August 6th

[Kaishaku]

_thousand cranes
flutter in the breeze --
_______ paper wings

 

[sophieloves]

gasp!

humbled by the beauty here

 

[Kaishaku]

Each year, on the anniversary of the bombing, the memorial park is decorated with origami cranes folded by local school children. Strange, I watched a documentary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which opened with interviews with Japanese teenagers. They asked what happened on August 6th, 1945. Teenager after teenager did not know. Perhaps they still need more origami cranes.

 

[TheRainMan]

Each year, on the anniversary of the bombing, the memorial park is decorated with origami cranes folded by local school children. Strange, I watched a documentary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which opened with interviews with Japanese teenagers. They asked what happened on August 6th, 1945. Teenager after teenager did not know. Perhaps they still need more origami cranes.

perhaps what they need are better teachers.

 

[wildsweetone]

perhaps what they need are better teachers.

it sounds like those teenagers might also need better parents (first teachers).

beautiful haiku Kaishaku.

 

[Tzara]

white paper folded
...to smother, to remember

.............hell

 

[Tzara]

Each year, on the anniversary of the bombing, the memorial park is decorated with origami cranes folded by local school children. Strange, I watched a documentary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which opened with interviews with Japanese teenagers. They asked what happened on August 6th, 1945. Teenager after teenager did not know. Perhaps they still need more origami cranes.

You could probably ask kids in Honolulu to say what happened December 7, 1941 and a lot of them wouldn't know. I was born in 1953 and when I was in high school, I wouldn't have done particularly well on a quiz about World War II, let alone WWI.

Perhaps it is a good thing that these things are not as prominent for later generations. It's the holding grudges for generations that seems to cause much of the unrest in the world.

 

[TheRainMan]

. . . Perhaps it is a good thing that these things are not as prominent for later generations. It's the holding grudges for generations that seems to cause much of the unrest in the world.

i have a feeling this is all going to end very badly, no matter what we do.

if that's the case, we might as well tell kids the truth.

 

[Kaishaku]

Perhaps it is a good thing that these things are not as prominent for later generations. It's the holding grudges for generations that seems to cause much of the unrest in the world.

The survivors, those that are still here, fear that if it is forgotten it might happen again. In the documentary what I found interesting was that none of the survivors they talked to seemed to hold any hatred or a grudge, they simply feared it might happen again.

 

[Tzara]

The survivors, those that are still here, fear that if it is forgotten it might happen again. In the documentary what I found interesting was that none of the survivors they talked to seemed to hold any hatred or a grudge, they simply feared it might happen again.

That's the Santayana argument (Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.) and probably true. But I wouldn't think there is any real way to keep alive the horror of things through the years. Certainly not through a civic ceremony (think of how Decoration Day mutated into just a three-day weekend for most people).

It's perhaps a function where art can provide the "remembering" capability. I know in my own case, the only sense I have of the awfulness of WWI gas warfare is through the poems of Wilfred Owen.

 

[sophieloves]

It's perhaps a function where art can provide the "remembering" capability. I know in my own case, the only sense I have of the awfulness of WWI gas warfare is through the poems of Wilfred Owen.

and post traumatic stress disorder... that image of the man's hands, ten digits moving about independently... stayed with me

 

[Tathagata]

perhaps what they need are better teachers.

I think it has more to do with students there are under so much pressure to do well and increase their chances of a good job with a good company that they just find what happened 62 years ago almost irrelevant in their lives.


We have 200 plus years to remember here...they have thousands of years and hundreds of local and national heroes.
There are festivals and statues and days of prayer.
Days honoring dead relatives etc.
They aren't adverse to history, but the bombings are also a dishonor,a loss and a shame in many Japanese minds and those are things that are not always readily discussed.

I'd like to see how many teenagers here know about 9/11 in 62 years.

 

[TheRainMan]

I think it has more to do with students there are under so much pressure to do well and increase their chances of a good job with a good company that they just find what happened 62 years ago almost irrelevant in their lives.


We have 200 plus years to remember here...they have thousands of years and hundreds of local and national heroes.
There are festivals and statues and days of prayer.
Days honoring dead relatives etc.
They aren't adverse to history, but the bombings are also a dishonor,a loss and a shame in many Japanese minds and those are things that are not always readily discussed.

I'd like to see how many teenagers here know about 9/11 in 62 years.

i'm sure that's all true. i know very little about Japanese culture. sometimes i wonder how much i really know and understand about my own.

you're probably right about 9/11.

like any other horror, it will fade with time. even the impact of the Holocaust is fading. i've heard elderly Jews discuss it in much the same way that Kaishaku describes survivors of Hiroshima discussing that -- the fear of repetition.

each generation feels the impact of the real thing less and less, i imagine. and each generation has its new atrocities, and its new beauties, that move front and center.

i watched 9/11 live. i don't know if my grandchildren will be better off remembering or forgetting . . who knows that kind of stuff, for sure?

anyway, good morning, Boston. always good to see you.

 

[bogusbrig]

i have a feeling this is all going to end very badly, no matter what we do.

if that's the case, we might as well tell kids the truth.

I have to agree with this sentiment. The problem with not telling the truth is that children get to uncritically believe the national myth (whatever the nation) and the one true thing about national myths, is that they are invariably full of half truths and lies.

