Bearing Witness to the Unbearable: The Bombing of Hiroshima as Treated in Selected Children's Books

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are events from which we are still recovering. Those who experienced the bombing of Hiroshima reacted in many different ways. Some became selfish or suicidal, while others were genuinely heroic. Many who survived the initial attack fell victim to radiation sickness or were haunted by guilt long after the dead had found peace. As we read accounts of the bombing and its aftermath we feel anger, horror, and compassion. How do we teach our children about the bombing of Hiroshima? Can the nonviolent protect themselves against aggression without resorting to violence? Can we protect our rights without sacrificing human lives? What is the best way to promote peace?

The type of narrative a writer chooses to recount the bombing of Hiroshima reflects that individual's fundamental assumptions about how we gain and maintain control over our lives. The achievement of such control is the goal of all mentally healthy human beings. But the existence of nuclear weapons and pessimism concerning their eventual use have historically engendered "feelings of helplessness" in American adolescents, a "loss of confidence in the political process," "alienation from the adult world that would subject [young people] to the threat of annihilation" and "a general turning inward" (Schirmer 5). Yet, as Roni Natov observes in her essay on "The Truth of Ordinary Lives," given the circumstances of modern life, we must exert ourselves to give children hope (113).

With some such intention Martin McPhillips has given us a rationalization of the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan in his book Hiroshima, which is intended for sixth graders. The book is an affirmation of politics as a decision-making process in which rational leaders arrive at realistic choices in response to material facts and conditions which can be evaluated by anyone. The book expresses compassion for the Japanese victims of the bomb while demonstrating the necessity for its use:

As Secretary of War, however, Stimson had also read the casualty reports, and he knew the tenacious character of the Japanese militarists. . . . The defeat of Japan by way of an invasion would mean massive destruction. The casualties on both sides, including hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, would be enormous.

(33)

McPhillips acknowledges that there were other factors behind President Truman's decision. By ending the war quickly, Truman avoided having to ask Stalin for assistance, for which he would have had to make political concessions. Also, the Japanese had been presented to the American public as brutal savages (a stereotype that John Hersey clearly set out to correct in his account of the bombing). McPhillips admits that "some saw the bomb as a crime against humanity" (49). But Hiroshima demonstrates the force of the political process as a means of gaining control over the irrational behavior of other nations. (It also illustrates Max Weber's dictum that politics is not a vocation for saints.)

The problem with this kind of apologia is that those who suffered most, the civilian populations of Europe and Asia, among them the women and children depicted in three of the books under discussion here, did not take part in the decision-making process. What would Jonathan Swift have made of the fact that the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the atomic bomb, was named for the pilot's mother?

Toshi Maruki adopts a very different approach in her Hiroshima No Pika. In this picture book the author-illustrator recounts the experiences of one family on the day of the bombing. A woman struggles to rescue her husband and seven-year-old daughter as she fights her own terror and flees the firestorms that engulfed Hiroshima shortly after the bomb was dropped. She succumbs to exhaustion, can find neither refuge nor assistance and, although she survives the attack, is ultimately defeated. Her husband dies within a few days of radiation sickness. Her daughter remains physically and mentally stunted for the rest of her life.

The illustrations have an apocalyptic sweep, recalling Northern Renaissance portrayals of Hell and also of the Last Days. There...