Hiroshima Travelogue - Episode 10

After a breakfast, we set out for a visit from Chugoku Shimbun daily. We gather at the entrance of the inn; there is no more a fat driver waiting for us. The bus is changed as is its driver. It is not a long journey.
The newspaper headquarters is in a large white building beside the Peace Park. We head to the second floor, where gatherings should be held. They set us a number of tables and chairs to be seated in a round shape. We also get coffee, cakes and note books on our tables.
Three elderly men take seats on one side of the arrangement; the three are survivors of the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima; on our side are a number of aged survivors of Iraq's chemical strike against Iran.

“I was ten when Hiroshima was bombarded," said Mr. Teramato, a narrowly survived of the atomic bomb, "The explosion destroyed everything within an [at least-]-two-kilometer radius. I lived with my mother at that time. She perished. I still don't figure out how I put through the event. A strange woman hugged me and salvaged my life while I was running away”.

Teramato has visited Iran some ten years ago. "I came to Iran with Ms. Soya. [It was during this trip] that is learned about chemically injured Iranians. We had come to Iran for a deferent purpose, but left it unfinished and pursued chemically injured individuals. We went to Sardasht. It was hard to believe. Had Iran really undergone a chemical strike? I came across a 20-year-old lad from Sardasht. He showed me a picture of his childhood. I could see the impact of chemical gas on his body. I met several other chemically injured individuals in Tehran and Sardasht. Their words were our words, the difference was that the world knows about Hiroshima, but there was almost nothing to know about Iran's chemical bombardments."

Ms. Okada, another survivor, underlined that the contacts between nonprofit Iranian and Japanese organizations have become a decade old, and asked us how we felt about the election of a new president in Iran.

“Hopeful,” said someone from the other side of the chairs.

She said, “The number of the survivors is on the decline in Japan. Today, I addressed a gathering with Hiroshima youths. I related my information about Iranian comrades who are chemically injured [during Iran-Iraq war] to the audience in the seminar.”

“They say the number of chemical warheads is decreasing but chemical weapons are apparently on the rise. There is a lot of news about their use in wars,” she added.

Mr. Hokta, 85, says he was a peace activist until last year. “I was not directly harmed by the atomic bombardment in Hiroshima. I arrived in the city in the afternoon and was exposed to its fallout. I was 17 then. The dead and the alive were hard to discern. Some had managed to survive by keeping away from the outburst in a soldiers’ camp. Unaware of the profundity of the disaster, they all longed for medication. I saw people with their skins completely burnt wait in lines for a doctor to see them. They all died before they could show their burnt bodies to doctors.”

“I found myself aiding others by bringing food from the adjacent villages to keep at least some more alive. On the third day, the area abounded with dead bodies. The river banks were filled with bodies. The corpses needed to be taken away from the city. The skin of the dead or the wounded would stick to our hands as we tried to carry them. After a very short interval, I became completely hardened to the situation. It became like I was carrying freight. We spent 12 days carrying the freight (bodies). After the job was done, depression overwhelmed my feelings for the next year to come. The anguish of those moments never left me alone. I had no way but find a way to rid of those memories. I took a job in a railway company. I have seen pictures of chemically injured Iranians. I kind of understand how you feel.”

I took a cake with coffee.

It was now our turn to speak. Alireza Yazdanpanah, who breathes with only one 4th or 5th of his lungs, says, “I wish these were all stories, but my cooked body, my corneal transplantations, and wait for finding new lungs are no stories.”

“I undertook my 44th surgical operation in 1996,” says Ali Akbar Fazli who fought against Iraqis some 6 years in the 8-year war. “There are similarities and differences between Iran-Iraq war and the Japanese wartime. One of the similarities is the agonies cause by weapons of mass-destruction used by enemies against Iran and Japan; and one of the differences is the world recognition of the crimes in Hiroshima and the world ignorance of chemical attacks on Iranian lands by Iraq.”

Behrouz Afkhami speaks a little. “I am chemically injured. I have had my right cornea transplanted, and am waiting for the left one to be changed. Seeing you is interesting for me,” said he with eyes always filled with water and coughs, but not as bad as Alireza’s.

“One of my unrepeatable life experiences is meeting with three survivors of Hiroshima bombing,” said Morteza Sarhangi. “I want to ask you this: Are your observations written somewhere? Because a message needs to be written to be transferable. They say nothing would have ever been written had there not been death.”

Ms. Okada says, “They didn’t let us say anything about the bombardment for some ten years. No one was allowed to talks about it.”

Mr. Teramato says, “A museum has been established at the Peace Park to transmit the memory of the event in various formats to those who happen to be interested in it. I don’t know whether there is a book about it or not.”

Is it because of those ten forced-years that the Japanese have not produced any written references on the event so far? Or a belief by the Japanese that loathing and agonizing doesn’t result in any progress is the reason why historiography of the incident has not expanded much among them? Or maybe this political scheme that ‘the softness of peace’ outdoes ‘the severity of war, is the reason why the disaster has not been focused upon in Japanese literature.

Albeit, Japanese literature is not void of works about the incident, but as we understand, nothing very special has been done in this regard, [at least so far].

Hedayatollah Behboudi
Translated by: Abbas Hajihashemi