Reconstruction, the Urakami Catholics, and Atomic Memory, 1945-1970
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Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction, the Urakami Catholics, and Atomic Memory, 1945-1970 Chad R. Diehl Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 © 2011 Chad Diehl All rights reserved. ABSTRACT Resurrecting Nagasaki Chad Diehl This dissertation traces the reconstruction of Nagasaki City after the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945 by concentrating on politics and religion. It follows the various people and groups who contributed to the city's rise from the ashes and shaped its image in Japan and the world. In contrast to Hiroshima, Nagasaki did not make its atomic tragedy the dominant theme of its postwar image, and instead strove to rebuild the city in the light of its past as a center of international trade and culture. The most influential group advocating the focus on "international culture" during the early postwar period was the Roman Catholic community of the northern Urakami Valley, which was ground zero. Although Hiroshima became synonymous with the atomic bomb in national and international discourse, Nagasaki followed its own path, one that illuminates the relationship between mass destruction, city history, religion, and historical remembrance. It is a story that sheds a different light on the atomic bombings and their aftermath, not only in comparison with Hiroshima but with other cities destroyed by area bombing and the course of their subsequent reconstruction. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Introduction 1 1. In the "Valley of Death": The Destruction of Nagasaki and the First Years of Occupation 21 I. Destruction 23 II. Occupation 42 III. Radiation and Christianity in the Urakami Valley 65 2. Envisioning Nagasaki: From Atomic Wasteland to International Cultural City, 1945-1950 75 I. Restoring the Past in the Wake of Disaster 76 II. Becoming a Symbol of International Trade and Peace 84 III. Nagasaki, the International Cultural City 98 3. The "saint" of Urakami: Nagai Takashi and the Formation of Atomic Memory, 1945-1951 112 I. Providential Tragedy 113 II. Nagasaki Literature and Postwar Society 131 III. The Bell of Nagasaki and Occupation Censorship 163 4. Ruins of Memory: The Urakami Cathedral and Symbolism, 1937-1959 187 I. Christianity and Patriotism in Urakami 190 II. The Christian Factor in Postwar Japan 203 III. Resurrecting the Cathedral 214 5. Living within the Walls of Silence: The Hibakusha Struggle for Survival, 1945-1970s 240 I. The Walls of Silence 242 II. Overcoming the "Dark Era" 256 III. Breaking down the Walls of Silence through Literature 275 Epilogue 284 Bibliography 294 ! i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With heartfelt gratitude to Carol Gluck for her mentorship, encouragement, and support throughout my graduate school career. I am always impressed with the dedication she shows her students, which has inspired me since my first year at Columbia when she took the time once a week to sit and discuss my reading responses, line by line, so that I might become a better writer, even though she is the busiest person I know. She has always shown extraordinary grace and patience, even when side projects or life circumstances distracted me from the dissertation. I could not have asked for a better sponsor and professional role model. At Columbia, I am grateful to Marianne Hirsch, Gregory Pflugfelder, and Kim Brandt for graciously offering their guidance and mentorship. I am also grateful to Marilyn Ivy for sitting on my dissertation committee. Laura Neitzel generously offered mentorship and friendship during my last two years at Columbia, and I am extremely grateful to her. In Nagasaki, Nagai Tokusaburô and Takahashi Shinji made tremendous contributions to my research. Yamasaki Toshiko and her family always made me feel welcome in their home. I thank the many hibakusha who have graciously shared their stories with me over the years, some of which I included in the following pages, but too many that I could not. In Tokyo, Inazuka Hidetaka and Iwasaki Minoru were indispensible for completing my research, and the members of the Kôdôgakusha, whom I considered like family, made the stay in Tokyo one of my most cherished memories to date. In New York, Nakamura Hideo has always been a source of good advice and friendship. Brett Walker of Montana State University introduced me to Japanese history ! !!! and has consistently supported my research, having been the first to suggest pursuing an academic career, and for that I am forever grateful. I thank Yuka Hara at MSU for introducing me to the Japanese language, encouraging me to study abroad, and remaining a close friend long after my first language class with her. Portions of this research benefited from the support of a Fulbright Graduating Senior Fellowship to Nagasaki University. I am also indebted