"Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
"Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.
Stories of Hiroshima Bombing–(2)
Historical Representation and
Identity Reconstructions
-- Different Online Reproductions
-- Joy Kogawa’s Obasan
Outline
A Footnote to Vietnam –a poem on Vietnam
“Recollection”
Online Representations of Hiroshima Bombing
Q&A
Obasan –
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General Intro
Issues of Race;
Repression of History
Trauma, Reconstructions & “Language”
For Next Time and References
A survivor’s vision: “Recollection” by Joan A
Furey
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An example of how the war has been seen from
different perspectives (women’s, Vietnamese’,
Vietnamese-Americans’)
The poem is a recollection of a woman whose lover
died in the V war as a soldier.
The first 6 stanzas presents a haunting vision. -can be compared with that of Sam in In Country,
and Naomi towards the end of Obasan
The last 3 stanzas — an ironic contrast between the
(lack of) purpose, sense of mission, reason on the
one hand, and the on-going presence in her mind of
the vision of his death.
Online Representations of
Hiroshima Bombing
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“Scientific” interest: Atomic Archive (example)
http://www.atomicarchive.com/mediamenu.shtml
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Medical Studies (of the effects of Atomic bombs)
http://www.hiroshima-cdas.or.jp/HICARE/abe.html
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For Anti-Nuclear weapon causes –e.g. No More
Nagasaki http://base.mng.nias.ac.jp/Nomore-e.html
(examples of the victims’ voices)
For Hiroshima victims from an Artist who’s not there at
the time (examples)
http://www.lclark.edu/~history/HIROSHIMA/intro.html
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THE HIROSHIMA DEBATE -- Was Harry Truman a War
Criminal? Was it necessary (example)
Fake Hiroshima; an Example of extreme videos
(http://fjt.todayisp.com:7751/bbs.txsm.cn/dispbbs.asp?b
oardID=100&ID=33876&page=1 )(http://media.ebaums
world.com/atomicbomb.wmv ) (example)
Different Online Reproductions
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From Atomic Digital Archive
Little Boy (left; dropped on H) Fat Man (right
dropped on N)
Examples of the victims’
voices
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Mr.Akio Sakita : Still today I receive regular
treatment as an outpatient at Nagasaki Atomic
Bomb Hospital. When my condition is poor I feel a
great weariness with life, but I have never given up
hope. In the face of every trial and every hardship, I
have found new incentives to continue living and
working.
The survivors continue to die today,finally released
from lives of untold suffering.We have suffered
enough.There must never be another Hiroshima or
another Nagasaki.
http://base.mng.nias.ac.jp/k1/saki.E.html
The Artist's Statement –begins
with a quotation from a book
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"In a cistern under a bridge were some mothers. One
mother held on her head a baby that was burned all over,
and another mother wept bitterly as her child suckled
her badly burned breast.
Children in the cistern cried out for their parents, holding
their heads above water and joining their hands in
prayer. Since they all were hurt, none could help the
other. Their hair was singed, and covered with white
dust. They scarcely looked like human beings.
Looking at these people, I could hardly imagine how I
must have looked. My hands were red with blood, with
skin hanging down. In my wounded flesh I saw black,
red, and white things appearing. I was alarmed and tried
to remove my handkerchief from my pocket. But there
was no handkerchief or pocket. The clothes below my
waist were burned away...." [From Genbaku no Ko
(Children of the Atomic Bombing), published in 1951 by
Iwanami Shoten, Publishers.]
Artist's Statement –end
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I have completed my work of
portraying Hiroshima, with this
collection of photographs. If anything
else remains for me to do about
Hiroshima, it would be for me to go on
honestly admitting my shameful
attitude as an artist as I continue to
gaze at Hiroshima.
The Hiroshima Debate -Necessary
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Revisionist:Gar Alperovitz's book “The Decision to
Use theAtomic Bomb, and the Architecture of an
American Myth Alperovitz: The real decision to use
the atomic bomb was the decision not to give the
Japanese another way to surrender. The documents
make it very clear that it was known they would never
surrender if we threatened their emperor-who was
more like Jesus or Buddha in their theology. The
demand for unconditional surrender was a threat to
their entire culture, their religion, and their politics, and
we knew it. (source)
Criticized by some other historians: Truman "acted for
the reason he said he did: to end a bloody war that
would have become far bloodier had invasion [of
Japan's home islands] proved necessary."
