Living with Hiroshima

Feeling Maymyo breeze
he funds we had raised at the Hiroshima YWCA amounted to 100,000 yen. I decided to go to Myanmar in March, 1998 to deliver the money, together with Noriko, who is a translator. I was also scheduled to talk about my A-bomb experience in a seminar held at Ms. A.’s seminary, and to attend its graduation ceremony as well as Ms. A.’s wedding ceremony.

It took 13 hours to go the 621km from Yangon to Mandalay by train. It was an extraordinarily bumpy and noisy ride. Moreover, from Mandalay to Maymyo where Ms. A. lives, I took a taxi, which was exclusively for foreigners, but the taxi was a rundown pickup truck, made in Japan.

In the seminary classroom, there was only one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and some broken windows had been repaired with pieces of cardboard.

While I was talking about my A-bomb experience, I wondered if it was really necessary to talk about Hiroshima to such poverty-stricken students. However my doubts were unfounded. They commented one after another that no possession of nuclear weapons, no fights and no hatred are the bases of world peace. Besides, they prayed for the A-bomb survivors who are still sick in bed.

When I gave the donations to the seminary principal, I said, “Please use this money to buy light bulbs or to repair the school building.” But I was struck speechless, when he said to me, “Tangible things will be broken. I want to use the money to support the life of poor students. That will be more meaningful.”

In the evening, I was spoken to by a small old lady on the street. She said to me, “There are electric lights in the school, but ordinary houses don’t even have electricity. They have a TV at the school and allow us to watch it, so I go there to watch ‘Oshin.’” I realized that I had a self-righteous view and at the same time I kept thinking back on what the principal said to me.

The graduation ceremony was simple, but solemn.

The next day, Ms. A. paraded the streets in a horse-drawn carriage in her wedding dress. A pig, which her students had raised, was cooked and set out on the wedding reception table.
Half an hour after the reception started, the guests started to disappear one after another. Then, many people who had been watching the reception through the windows dashed to fill the empty seats and to eat the dishes on the table. One of the townspeople told me, “It’s customary for poor people to swap places at a wedding reception, otherwise we would not have any chance to eat meat. “

Students listening to my A-bomb testimony

The classroom with its single bare light bulb is always dim.
(The school building was previously to be used by the British army, but it was left incomplete due to the army’s withdrawal from Myanmar, so the stairways and classrooms are full of danger.)