to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for a generous dissertation research grant. My family always sends love and encouragement from Montana to wherever I am. They are my constant source of support and comfort. I thank Reto Hofmann and Yumi Kim for comments on the manuscript at different stages and in different capacties, and also for their friendship. And to Anri Yasuda, my comrade in arms. Thank you for your compassion, good company, and sense of humor, not to mention your brilliance— Wir mussen schreiben bis wir sterben!! I am indebted to everyone here, and to many more not listed. Even so, the faults of the manuscript are no one's but my own. ! !!!! For My Parents ! iv 1 A city brings together in the same space different ages, offering to our gaze a sedimented history of tastes and cultural forms. The city gives itself as both to be seen and to be read.1 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting. Valley of Ashes and Visions: An Introduction When mass destruction levels a city, surviving city officials and residents turn to familiar referents—memory, religion, or history—to guide the reconstruction process. They seek to restore the recent past but also to build a vision of a renewed destiny. Reconstruction becomes an exigent and existential venture encompassing the past, present, and future. Standing in the ashes, people gaze backward in time to revive what was lost and look forward to give meaning to the tragedy and clear a path to renewal. After the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the history of the city constituted the bedrock on which officials and citizens planned to build the city's future. Their visions of reconstruction sometimes conflicted, as did their perceptions of the significance of the destruction, even as shared experiences and disparate views combined to set Nagasaki on a different path than its atomic counterpart, Hiroshima. Out of the discordant visions of the first three decades after the bomb emerged the diverse narratives, or memories, of post-atomic Nagasaki. When the city set out to rebuild, it first sought to articulate the significance of the bombing. The symbolism of the event depended on who was speaking, producing a variety of interpretations that at once overlapped and opposed one another. For Allied occupation forces, Nagasaki city officials, the Catholic community, and even Emperor 1 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 151. 2 Hirohito, the bomb brought the end of the war, or as a common saying put it, the bomb was a "harbinger of peace." Nagasaki was the second and last atomic bombing in the war, the logic went, so city officials rallied residents with the saying, "Peace starts from Nagasaki," attempting to set the city's catastrophe in the broader context of the end of the war, surrender, and the new postwar beginning. City politicians and the emperor alike encouraged Nagasaki residents in the early years of reconstruction to "turn tragedy into happiness" by rebuilding their "international cultural city." Because the Urakami Cathedral had stood at the epicenter of the bombing, the official approach enhanced the position of the Catholics who viewed its destruction as a kind of martyrdom. In November 1945, the leader of the Catholic parishioners, Nagai Takashi, declared the tragedy an act of Providence, claiming that God chose Urakami— ground zero and home of generations of Catholics—as a sacrificial lamb on His altar to expiate the sins of humankind for the sake of ending the war. For Nagai, the bomb became a "harbinger of peace" with the martyrdom of the Catholics, "the only worthy sacrifice." Nagai was already a leader in the Catholic community before the bombing, but after it he became a local prophet to whom Catholic survivors looked for spiritual leadership. During the occupation, Nagai was the public voice of Nagasaki's atomic experience and a key figure in the city's physical, social, and spiritual reconstruction. Through his nationally best-selling books, which expounded his interpretation of the bombing, he shaped the discourse on the Nagasaki bombing, which linked it to Urakami and Christianity in popular memory for decades to come. For most hibakusha (atomic-bombing survivors) who were neither Catholic nor members of the city council, the bomb meant personal trauma and human loss. The 3 bomb brought not peace, but destruction, the death of loved ones, and physical and mental scars, as well as lifelong, debilitating illness caused by exposure to radiation. These survivors constituted by far the largest group in post-atomic Nagasaki. I refer to them here as "hibakusha," even though the term technically includes all those who survived the bombing and radiation, including most city officials and Urakami Catholics. In the 1950s, the term "hibakusha" in Nagasaki came to signify the groups of survivors active on behalf of bomb victims or in the peace movement, as well as the voiceless survivors for whom they spoke.