Fake Hiroshima argument
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Reasons: 1) impossible—the range of B-26; the three images
of the mushroom cloud –the same one; only three A-Bombs; a
lot of opponents; the victims—only regular burns, etc. etc,
Conclusion: “戰後不久，日本政府發現這了“兩顆原子彈”卻
有巨大的利用價值，可以掩蓋日本“害人國”的地位，突出其
“被害國”的地位，所以日本不願再懷疑那兩顆“原子彈”。
現在，每年的8月6日和9日，在日本廣島和長崎，都有紀念活動，
紀念從未有過的原子彈爆炸，在兩地還有紀念館，以突出日本
在歷史上的“被害”，但是卻從未反省自己對亞洲和世界各國
人民犯下的罪行。
歷史上就認可了美軍在日本本土投放原子彈的謊言。
歷史是公正的，今天，這段謊言被揭穿了。歷史雖然已經過去，
那么，我們在今天該說些什么 ”
Q&A
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What do you think about all these
representations? Which of them are to
be trusted?
Any other questions from the groups?
Joy Kogawa—
Biographical Sketch
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born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1935
relocated to Slocan and Coaldale,
Alberta during and after WWII
Selected Publications:
Obasan. 1983.
Woman in the Woods. 1985.
Naomi's Road. 1986.
Itsuka. 1993.
The Rain Ascends. 1995.
Awards for Obasan
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Books in Canada, First
Novel Award.
Canadian Authors
Association, Book of the
Year Award.
Periodical Distributors of
Canada, Best Paperback
Fiction Award.
Before Columbus
Foundation, The American
Book Award.
Joy Kogawa
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Obasan
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Itsuka: on the
redress movement
“itsuka, someday,
the time for
laughter will come."
Obasan background
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Racism against the Japanese during WWII;
Suspected as ‘Enemy Aliens”
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under surveillance before the Pearl Harbor
suspected, (clip 3)
relocation (clip 4) –dispersal of JapaneseCanadian family members -- men sent to road
camps in the interior of B.C., sugar beet projects
on the Prairies, POW camp in Ontario; women
and children to Hasting Park, etc.
Deportation (clip 5)
Obasan--Family Trees
Issei. Grandma Nakane
Arrive in Canada 1893;
~ 1945
Ayako
(Obasan)
Isamu
(Sam)
1891-
1889-1972
stillborn
Grandpa Nakane
Kato
~ 1942
Father
(Tadashi Mark)
Sansei:
Stephen
1933-
Mother
Nisei: Emily
1916-
Naomi
1936-
Ref. Chap 4; pp. 17-19; 20
Obasan: Three Topics for
Discussion
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From a postcolonial perspective: Wartime
Racism and its influence on Family and
Children
History: Different Views and the
consequences of its repression
Trauma and Reconstruction –a gradual
process of listening, imagination and
holding imaginary dialogue
Traumatic Moments in Naomi’s
Life
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1941—(episode of the white hen and chicks,
and of the Old Man Gower) Mother returned to
Japan (clue: p. 20 )
1941—Dec. Pearl Harbor
1942 – Moving to Slocan, BC
1945-- the bombing of Nagasaki
1950 – Father’s death
1951--moved to Granton, Alberta
(minor episodes: drowning, chicken killed by
school boys; kitten in an outhouse, nightmares,
etc.)
Stages of Reconstructions
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1954--the first visit to the coulee (p. 2;
斜壁峽谷); the grass treated as sea
waves
1972—August, last visit to the coulee;
Aunt Emily’s visit with a package of
documents and newspaper clips.
1972 – 9/13 narrative present --Uncle’s
death
Naomi’s Racial Identities and
her Aunts’
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Naomi--sansei--spinster, tense ([2] 7),
Obasan--issei—
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language of grief--silence ([3] 14);
ancient; accepting death;
live with the past ([3]11, 14-16; [5] 25-26 ),
Emily--nisei—
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energetic, visionary ([2] 8),
“word warrior” (32), “white blood cells” (34)
different from Obasan ([7] 32); from Uncle and
Naomi (35-36); /
Canadian identity--“This is my own, my native
land”
Naomi’s two Aunts
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How different my two aunts are. One [Emily]
lives in sound, the other[Obasan] in stone.
