Hi folks
I have just finished a workshop in Hiroshima. I wanted to share with you some
of the experience.
Beforehand, I paid the necessary visit to the Peace Museum. Every detail of the
history and background, the actuality of ground zero, and the aftermath was
there. I read every single line, looked at every single picture, every exhibit.
Many emotions going through me. It was essential to bear witness to something
absolutely intolerable. Mans’ inhumanity. The museum didn’t mince words about
the Japanese responsibility for the destructiveness of military expansionism,
the forced labour of Koreans and other brought to work in munitions factories.
It also laid out plainly, without any unnecessary drama, the role of the US. I
didn’t really fully get it before. But dropping the bomb was absolutely
unnecessary. Japan was already engaged in negotiations to surrender. The US did
not reveal the threat of the bomb, which in itself could have completely
changed everything. They just dropped it. They needed to justify the billions
of dollars spent. And even more cynically (if its possible), is that they
wanted to mark the territory, like a dog against a lampost, so the Soviets
wouldnt have designs on Japan. So they created mass suffering, just for this
purpose; and also, for a kind of evil scientific interest in ‘what would
happen’. For years after the war the Americans operated facilities where they
would regularly examine victims of the blast, suffering radiation sickness, but
not treat them. Examine but not treat - that seems as bad as Mengele to me.
Then the workshop; on the second day, a woman brought the issue of ‘sorry for
being me’
Her setup of the constellation was very strange. I have never seen anything
like it. The mother and father were next to each other, facing the same
direction. Then her brother was on one side, and she was on the other, a little
further away, facing in, so it looked like a U-shape, with lots of space. Like
a quadrangle.
Her grandmother was affected by the Nagasaki bomb, and died some years later of
cancer. She had shards of glass in her body, from the blast.
So I got the client to add all the grandparents. They were also arranged in
this odd manner. I commented it looked like spectators lining the streets, with
the mother and father facing forward.
It seemed clear the mother and father were facing the war, so I put a rep for
war at the front. Now it was a rectangle. It was still very odd - so much space.
Then I remembered the pictures from the museum, of what the city looked like
after the atomic blast. Completely cleared. Nothing left. Just a big space.
This space reminded me of that space - like a hole in the middle of everything.
So next, I placed victims on the ground in that space. The mother wanted to
join the victims, and lay down. The grandmother turned away. The client wanted
to move to the position where war was, so I put war into the middle of the
atomic blast space.
Now the client became aware of her choice - to be sorry for being alive, and
identify with her mother and the victims, to turn away as her grandmother had
done - because it was too much to hold. Or to be in the leadership position,
and bear witness to the pain and suffering and horror, and hold onto herself. A
rep for life stood behind her, and supported her. I have tears as I write this,
and of course, everyone present was deeply moved. There were many people at the
workshop who were local to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who had therefore family
connections to what occurred.
I appreciate so deeply this work, the capacity to broach these huge social
issues, in a way which can bring healing. And for the people who come, willing
to open up their stories, willing to do the healing work.
Vinay
