Hiroshima (20 page)

Films were changing to Cinemascope. When I saw the first one,
The Robe
, I was overwhelmed by the huge screen and the stereophonic sound—the voices of characters not yet visible on the screen materializing out of the background, the sounds of the special effects. In Japanese film, Kurosawa Akira's
Seven Samurai
was released, all of three-and-a-half hours long, and I was lost in admiration of its tremendous force.
[6]
I tried for all I was worth to see whether I could duplicate that film's impact in manga. Even when exhausted from hard work at the sign maker's, I raced home at the end of work and immersed myself till nearly 1:00 A.M. drawing manga. In winter I lit the charcoal fire, put the charcoal heater under my desk, and warmed my freezing hands and feet.

With my first month's 4,000 yen, I bought the bananas I'd always longed to eat, brought them home, and ate them with Mom. Mom ate happily: “Delicious, delicious!” Watching her as she ate them delighted me. With all of us working, things got easier at home. Mom's laughter echoed through the house.

Saying he wanted to learn business in earnest, Akira left home and went off to Osaka. Had Dad lived, Akira surely would never have become a tradesman. Because Dad hated business: “Merchants are the filthiest of all!” Time and again, he stressed that the war had come about because merchants of death profited from the sale of weapons. For Akira, son of that father, to become a merchant was an ironic turn of fortune. Our family shrank to the three of us—Mom, K
o
¯
ji, and me.

Hiroshima continued to develop rapidly, and at night the voices of the prostitutes in the red-light district echoed in the night air. An industrial exposition was held at Peace Park, and I went to the site to paint signs and work on construction. Day after day in Peace Park, tourist buses were parked. From their windows, soda and beer bottles came plopping down, and the buses disgorged herds of U.S. soldiers. They gathered in front of the atomic cenotaph and, raising loud voices, kicked up a row. It made me sick. They wrote graffiti on the walls of the Atomic Bomb Dome—“Remember Pearl Harbor!” My bile rose at the attitude of the swaggering victors.

Day after day American soldiers came for “atomic tourism” from the U.S. bases at Iwakuni and Kure, and atomic orphans sold them the skulls of bomb victims as mementos. I witnessed that many times near the Dome. But I couldn't blame the orphans struggling to survive. They even stole the countless weather-beaten skulls that had been collected by residents in the burned-out waste and placed in a grave for those with no survivors. They extracted the gold teeth and traded the gold for cash. On the surface, Hiroshima was being swaddled in beautiful clothing, but beneath the surface, the ugly struggle for survival went on.

On August 6 each year the peace ceremony on atomic bomb day begins, and each year more people crowd in from other prefectures and make a great to-do. But Mom, K
o
¯
ji, and I never once took part in the ceremony at the cenotaph in Peace Park. Our first feeling was this: “The very idea! That the suffering and anger and sadness of the atomic hell will be laid to rest by so barefaced a ceremony!” We had no desire to attend. Mom would go early that morning to the Nakazawa family grave, and by the bombing hour, 8:15 A.M., she'd have started her all-too-demanding physical labor. She wanted to forget the atomic horror, if only for a moment.

I too had no desire to recall the atomic hell and immersed myself at work painting signs. At 8:15 the sirens would ring out across the city. I even got angry at the sirens that willy-nilly brought back memories of that day. But I think it's better to hold the annual ceremony than not—as a sign of opposition to war, opposition to nuclear weapons. If it ever became impossible to hold it, then Japan's peace constitution would be doomed. I look to the atomic bomb ceremony as a barometer of the state of peace.

I spent my days working on signs, my nights working on manga,
and on Sundays I'd make the rounds of the three theaters that showed triple features. That life continued, and I learned to drink and smoke. In the full flush of vigor at seventeen and eighteen, I fought with thugs on the busy streets of Hatch
o
¯
bori and Yagenbori and—perhaps because I was a contrary sort of guy—was quick to fight; in clashes with my fellow artisans, I sent other guys flying and injured them seriously, and at work sites I sometimes went wild with my long-handled shovel.

