Volume 6 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2758 | May 03, 2008 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus From Trinity to Trinity Hayashi Kyoko From Trinity to Trinity my utmost to be a doctor who stands on the side of his patients. A Hayashi Kyoko hibakusha myself, I have walked Japan and the world pleading for Translated by Kyoko Selden the abolition of nuclear weapons. These efforts were made with the After checking them against a list of prize- thought that this was my winning numbers, a family member of tender responsibility to those who age handed me my New Year cards, informing swallowed their resentment amidst me that I had won three sheets of post-office the infernal fire. Physically stamps. One of the cards was from Rui. I read it weakened in recent days, I have again: “I am leaving the hospital as I reach been made to realize the severity retirement age; I plan to enjoy the afternoon of life’s slope in one’s eighties. Yet, tea time of life.” “Now I finally know your age. super powers possessing nuclear Bravo,” I said. I had said the same thing on first weapons act as if the world were reading the card that New Year’s morning. their own. As long as I live, I have no alternative but to pass down the I had known her for nearly thirty years, but realities of the bombing to younger never knew how old she was. When I asked her generations. By way of a New which year she had been born in, she had Year’s greeting, I humbly ask you evaded the question with a laugh, mimicking to guide my way, lead me by the the voice of a little girl: “When I grow up, I hand, and lend me your support. want to be like you, big sister.” New Year, 2000 Another was a greeting card from a boutique in Kamakura with a message that said, “Happy Millennium!” The third was a New Year’s This card brought me back to reality from the greeting from Doctor S, who had been bombed peaceful sentiments I had felt on reading Rui’s. at Hiroshima while serving as a military doctor. In it I hear the heavy breathing of one climbing the last stretch of life’s slope and am also made His printed card, written in an old-fashioned to realize that my own seventieth year is right epistolary style, read: before my eyes. This is the reality for those who were bombed on August 6th or 9th. Hibakusha It is three and eighty years since I now walk toward death with weakened legs and was brought into this world. backs. I once announced, when I was still in Having lived through the turmoil of mid-life, that I would live until I made news: the Taishō and Shōwa eras, if “Today, the last hibakusha died.” But this wish questioned as to what I have has been unexpectedly hard to fulfill. accomplished, I maintain some modest pride about having tried Starting last spring, there had been concerns 1 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF about the impending computer crisis in the year 2000. Stirred by these projections, I stocked up on water and instant noodles. Thinking that I was now ready to survive into the 21st century, my heart felt full. The year 2000 was namely the 21st century. If so, I should process my August 9th with some finality before the 20th century ended—a century that was on its way out, trailing its power-smoke smeared skirts. Writing a list of those things I had already completed and what I had left undone, I planned a busy schedule for the coming year. The Mitsubishi Steel and Armaments Works But I had it wrong. “The year 2000 is still the 20th century.” So taught by the young family member, I stopped short for a second. The The primary target for the Nagasaki attack was wrong date imprinted in my memory, however, the Mitsubishi Shipyard, the second being the was hard to erase. “Never mind, let it be armory where we had been mobilized to work. wrong,” I thought to myself as I pushed my The sky over Nagasaki that day was covered schedule forward. with thick clouds, so the shipyard was not visible from Bock’s Car.2 From a rift barely The first of the things weighing on my mind appearing between clouds, the armory showed, was a pilgrimage. This was because Kana and I and the a-bomb was released. Kana, in a had made a promise on her 60th birthday that different work area from mine, sustained a the two of us would some day make a heavy injury to her head, which cracked under pilgrimage together. But more precisely, I had a falling iron weight. Pulling out a bottle of taken such a journey in the summer of 1998. alcohol from her first-aid bag, she sprinkled the contents on her open wound. The amount of Students of the same grade at a girls’ school, blood doubled and streamed into her eyes and we were both bombed during mobilization at mouth. “I ran from the place, covering the the Mitsubishi Armory,1 1.4 kilometers from wound with my hand,” she told me. the epicenter. Since then, whenever August 9th approached, she confined herself in the dark with rain shutters closed, in her camellia-surrounded house on an island to the south of the city. Because she repeated this every year, we simply waited for an autumn day when she would return to a more normal frame of mind. In January of that year, however, she suddenly cut off communication. She left, without telling anyone her destination. Rumor reached me that she was ill, but no details were available. In order to fulfill our 2 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF promise, I decided to make the pilgrimage There was one other thing that I had left myself. Properly, it should be a tour of the undone and had to take care of: going to eighty-eight amulet-issuing temples in Shikoku. Trinity. The Trinity Site of the Manhattan Yet, although still some years away from Project is where the U.S. conducted the first reaching Doctor S’s age, I lacked theatomic test explosion on earth. At that time, the confidence to walk the entire distance of the U.S. possessed the only three a-bombs in Shikoku pilgrimage route, which included many existence. One was the uranium bomb that was precipitous mountain trails. Cutting the route dropped on Hiroshima. The remaining two short to thirty-three temples, I toured the were plutonium bombs, one of which was used Kannon images on the peninsula where I live. for the test. The other was dropped on Putting the furoshiki hand cloth Kana had given Nagasaki. me the day of her recital in my rucksack,3 I When I told Rui that I was visiting Trinity, she toured the temples along the coast, collecting asked smoothly, “Are you an a-bomb maniac?” vermilion stamps on the cloth at amulet offices. “I wonder,” I answered with a wry smile. Even now I still wish to cut my ties to August 9th. When I wake on certain mornings, I find saliva dyed pink with blood that has oozed from my gums while I sleep. Each time this happens this thought is renewed. I first traveled to the U.S. in 1985 to join my son Kei during his three-year stay there for a job. Having begun his American life one step ahead of me, he met me when I arrived and drove me on the highway that ran along the Potomac River. It was June, when dogwoods The 88 temple pilgrimage route had finished blossoming and the young leaves of Virginia lent their green hue to the sunlight. Perhaps in a regatta practice, a slim-bodied The cloth, dyed red with the stamps from the boat went down the brown stream of the river. thirty-three temples, is still displayed in the From the tall maple trees canopying above us, miniature family temple at my house. Once the silver-winged seeds fluttered down, shining, summer had passed, the grease of the red ink onto the water. started running into the texture of the white background of the cloth, giving off a damp In the sky and on the road ahead, too, silver smell. I should give it to Kana before mildew wings flurried. forms, but I still don’t know her whereabouts. It was then. The thought suddenly occurred to I stopped looking for her, however. Many of the me that if I pulled the road in toward me, hand New Year’s cards I received from friends this over hand, I would come upon the a-bomb test year bore messages that declined to remain in site. Before leaving Japan, I had received an touch: “Having reached age seventy, this will accusing letter from Instructor I from N Girls’ be the last New Year’s greeting I will send.” Higher School:4 “The U.S. is the country that This, I gathered, meant leaving futuredropped the a-bomb on us; have you forgotten greetings for the other world. that you are a hibakusha?” Following August 3 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF 9th, in the schoolyard, this teacher had burned swallowing them. This was my thought when I the bodies of many students who had died by carried out my plan to visit Trinity. This was in the bomb, students whose parents had died as the autumn of 1999.