 1958.
What links it with Hiroshima is the following line – keep in mind this article was written in 1958, plus ça change!
“Such are the frightening prospects of the Jewish-Arab conflict. If we are not careful, it is from there that the spark of nuclear war can start.”
from Harley: Dick, thanks for this. I read your blog post about Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The only time I have gone to Japan was on the opening of the Nagasaki Concert hall in 1998. I went with Christina and my mom and daughter. As you can imagine, it was very moving. We also went to our homestead in Kagoshima and met our relatives too.
My mom was incarcerated during the war. She went in at age 14 and got out at 17. She settled in Minnesota, not being allowed to go back to the west coast while the war was still on. She spent her growing up years in the camp. I still do not know the full effect of that experience on her. I never will.