But even then I didn't abandon my goal of drawing manga. The days continued: I'd buy up the manga magazines published each month, study the artwork or clever layout of each artist, and be amazed—“How did that artist get this clever?” I'd tear up and chuck my own immature work and think about giving up—“I've got no talent!” Mom didn't want me to be a cartoonist. In Dad's life as artist, she'd had more than enough of the impoverished artist's life, and she worried that I was entering a world of the same poverty and hardship. She consulted Uncle H. about how to make me give up manga. When I was absorbed in drawing manga, she'd frequently say, “Please stop!” Disputes arose between us.

Then a sixteen-page manga I'd drawn and submitted to
Fun Book
was named a winner, and my cover page was published as an illustration. I was deliriously happy. A registered letter came with the prize of 1,000 yen inside, and I checked my name on the envelope many times over. Wanting to use my first-ever payment to buy a memento that I'd have forever, I bought a ceramic palette and a water jar. I still use that palette and that water jar today.

My
Fun Book
success swept away my discontent and reignited my dream of becoming a manga artist, a dream that had seemed on the point of shattering. I immersed myself again in manga. The world of manga magazines saw a succession of big hits. I burned with ambition: “I'll show them! I'll soon draw a hit just as big!”

Decline

Mom had long complained of not being her usual self, and now her physical condition grew markedly worse. She had severe headaches, the ringing in her ears continued, and her blood pressure rose. She watched her health, switching to a vegetarian diet, but went often to the clinic, complaining of aches and pains. No matter how bad she felt, Mom liked work and didn't take time off. The doctor at the clinic to which she went advised her strongly to go and get checked at the ABCC on Hijiyama. He kept at her: “The ABCC has the latest equipment; you'll obtain good treatment there. I'll refer you. Go soon and have them check you out.” So reluctantly—“I'll try the ABCC”—Mom went.

When she got back, I asked her about the ABCC. She told me in great detail. She was made to strip to the skin, draped in a doubled sheet with an opening in the middle for her head, and with the sheet hanging down fore and aft made the rounds of the exam rooms. A lot of blood was drawn, and she was examined from head to toe. Looking upset, she said, “I took offense when they went so far as to examine my uterus.” On leaving, she was given no medicine at all, nor did they say they'd tell her the findings later. Mom grumbled, “Why ever did I go? The ABCC has no respect for us!” It angered her to see her name on the file as “specimen name.” “The idea! I'm no guinea pig. I'll never go back!”

Years later, I boiled inside all over again when I read internal accounts by ABCC staff. Hiroshima doctors knew that in return for sending bomb victims to the ABCC to have their data recorded, they'd receive honoraria and new medicines developed in the United States. I wanted to thrash the doctor who sent Mom to the ABCC. Moreover, I trembled with anger at the doctors, those inexcusable fools, who opposed the ABCC treating bomb victims for free because their own business would suffer. They turned bomb victims into fodder for their own profit.
[7]

Unease about the effects of radiation grew year by year among surviving bomb victims. The numbers of sudden-onset leukemia victims increased sharply before finally subsiding, but then the number of cancer patients increased rapidly. Articles reported, “Atomic aftereffects are systemic!” When we read them, Mom and I both thought dark thoughts and were assailed by intolerable unease: we wondered when the effects of radioactivity would show up in our own bodies.

What relieved that unease a bit for me was the Hiroshima Carp, the baseball team, organized in January 1950 in the atomic ruins. It was a weak team that vied each year for last place, but there was a sense that Hiroshima residents had created the team. If they won, our victory sake tasted delicious; if they lost, we drowned our sorrows, and the sake tasted ordinary. The Carp was one aid to the psychological rebirth of residents beaten down by the atomic bombing. When the team couldn't pay the players' salaries, and it looked as if the team would go defunct, Hiroshima residents responded to the appeal to save the team, tossed their five or ten yen into the large barrels at the entrance to the ballpark, narrowly averting financial disaster. That was the context of Hiroshima residents' avid support for the Carp.

