Stories of Hiroshima Bombing (1945)

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Stories of Hiroshima Bombing (1945)
"Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. "Fat Man" --dropped
on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.

• Summer Flower 1947
• Human Ashes 1966
• Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

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Hiroshima literature

• First generation witness account or realistic
  descriptions of the victims
• second- generation survivors with a broader
  perspective, acknowledge clearly that Japan and
  the Japanese were partly to blame (as aggressors
  in the Pacific War, and also their invasion of
  China).

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First Reactions

• First experience of the bombing in the three
  stories p. 38 p. 68-69
• lack of understanding, puzzled at not seeing
  holes 42 helpless
• losing contact with the surrounding, numbness p.
  73 helping, or being selfish
• Gaps in memory (it meeting the teachers
  wife), non-verbal memories
• First reactions
• Disgust at injuries 41 45 71
• Wandering or escaping to the river

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Hara Tamiki (1905-1951)

• An English major familiar with Russian lit,
  wrote poems himself, too.
• Summer Flower in 1947
• The Land of Heart's Desire in 1951.
• -- A suicide note in the form of an account of
  troubled dreams recalling memories of the
  Hiroshima bombing.
• -- The author committed suicide in 1951, when
  there were rumors about the use of A-Bomb in the
  Korean war.

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Summer Flower

• A straightforward account of scenes witnessed by
  the author after the bomb was dropped on
  Hiroshima. The story begins with the narrator
  visiting the graves of his wife and parents three
  days earlier, and concludes with a friend
  searching for his wife's remains mingled with the
  bones of her pupils in the ruins of the girls'
  school where she taught. He says that the ruins
  of his house reminded him of The Fall of the
  House of Usher. The author, who published this
  narrative in 1947, committed suicide in 1951.

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Summer Flower Verbal Construction of
non-verbal memories

• Irony the wifes grave, flower and
  incense?Fumihiko 51 Ns experience 53-54
• Central Pattern searching (to satisfy basic
  needs) and meeting the injured among broken
  pieces and corpses.
• Dominant images
• the tree 40 memory of childhood
  p47?voices(46-47) and corpses 51 (haunting
  rhythm)

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Katsuzo Oda Human Ashes (1969)

• a boys experience of displacement and his
  adolescent desires 64
• avoiding his aunt, 64 looking for the aunt 79,
  seeing the teachers wife 82

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Human Ashes (1969)

• Compared with Summer Flower, does the narrator
  of this story show greater distance from, or
  better understanding of, the event?
• Why does the story take a diary form? Do you see
  other literary techniques here?

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Human Ashes (1969)

• Other Ironies
• Respect for soldiers/authorities and even
  kamikaze (?????) Death of the figures of
  authorities
• the role of the military 64 a soldier in
  uniform 65-66
• ? Dragonfly 69 the lieutenant 71 the student
  73 Ichikawa? P. 72
• People losing their mind (72 74)
• People unable to help each other p. 74 violent
  when it gets to getting food (crackers) ?
• Order and calm only apparent p. 76
• nightmare of childhood
• Ash-Covered bodies with oil and sweat, streams of
  blood (76) ?Human ashes

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Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

• What is the film about?
• -- The atomic destruction of Hiroshima and the
  psychological consequences of World War II?

Director Alain Resnais  ScriptMarguerite
Duras Actors Emmanuelle Riva   Eiji
Okada
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General Introduction Background

• 1959 the beginning of French New Wave also
  the year when Godard's Breathless, Truffaut's The
  400 Blows were released.
• Resnais By 1959 Resnais had produced a lot of
  documentaries e.g. 1955 Night and Fog, which
  Godard has called a documentary on the memory of
  Auschwitz.
• After seeing the documentaries already produced
  on Hiroshima, Resnais changed his mind, asking
  Duras to write the script for him.

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General Introduction Impossibility of Historic
representation

• Reenacting the pain and horror of such events
  cannot be portrayed in a documentary manner
• such representation is possible only if it is
  mediated through human experiences of love and
  death.
• Plot -- the sexual tryst between the French
  actress, who is married, and her Japanese lover,
  an architect who is also married,

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General Introduction Structure and Plot

• But the story goes deeper as they dig up her
  past, and they have a mutual recognition.
• five panels (not labeled, as such in the film
  itself) Prologue, Night and Morning, Day, The
  Café by the River, and Epilogue.

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General Introduction Structure and Plot (2)

• five panels (not labeled, as such in the film
  itself) Prologue, Night and Morning, Day, The
  Café by the River, and Epilogue.

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Starting Questions

• What does the beginning shots of the film mean?
  And the opening sequence?
• "You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing," "I saw
  everything.... Every thing." What does she see?

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Remembering and Seeing

• Bodily memory, or enactment of ones memory.
  (bodies in sex bodies covered by atomic ashes)
• Opposed to the visualization of memories
  museum, park, newsreel, and a film about "peace."
  

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What she sees

• Hospital with patients averting their faces,
  documentaries, Hiroshima park and museum

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Hiroshima at the present time

• The film and the parade

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Lui (Him) and Elle (Her)

• Both traumatized
• I was never younger than I was in Nevers.

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Forgetting the past
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Torn between the Past, the Present and future
forgetfulness
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Saying Goodbye to both the Past or the present?

• Walking thru Hiroshima, with flashbacks of
  Nevers.
• Elle I consigned you to oblivion.
• Lui Were sad about leaving each other

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Self-Othering

• Casablanca

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The ending

• What does it mean to call each other by the name
  of their cities?

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For next week Obasan

• A story about the Japanese experience of WWII,
  both in Canada and in Japan. (Three generations,
  Issei, Nisei, Sansei.)
• Protagonist, Naomi Stephen (3rd), separated
  from her mother before the war against Japan
  started experience two fold relocation (from
  Vancouver to Slocan to Alberta)
• lives with their uncle and aunt (Obasan),
  visited by another aunt (Nisei)
• The present Naomi a timid and unsocialable
  school teacher.
• The uncles yearly ritual on 8/9 (? 1951 the
  bombing of Nagasaki)

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For next week Obasan (2)

• The death of the uncle brings Naomi back to
  Obasans house, the question about the mother
  arises again.
• Aunt Emilys package ? Naomi starts to remember
  the past
• The present moment Obasans package (with the
  grandmothers letter)

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Our focus the mothers silence and final
communication

• the avenues of silence are the avenues of speech
  228 233
• There is a silence that cannot speak there is a
  silence that will not speak.