Hiroshima Day

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Hiroshima Memorial Day (Hiroshima-ki, Japan)

***** Location: Japan
***** Season: Summer, August 6
***** Category: Observance

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Explanation

On August 6, 1945, the United States used its massive, secret weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. While Japan was still trying to comprehend this devastation three days later, the United States struck again, this time, on Nagasaki on August 9.

At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, 1,500 miles south of Japan.

Text with pictures is here:
http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa072700a.htm

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Hiroshima Day has different readings in Japanese
genbaku no hi, Hiroshima-ki, genbaku-ki 原爆の日、広島忌、原爆忌

KI means Memorial Day. GENBAKU means atom bomb.


http://www.geocities.jp/yokozeki_photo/a-bomb.html

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Yasuhiko Shigemoto

The number of survivors of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima is dwindling.
What have we all learned from this experience?
Yasuhiko Shigemoto was born in Hiroshima in 1930. He was fifteen when he suffered from A-bomb attack on the City in 1945. Having survived it, he later taught English at a senior high school in Osaka, which became his long career of forty-five years.

Meanwhile, he has been engaged in the struggle for peace both at home and abroad. His anthology, My Haiku of Hiroshima, was published in 1995. He has been giving public lectures and speeches on the theme of peace, including the speech he delivered at London University on Hiroshima Haiku also in 1995. He is one of the judges of the annual A-Bomb Memorial Day Haiku Contest* in English. The meeting of this contest is held every year at the Peace Museum of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

The A-bomb at Hiroshima is not a past event for Shigemoto but very much of the present and will continue to be so unless and until all the nuclear weapons are eradicated from the face of the earth. His haiku poems are a testimony to it.

Yasuhiko Shigemoto, Osaka, Japan
http://www.worldhaikureview.org/pages/whcjapan1.shtml

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The speech of the mayor of Hiroshima on August 6, 2004
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/message/286


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Worldwide use

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Things found on the way


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HAIKU

Hiroshima o shirazaru ko-ra yo ryuutoo-e

Children --
floating lit paper lanterns
not knowing Hiroshima

Yasuhiko Shigemoto (Japan - Hiroshima)

More Haiku on this page:
http://www.tempslibres.org/awhw/poets/ys.html



“this is our cry
this is our prayer
Peace in the world”

Sadako Sasaki, Hiroshima 1945
World Children Haiku


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.. .. .. HIROSHIMA HAIKU
http://www.fureai-ch.ne.jp/~haiku/enhaiku.htm

1
Swallows
coming again and flying
not forgetting Hiroshima

2
Swings―
nowhere are they to be found
in the A-bomb park

3
A column of ants
reminding me of the scene
after the A-bomb dropping

4
The sunset glow―
Hiroshima
as if still burning

5
The thunderhead
looking like
an atomic cloud !

6
All alone
in silence at the dome,
Hiroshima Day

7
A-bomb blast center
no human shadows at all
the winter full moon

8
In the window
of the A-bomb Dome
full moon

9
Hiroshima Day―
I believe there must be bones
under the paved street

10
O cherry views !
never forget where you are
A-bomb blast center

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Hiroshima Day ~
in my heart, I release
a thousand cranes

Karma Tenzing Wangchuk
Bodhisattva Institute
Tucson, Arizona USA

How to Fold an Origami Crane:
Folding a paper crane is like making peace -- some of the steps are awkward. At first it may seem impossible. There is definitely more than one route.Patience and consultation are helpful. And the result, big or small, is a thing of beauty.
Send your crane to Hiroshima !


http://www.sadako.com/howtofold.html

Gary Gach

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Hiroshima Gedenktag
Der Klang der Glocke
ueber der Stadt

Hiroshima Day -
the sound of the bell
over the town

Udo Wenzel

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Hiroshima
feeding chickens
59 years later

Clifford “Kawazu”

(quoted with permission from WHCworkshop)

This Hiroshima ku is even more thought-provoking if you know that in Japan lately we get frequent warnings and threats about Chicken being raised in Thailand and other Asian countries, sold as food in Japan,　but whith the strong doubt of having the bird flu to spread around with them!

Gabi Greve, 2004.

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Hiroshima-ki
kane ga naru wa
naru wa naru wa

Hiroshima Memorial Day -
the bell tolls and tolls
and tolls

Hiroshima Gedenktag -
die Glocke laeutet und laeutet
und laeutet

Gabi Greve, 2004

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Hiroshima Fragments

mushroom clouds -
little sister tries to carry
limp young brother

river bank -
where bodies landed
eerie silence

streetcars melted -
journey back to
primal man

young students -
their skeletal remains,
final lesson

summer rain,
a stray dog searching
for his master

radiant sky,
where was the Buddha
when it happened?

over 1000 cranes
enfold the memory of
Sadako's short life*

her golden crane*
polished by children
each year

leaving Hiroshima -
Iost my way, endlessly
ask for direction

finding refuge -
lotus blossoms arising
out of mud

* Sadako Sasaki
was only two years old and lived near Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima lived near Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. At the age of eleven she became very ill and thereafter died from radiation illness (leukemia). While in the hospital, she folded 1300 origami cranes, hoping that the gods would grant not only her wish to get well but to end all such suffering, to bring peace and healing to all victims of war. -- In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

Joachim Seckel, August 2006

See also the LINK given above about Sadako.

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August Six -
can we ever stop the
forces of war ?

Gabi Greve
Introducing Okamoto Taro and his "Myth of Tomorrow"


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Related words

***** Nagasaki-ki, Nagasaki no hi,
Nagasaki Memorial Day, August 9
長崎忌

Nagasaki Oshima Junior High 3rd year Students

Peace & Anti-Nuclear Haiku Poems in 1998

Destroy or dissapear
Everything, in an instant
Give me back my father and mother !

Hisako Nakagama
http://www.yoni.com/maidenf/peacehaiku.shtml


Cherry blossoms fall
Autumn breezes WHAT'S THAT LIGHT?
OH MY GOD MY *EYES* !!!!

Andrew
http://flail.com/haiku.html


The Nagasaki atom bomb 7 high war damage student mourning tombstone　



There is this tombstone in the swan park which neighbors about 1.5 kilo meters of the northwest, a western city small school and a Nagasaki incarceration branch office from the atom bomb fall spot.
http://base.mng.nias.ac.jp/k18/nanakou.E.html

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***** Peace and War as Haiku Topics


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