Obasan's language remains deeply
underground but Aunt Emily, . . . , is a word
warrior. She's a crusader, a little old greyhaired Mighty Mouse, a Bachelor of
Advanced Activists and General Practitioner
of Just Causes. (32)
 Two endings – one poetic reconciliation,
the other, a political document
Race: Naomi’s sense of her
“Japanese” family
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Intimate; beyond language
Mother--‘yasashi’ on the photo -- “Mother is
a fragile presence. Her face is oval as an
egg and delicate. She wears a collarless
straight-up-and-down dress and a long
string of pearls.” (19)
Momotaro (桃太郎) – behave with honor,
family’s love—a Canadian story.
 recollection – p. 242 – 43
Naomi’s experience of racism
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In the past – Old Man Gower’s sexual
harassment;
In the present – “Where are you from?”
An ice-breaker question that shows the
ice.
In childhood – expressed thru’ fairytales and animals she projects herself
to.
Naomi’s Responses
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Fails to understand (A riddle: end of Chap
12); fear Chap 13 (73);
Sense of guilt; Old Man Gower (end of Chap
11)
Nightmares– chaps 6; 11; 20; 22, 35
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As a grown-up: the three Oriental women; a
soldier with a beast commanding a couple to
work;
(end of chap 20)
Nightmare (chap 22)
“Tense” in the present
Children’s Responses (3): Naomi’s (2):
as a victim –identification with animals
In Slocan:
 Quiet (chap 21)
 Naomi as a victim,
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like a red insect chap 21,p. 140, 142
King
bird
little yellow chicken vs. white fairies chap 22
Her guilt over the deaths of little
chicken(chap 22); The kitten in the outhouse
(end of chap 22)
Naomi’s experience of racism –
expression thru’ fairy tales and of
fragmentation
e.g. Being harrassed by a white Canadian
old man (Old Man Gower);
”I am Snow White in the forest, unable to run.
He is the forest full of eyes and arms. . . . ”
 “In the center of my body is a rift.”
 Mother separated from her by the chasm.
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The Other Responses to the changes thru’
Fairy-Tales
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The house’s being taken: Goldilock vs. the little
bear; (chap 17)
Humpty Dumpty (chap 15) –fall into pieces;
Fragmentation & Survival:
Beginning of Chap 15 (leaving for Slocan )
“We are the hammers and chisels in the
hands of would be sculptors, battering the
spirit of the sleeping mountain. We are the
chips and sand, the fragments of fragments
that fly like arrows from the heart of the rock.
We are the silences that speak from stone.
We are the despised. . .
We are those pioneers who cleared the bush
and the forest with our hands, the gardeners
tending and attending the soil with our
tenderness . . .
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Three ways of dealing with
memories
 Obasan:
ancient woman who stays in
history
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be consumed,
 --can make use of the leftovers
 Emily:
“The past is the future” p. 42
 Naomi: “Crimes of history . . . Can
stay in history” p. 41
Identity and Repression of
History
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Aunt Emily to Naomi: "You have to
remember," Aunt Emily said. "You are
your history. If you cut any of it off
you're an amputee. Don't deny the
past. Remember everything. If you're
bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream!
Denial is gangrene." (49-50)
Trauma and Memory; Silence
and Speech
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How is trauma endured by grandmother and mother?
What are the functions of the two letters? How are
they read?
How does Noami respond to them?
What do you think of these imagery--the child with
the “double wound” (243) the letters as skeletons
and bones of the past (38: 243)?
Why does Kogawa end the novel with an
official document?
Grandmother’s letter
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A contrast between family togetherness and the
deaths afterwards in Tokyo and Nagasaki.
The moment of bombing –taken with
incomprehension; fell into what seems like a dream.
Never mentions her own wound;
Cannot help the others but only the two children;
The Mother – burning a dead child’s body while she
herself is naked.
No return address.
Letters –as release
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--for Grandma Kato--“however much the effort to
forget, there is no forgetfulness” (281)--release the
burden of memory with writing (283)--the reader as
burden sharer
Prefaced with “Everybody someday dies” (231)
(232-33)-- for the relatives and pastor (Sensei): read
with care many times, keeping them from the
children (“for the sake of children”)
The letters –beginning of silent
communication for Naomi
The novel’s preface on silence -There is a silence that cannot speak.
There is a silence that will not speak.
Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and
beneath the dreams is a sensate sea. The
speech that frees comes forth from that
amniotic deep. To attend its voice, I can
hear it say, is to embrace its absence. But I
fail the task. The word is stone.
I admit it.
