Of anniversaries and humanity

At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

 

77 years ago today, an atomic bomb was dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  Tens of thousands of people were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.  Civilians also constituted the majority of people killed by a second atomic bomb dropped over another Japanese city -- that of Nagasaki, over in Kyushu.  

 

Post visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the latter when I was just 14 years of age) and visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, I came away wishing that nuclear bombs will never be dropped on any other city on this earth.  And this despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki having managed, against all odds, to revive after those bombings and actually become pretty lovely cities -- with Hiroshima actually being a city that's become one of my favorite cities to visit in Japan (not least because of its great food and encounters I've had with lovely people there). 

 

Yesterday was a more personal anniversary for me: with it being three years to the day that I ceased to be a tear gas virgin.  I know it totally doesn't compare to experiencing a nuclear disaster but it's also true that, as memories of inhaling tear gas came flooding back yesterday, I actually felt rather traumatised -- and consequently was in low spirits for much of the day.  

 

Fortunately, after a nice dinner (at a member of the Yellow Economic Circle) with two friends, my spirits were revived.  It also helped to see (on Twitter -- see here, here and here -- the last (batch) retweeted by their creator) that other people were remembering what happened in Hong Kong on August 5th, 2019.  

 

At a time when there are people who clearly want Hong Kong to become part of the People's Republic of Amnesia, it's good and reassuring to know that there are indeed a number of others who feel the following: "No amount of "telling the story well" is going to make those of us who were there forget what happened. And a lot of us were there. And a lot of us are still here."  In other words: resistance remains alive in Hong Kong; with protest often hiding in plain sight.       

 

At the same time though, I totally "hear" Niao Collective over on Twitter with regards to the following lament: "I hope to see the day when stories about HKers won't need to contain the words * brave * creative * hopeful * resistance *..."; "I don't want us to have to be brave. I don't want us to have to be creative. I don't want us to have to cling on to hope. I don't want us to have to put up a resistance"; "[Hong Kongers] finding ways to survive in this new world - it's not some performance for "onlookers elsewhere". We're just doing it - at home or scattered through the world - because life has to go on. If you find inspiration, good? But we are not your hopepunk"; and "I wish that one day, we are all allowed to go back to just being very ordinary people."     

 

In response, a fellow Hong Konger Tweeted: "I wish we could go back to introducing HK with egg tarts and instead of -deep breath- “so, in 1839 Britain and China fought a war and China lost. There were just some fish villages in HK then…”"  And I must admit to wondering whether people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki feel similarly with regards to how their cities are viewed.  

 

Which might go some way to explaining why a number of Japanese people I met -- and in some cases am friends with -- often seem to perk up when I tell them that I've been to Hiroshima and really loved the okonomiyaki and oysters there.  (My visit to Nagasaki was so long ago that, alas, I don't have particularly vivid memories of that city's specialty foods.)  Put another way: sometimes, we like to be seen, and connect, as regular human beings, after all.  And all so often, the mutual love of food and a particular local cuisine has been a great connector!