 

[Tathagata]

i watched 9/11 live. i don't know if my grandchildren will be better off remembering or forgetting . . who knows that kind of stuff, for sure?

anyway, good morning, Boston. always good to see you.

I agree about 9/11
By telling them do we foster paranoia, anxiety, hate...
or do we tell them that life is always uncertain and these awful things happen, have happened, throughout history?

I watched a documentary on a public school, I believe in the South, that was studying about the Holocaust.
To give the children an idea of how many 6 million was, they started a campaign to collect 6 million paper clips.

Long story short this thing took on a life of it's own.
people from all over the world sent in paperclips, many survivors sent in some representing brothers sisters, parents who died.
They had survivors come and speak at the school,
and in the end they opened a museum, with one of the actual railroad cars that transported the Jews to the camps housing the paperclips in clear cases.

When you see the enormity of that number,your heart breaks.
There is no way you can even begin to understand it.

History presented that way, which fosters compassion and empathy is what we should pass along.

Just my observation this foggy morning.


Nice to see you also Pat, the lead is down to 6 I believe.

 

[Tathagata]

paper clip project

http://www.marionschools.org/holocaust/

 

[TheRainMan]

I agree about 9/11
By telling them do we foster paranoia, anxiety, hate...
or do we tell them that life is always uncertain and these awful things happen, have happened, throughout history?

I watched a documentary on a public school, I believe in the South, that was studying about the Holocaust.
To give the children an idea of how many 6 million was, they started a campaign to collect 6 million paper clips.

Long story short this thing took on a life of it's own.
people from all over the world sent in paperclips, many survivors sent in some representing brothers sisters, parents who died.
They had survivors come and speak at the school,
and in the end they opened a museum, with one of the actual railroad cars that transported the Jews to the camps housing the paperclips in clear cases.

When you see the enormity of that number,your heart breaks.
There is no way you can even begin to understand it.

History presented that way, which fosters compassion and empathy is what we should pass along.

Just my observation this foggy morning.


Nice to see you also Pat, the lead is down to 6 I believe.

i remember a Jim Jarmusch film where Roberto Benigni said, "It's a sad and beautiful world."

i think that sums it up as well as anything.

down to 6 games . . . holocausts . . . the search for compassion . . .

whether it's sports or history, how can anyone not look at the world everyday and say, "Haven't I seen this before?"

 

[Tathagata]

i remember a Jim Jarmusch film where Roberto Benigni said, "It's a sad and beautiful world."

whether it's sports or history, how can anyone not look at the world everyday and say, "Haven't I seen this before?"

sad and beautiful indeed

Joseph Campbell said about life " It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts."

Yes ,the trick is to see it with new eyes if you can.
make " all things new", if you will.

I have a lot of trouble with that one

 

[TheRainMan]

sad and beautiful indeed

Joseph Campbell said about life " It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts."

Yes ,the trick is to see it with new eyes if you can.
make " all things new", if you will.

I have a lot of trouble with that one

me too.

gotta try, though.

 

[ishtat]

Sadako

I think every child alive if possible needs to have the story of "Sadako (??spelling) and the Thousand Paper Cranes" read to them by the time they're 6 or 7. Much more impact than the straight history.

 

[twelveoone]

I have to agree with this sentiment. The problem with not telling the truth is that children get to uncritically believe the national myth (whatever the nation) and the one true thing about national myths, is that they are invariably full of half truths and lies.

and that is why history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce,
paraphasing Karl Marx.

There is an interesting story about forgetting, Hitler was alleged to have said something about who remembers the Armenians.

So who remembers what the Kymer Rouge did, whom the US supported, along with Red China.
Who remembers the Rape of Nanking? A thousand cranes for them?

Strange, this remembering and forgetting.

 

[champagne1982]

If a woman never forgot the pain that laboured her children into the world, we would never bear enough replacements.

On the flip side, if we never remembered the beauty of loving passion, we wouldn't be worried about forgetting the pain of childbirth.

So, live and remember and when it becomes too much to hold, forget.

 

[annaswirls]

i have a feeling this is all going to end very badly, no matter what we do.

if that's the case, we might as well tell kids the truth.

I never remembered dates in school. I did poorly on the tests that required we spit out numbers. Does it matter what day it happened? Does that mean lessons were not learned? Who knows, but just my personal experience. I remember the deep down lessons, the ones that still choke me, the history and literature teachers that helped us to feel it, even though the years had separated us, years or miles or cultures.... the adults that helped me to become empathetic.

If you asked me what happened August 6, I would not have had an answer either.

 

[MungoParkIII]

I never remembered dates in school. I did poorly on the tests that required we spit out numbers. Does it matter what day it happened? Does that mean lessons were not learned? Who knows, but just my personal experience. I remember the deep down lessons, the ones that still choke me, the history and literature teachers that helped us to feel it, even though the years had separated us, years or miles or cultures.... the adults that helped me to become empathetic.

If you asked me what happened August 6, I would not have had an answer either.

Perhaps you're right, if the interviewers had asked how WWII ended the answers may have been different, although I would have thought August 6th, 1945 should have made the answer easier. I also imagine most Americans would remember December 7th.