Hiroshima in the Morning

Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

Publication Year: 2010

In June 2001 Rahna Reiko Rizzuto travels to Hiroshima to research and interview survivors of the atomic bomb, leaving her husband and two young sons in New York. Her work does not go well until September 11, when the survivors finally open up as they share Americans’ fears and relive their own trauma. But Rizzuto’s marriage is crumbling. On her own in Japan, she questions her role as a mother and wife and ultimately makes the painful decision to get a divorce and have the children live with her ex-husband.

Published by: The Feminist Press

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Title Page, Copyright Page

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pp. 1-6

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Prologue

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pp. 9-16

I can tell you the story but it won’t be true. It won’t be the facts as they happened exactly, each day, each footstep, each breath. Time elides, events shift; sometimes we shift them on purpose and forget that we did. Memory is just how we choose...

Part I If Hiroshima

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pp. 17-82

These are the things I packed: — Twelve blank notebooks (paper is more expensive in Japan, or so I am told); — Three hundred tablets of Motrin IB and a bottle of 240 of the world’s heaviest multivitamins; — Forty-eight AA batteries in case my tape recorder dies...

Part II In the Morning

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pp. 83-140

How simple to erase. It starts with a small, stubborn no, and Japan could be its birthplace: here, they have perfected the barely perceptible smile, the sliding maybe I’ve become so familiar with. If I’m making inroads now, if I’m gaining trust, I am...

Part III After the Bomb

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pp. 141-170

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 Time in Japan: 9:49 p.m. telephone transcript “Moshi, moshi . . . ” “Rei? It’s Ami. Am I calling too late?” “No. What’s up?” “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m fine, but I think something happened in New York. My father was watching TV and they said there was a plane crash . . . I’m not sure what happened.”...

Part IV Like a Dream

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pp. 171-244

I have been out. No longer inside, hiding; no longer whispering my worries in my head, voicing them to Brian who will not listen. I’ve been plucked off the ground—running from interview to interview to bar. If I’m not home, I don’t have to answer

Part V One Must Ask Whose?

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pp. 245-331

Golden hair, bowl-cut, and oddly pastel eyes. My two sons, in Crayola sweatshirts and baggy jeans to match their father, and their father himself—my husband—towering above even the few foreigners in the stream of passengers pouring out of...

OF THE DAYDAY JUST BEGINNING

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pp. 332-333

Acknowledgments

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pp. 334-336

E-ISBN-13: 9781558616684
Print-ISBN-13: 9781558616677

Page Count: 346
Publication Year: 2010