In 1957 Hiroshima Baseball Stadium was completed near the atomic dome. My sign painting, too, had made good progress, and I went any number of times to paint billboards in the park. At night I was an avid Carp fan.

That year “atomic bomb IDs” were distributed to bomb victims. We were told it was best to apply for one, that if you went to the hospital with your ID in hand, you'd get better treatment. So with mixed feelings, Mom, K
o
¯
ji, and I accepted the IDs from city hall. We stared at the document with distaste, thinking that if we had to use the ID, it'd be because we were dying.

K
o
¯
ji married, and our house was sparkling and bright. The neighbors congratulated Mom—“You can stop worrying now!” She answered happily, “Not yet. I've still got two more to go, so I can't relax yet.”

Mom was a straight shooter, a modern woman, and she was popular with the young women at work. But perhaps her words sounded pointed to K
o
¯
ji's wife, and dissension grew between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. K
o
¯
ji and his wife built their own house and moved out.

Fearing I might cause trouble in K
o
¯
ji's life as a newlywed, I'd thought of renting an apartment and moving out, but Mom had opposed that. She didn't want to part with me. The household became just the two of us, Mom and me. It pained me to see Mom, back bent, stooped from working constantly, leaving for work at the company.

Wanting to show gratitude to Mom, I said, “If I get a bonus, I'll take you to Osaka and Kyoto!” Mom smiled, “I'll wait—but will the day ever come?” I used all of that summer's bonus to keep my promise to Mom. We left Hiroshima Station with the further aim of learning how things were going with Akira, in business in Osaka. Mom said, “I've never been so far in my life.” And on the train she was in good spirits. At the station in Osaka we met Akira and toured the variety shows, and Mom held her stomach laughing at the comic monologues. After spending half a day walking about Osaka's theater district, we took our leave of Akira. That night we stayed in a cheap hotel near Kyoto Station. Mom exclaimed repeatedly, “What a lovely time!” and at supper the two of us drank beer.

Perhaps it was the beer: complaints about the hard times after the atomic bomb spilled from Mom's mouth. Virtually every day the voices of Susumu and Dad resounded in her ears; they'd been pinned and died crying, “Mommy! I'm hot!” and “Kimiyo, can't you do something?” When she slept, the voices inside her head awoke; she blamed herself, and the tears flowed, unbearably. I grew heavyhearted and shouted, “Don't rehash the past!” Then thinking again, I said, “We'd be better off if we could simply forget that tragic past! As long as we live, we'll never get away from that horrible past!” Mom smiled bitterly at my scolding. That night as we slept side by side, Mom had nightmares. I fell asleep with the gloomy thought that once again she was seeing Dad and Susumu in her dreams.

The next day we toured Kyoto on a sightseeing bus. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion had only just been rebuilt after the arson, and the gold leaf newly covering it glittered garishly and spoiled the impression.
[8]
In front of the Chionin, the entire tour group took a formal souvenir photograph, and we returned to Hiroshima. They mailed the photo to us, and any number of times Mom gazed at it, repeating, “That was fun! I really enjoyed it!” I was a bit self-conscious: I might have faked some of that filial piety.

1954. In the waters off Bikini, the
Lucky Dragon #5
was bathed in the death ash of the hydrogen bomb test, one crew member died from the radiation, and terror of radiation gripped the nation.
[9]
Voices of opposition to nuclear weapons spread, but the number of U.S. and Soviet nuclear tests only increased; I was stunned. In desperation, I thought, “I wish both the United States and the Soviet Union would get their fill of atomic warfare and learn how fearsome atomic bombs are. Die in an atomic blast, why don't you? Then I'd have a big laugh—‘Serves you right!'” The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no avail. I boiled in anger at the foolishness of human beings avid to develop nuclear weapons.

1959. Akira came back from Osaka, and our household grew to three. In winter around the space heater, we talked of our lives. I spoke of my dream: “My talent's as good as gold! With my talent, I'll draw a major hit, earn a bundle, and travel around the world!” I said I'd take Mom along. Listening to me, Mom smiled. Akira made fun of me: “What a lot of hot air!”