Nagasaki Christmas Mass　Chants of A-bomb victims echo on Holy Night

Pray is possessed by a song, and the song is possessed by the pray, the holy night goes on. Hiroshi Shimomura (1904-1986)

This is a haiku introduced in “Kahoku Shimpo” of December 24, and Dr. Hiroshi Shimomura was a practitioner in Nagasaki who had devoted himself to the medical activities of the A-bomb survivors. According to the article, Mr. Shimomura had haiku poems about his anger and emotional scars, such as “Indelible anger, Indelible keloid, Atomic bomb anniversary.” For Christians in Nagasaki, the Christmas Mass would have been an opportunity to requiescat the victims of the atomic bomb. It seems that the participants of the Mass and the voiceless voices of the souls of the victims who already died are united in singing a chant, and it is also an opportunity to swear that the tragedy of the atomic bomb will not be repeated. The haiku at the beginning is a work in which songs and prayers overlap and the feelings for peace echo in layers.

American writer Susan Southard, who published “Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War” in 2016, contributed an article “Ground Zero Nagasaki” to TomDispatch.com on January 17^th, 2019. “Nagasaki” depicts the hardships of the five Nagasaki A-bomb survivors, including Sumiteru Taniguchi, whom Suzard had a close relationship with. Despite the attack on Pearl Harbor and Japan’s atrocities in China, the United States bombed 66 cities in Japan, killing 668,000 citizens, and by the end of 1945 in Nagasaki 74,000 with an atomic bomb, with only 150 were military personnel, and that this should now be called “terrorism.”

Many Americans are told in history lessons that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hastened the end of the war, but for no reason, it gained public support for the Cold War era nuclear arms race. With the government’s intention to do so, such a government claim has distracted Americans from what actually happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and is still a factor in supporting the nuclear arms race. Sotherd also warned that the Trump administration had announced its withdrawal from the medium-range nuclear abolition treaty with Russia and has a $ 1.6 trillion plan to modernize its nuclear weapons.

An American has closely observed and sympathized with the difficulties of the atomic bomb survivors in Nagasaki, appealed to the world, and voiced opposition to the US nuclear arms race. Should Japan, which was dropped a nuclear bomb, ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and respond to the prayers of the atomic bomb survivors?

“Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since “the rest of your life” won’t last forever.”
― Omar Khayyám