(sensate: related to senses; amniotic – 羊水)
The novel’s preface on silence
(2)
I hate the stillness. I hate the stone. I hate the sealed
vault with its cold icon. I hate the staring into the
night. The questions thinning into space. The sky
swallowing the echoes.
Unless the stone bursts with telling, unless the seed
flowers with speech, there is in my life no living word.
The sound I hear is only sound. White sound. Words,
when they fall, are pockmarks on the earth. They
are hailstones seeking an underground stream.
If I could follow the stream down and down to the
hidden voice, would I come at last to the freeing
word? I ask the night sky but the silence is steadfast.
There is no reply
Hailstone: 雹子
Naomi’s responses
A. Attentive – “What is it?”
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233 – the rain
239 – After the reading, her skin hungry for warmth, for flesh.
B. Listen to her mother – Sansei’s suggestion 
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240 --for Naomi--attending the voice of the voicelessness--an
eulogy of Mother
C. speak to mother (In chap 38)
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asserting her Canadian identity; 241
feeling her hardship and influence from Alberta – in a surreal
manner 241-42
D. Starts her search for ‘flesh’; for dormant blooms and
love– with the letters as bones
Naomi’s responses (2) –Active
Reconstruction of Love
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remembering--personal memorial service to
the dead (Mother, Father, Uncle--all the
“absences”)
re-membering last community 244 
Understanding Obasan and her love with
Uncle p. 245
But she still feels the ‘gentle’ touch of Grief
Direct address to her dead family; a
communion in the forest through ‘picking
berries’ with their help, and reading their
‘forest braille.’
Naomi’s responses (3) –Active
Reconstruction of Love
-- another act of constructing her
community
Visit the coulee in Aunt Emily’s coat;
To do what Uncle used to do;
To smell fragrance of her mother.
Silence– (1) a means of
communication in the family
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e.g. the mother’s response in Naomi’s
chicken episode;
Care taking in the family (chap 10)
 Naomi’s lack of resistance to Old Man
Gower;
 learns of danger only as “whispers and
frowns and too much gentleness” (13: 73)
father's illness, his coming back, and
departure 166, 171, 179
Silence– (2) for the sake of
children
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Obasan's silence
Live in stone (p. 32); turns to stone
(198)
Endurance chap 34 -- 224 (inviolate);
226;
 Trapped in her memory
Silence– (3) no more
inquisition
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mother's silence the avenues of
silence are the avenues of speech 228
==233
silence and forbearance of the atomic
bomb victims 236
 lost together in our silences 243
 silent communion with the dead:
unity and distance at the end 246-47
Official Document –
Aunt Emily’s
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write the vision Language and make it
plain
Her documents as “the mind’s meal”
(chap 27); her words – not made flesh,
not touch N in Alberta (end of chap 27)
Pushing Naomi to talk about “facts”
chap 27; pp. 183 -
Kogawa’s own experience
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1. 1960s -- Not asserting her Japanese
identity first: “I would see myself as
white. I wrote as a white person. I
wrote, in fact, in a male voice initially.
In that sense I was a mimic, I read and
I wrote what I read. ”
Kogawa’s own experience
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2. the writing of "Obasan"
“But even at that point, I was not thinking
particularly of writing about Japanese-Canadians,
I was simply writing out of my own life and
writing it in some of the way I wrote poetry. . . .
3. at the Archives, though, in Ottawa,
“ that's when I became aware of another voice
that I was not conscious of being within me-Muriel Kitagawa's voice. To me, it was a voice
from the outside, . . .. So Aunt Emily's voice
was always outside of me throughout the entire
writing of Obasan. “
Kogawa’s own experience
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4. after writing Obasan; writing Itsuka
”the Naomi character -- the way I used
to be--got more and more transformed,
and the Aunt Emily voice came out. I
found myself being more like Aunt
Emily. And I think in Itsuka I was much
more like Emily [though still writing in
Naomi’s perspective]. . .
A brief conclusion
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Trauma –
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not re-presentable; a wound that cries
only too late.
real survival means understanding and
action
Representation of Trauma –
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motivation and effects.
Next Time
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Different Views on and Representation
of Trauma
11”09”01 September 11
凌遲考 – by 陳界仁
Please finishes the article on
Hiroshima, mon amour.
Reference

Joy Kogawa Talks to Karlyn Koh: The
Heart-of-the-Matter Questions." The
Other Woman: Women of Colour in
Contemporary Canadian Literature. Ed.
Makeda Silvera. Toronto: Black
Women and Women of Colour P, 1995.
19-41.