More than 400 years ago when Hiroshima was founded  a camphor tree was planted in the middle of the city. Over the centuries its roots spread and were covered by buildings but they were never cut as the tree was regarded by the Japanese as sacred. When the atom bomb exploded in 1945 the trunk and limbs were destroyed but its heart stood firm and out of this heart wooden crosses were cut.

                In 1950 when the mayor of Hiroshima, Shinzo Hamai, travelled to Europe and the United States he carried with him these small crosses to present to the cities where he was hosted. One of those crosses is to be found today at the center of reconciliation in Caux, Switzerland which was his first destination.

                After the war Hamai, who was injured in the atomic blast, quickly set about relief activities, working for the reconstruction of his city which had been 90% levelled, and became in 1947 the first popularly elected mayor. That year the city held its first Peace Festival and Hamai read out the first Peace Declaration which has been worked on and read out annually every year since calling for the renunciation of nuclear weapons and a commitment to peace building. This year 60,000 people participated in the 60^th anniversary commemorations.

Mayor Hamai’s perspective has always been challenging. In 1952 when the present memorial was unveiled he said that he wanted everyone visiting and praying before the cenotaph ‘to take responsibility for the past evil by making an apology for it’.

Nearly fifty years ago  I saw for myself the inscription on the cenotaph which he had chosen  and was struck by the lack of blame. The mayor had resisted pressure to make the inscription an indictment of America for dropping the bomb. There have been attempts since to get the inscription changed and in August this year an ultranationalist who felt that it obscured American responsibility defaced the stone that lists the 230,000 victims of the bomb. But Hamai’s breadth of approach may be one reason for the universal response to Hiroshima as a peace city today. The inscription reads: Rest in peace. For we shall not make the same mistake again.

                I met Hamai in 1950 when he was part of a group of nearly seventy Japanese leaders who were invited to that Swiss centre. It included the member of parliament for Hiroshima and the mayor of Nagasaki as well as the governors of seven prefectures, business and trade union leaders and journalists. When they arrived the Japanese flag was flying – which was not permitted by the occupation authorities at home - and the representatives of the nations present welcomed them warmly. They learned from the French and Germans who were there together of how they were rebuilding their countries. The youngest member of parliament, Yasuhiro Nakasone, later to be prime minister, wrote to his hometown newspaper that the ‘ ice in Japanese hearts was melted’  by the international harmony they encountered. One Hiroshima trade union leader, Katsuji Nakajima, another victim of the atom bomb, told nearly a thousand people at Caux that removing his hatred was ‘an even greater spiritual shock than the physical shock I received at Hiroshima’

                On their way home members of parliament in the delegation spoke on the floor of the US Senate and of House of Representatives. Chojiro Kuriyama, a member of the Japanese parliament who represented the Japanese prime minister at Caux, told the Senators, ‘We are sincerely sorry for Japan’s big mistake. We broke almost a century-old friendship between the two countries.’

                US papers responded to this honesty. The  Saturday Evening Post commented, ‘The idea of a nation admitting that it could be mistaken has a refreshing impact. Perhaps even American could think up a few past occasions of which it could safely be said, “We certainly fouled things up that time’.” The New York Times editorialized, ‘The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among yesterday’s visitors. If they felt that they too had something to forgive they had achieved that miracle. For a moment one could see out of the present darkness into the years when all men may be brothers.’

                On the fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb the Japanese party was in Los Angeles and were invited by CBS to speak on a nationwide program along with the Governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles. Mayor Hamai thanked Americans for their material and moral support in the reconstruction of his city. ‘We people of Hiroshima,’ he said, ‘hold no bitterness towards anyone because we have realized this tragedy is naturally to be expected from war. The only thing we ask of the world is that everybody becomes aware of what happened in Hiroshima, how and why it happened, and exerts every effort to see it will not have to happen again in any other place.’

Articles Archive of Michael Henderson