Reaching Beyond the Ashes–Message from the Children of Hiroshima

Several weeks ago, my husband David and I went with our friend Dr. Serrin Gantt to the Gaithersburg Arts Barn in the Kentlands neighborhood to watch a documentary “Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard.”  This extremely poignant documentary was about the relationship between the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Washington D.C. and a group of Japanese school children after the bombing of Hiroshima.  I highly recommend this documentary to all of you, and all the school children in the US, once it’s released.

In this documentary, the children of Hiroshima received school supplies as gifts from the wonderful pastor of the Church of All Souls and his congregation.  The outspoken pastor was devastated after the bombing and extended his act of kindness as a symbol of friendship and peace.  Later, the school children were asked by their teachers to use the school supplies given by members of the American church to draw whatever they wanted to draw.  Unknown to them, these children’s drawings and paintings were shipped to the Church of All Souls as a gift.  Sixty years later, the paintings (discovered in the attic of the church), after an elaborate process of restoration, were reunited with their painters, now older adults, by bringing them back to Hiroshima by the current pastor and some church members.  The documentary was elegantly and beautifully produced.  The former school children came to view the paintings, displayed as an exhibit in a memorial building for peace, and recognized almost immediately their individual painting or drawing and explained the subject of their artwork, what they had seen in their mind that was so beautifully and poignantly depicted in their paintings. 

It was very moving to see how, in the aftermath of Hiroshima, among the dead and the ruins, the surviving children could display the world they dreamed off in vibrant colors, with flowers and plants, happy scenes of children picking flowers, playing with each other.  One even had an imagined carousel, when there were no carousels in Japan in 1945!  There were no pictures of darkness, ashes, skeletons, dead children, or the shape of the atomic bomb exploding into a mushroom cloud.  Other viewers and I were shocked at how well adjusted these children were, whose parents and many relatives had all perished by the A-bomb.  They continued going to school, even when their school was only a “skeleton” of building with no windows.  Whenever it rained, they had to sit in the dry corner of the classroom.  There were not even enough chairs for the students, so some had to sit on logs resting in between two chairs.

The week after seeing the documentary, I read in the Washington Post how there had been 4 students from the elite college of William and Mary who killed themselves this year.  There were 8 students from this college who committed suicide since 2010.  The last student who killed himself was a bright and kind young man who was supposed to be in a school play two days after he killed himself.  Also recently, a graduate student from Brown University leaped from the library and fell to his death in mid-day, witnessed by many students who were passing by.  He was a brilliant science student who had received a full scholarship to Columbia University before going to Brown for a graduate degree.

Why did all these bright students kill themselves?  Obviously there was some stress factors, but what kind of stress would lead to such final act?

On April 28, to commemorate the 40th year anniversary of South Vietnam becoming communism, PBS showed Rory Kennedy’s incredible documentary “Last Days in Vietnam,” about the traumatic and often horrendous escape of many Vietnamese on April 29, before the communists marched into Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam.  My family was among those climbing to the American Embassy roof that night, into one of the last helicopters for the civilians, to begin our life as refugees.  Ms. Kennedy’s documentary showed the dramas so many of us Vietnamese had to face then, losing everything we had and living an uncertain future.  

PBS also released, on April 28, a collection of interviews conducted by the Vietnamese families escaping in 1975, in its “First Days Project.”  These stories, shared by family members about their first years in the United States, showed the hardships they endured in the new land. My interview with my 92 year-old father is among those chosen to be on the PBS First Days Story Project website.  I listened to others’ interviews and shuddered at some dramatic details of their first years here.  How was it that most of my Vietnamese friends and I, with such difficult and traumatic teenage years in the U.S., managed to thrive in that environment and survived our hardship so well?

How was it, that the school children of Hiroshima could paint such amazing pictures of a world no longer existing around them? How did these children survive emotionally when they had nothing left but their classrooms and a skeleton of a school?  How did they face their world alone? How did they become such well adjusted adults years later with normal lives, and without much bitterness? How did they see beyond the ashes?

I believe the endurance of the children of Hiroshima was result of their ability to see beyond their present moments.  They did not, similar to many young Vietnamese refugees in their first years in America, dwell on their sorrow.  An element of hope in their minds and hearts propelled them to survive day by day, not focusing on the ashes and ruins around them, but on a brighter future waiting down their paths.

These young survivors also did not focus on themselves.  They recognized internally somehow that they were part of a larger, more complex, canvas of life, of a broader human community.  This allowed them to avoid pitying themselves and, instead, to work on improving their community.  A sense of belonging gave them comfort that they were not alone struggling in hardship.  Instead, they wanted to participate in their community to alleviate their friends’, and their own, suffering, and in return, have a purpose for themselves.  Their existence had the purpose of building a better tomorrow for everyone. 

This “focus beyond ourselves” strategy played a big part on my survival in 1975.  I realized I had to be strong to help my parents recover from their enormous loss.  I realized I was not the only one who lost everything, but was a part of a community that lost everything and, therefore, had to play my part in rebuilding that community.   

As parents, maybe we should remind our children to look beyond difficult present moments to see a brighter tomorrow.  The perspective of each of us not being the center of our universe, in a sense, helps us recognize the graver problems in the community to which we, together with others, need to tend.  Self importance or self focus, at times, can drive us to a corner with no exit.