From HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI to You…. ヒロシマ,ナガサキからのお願い
I am a product of war.
I am a product of racism and white supremacy, Japanese imperialism, and global military corporate industrial complex. I am a product of love.
I am a product. Of people’s minds and hearts. It is not one or the other in any way. Living is complex. But people reduce things to ONE thing or another ONE THING.
The IMPERIAL ONE. I hope that we work to Decolonize, De-imperialize our minds.
Is this the only way people see? Do you see?
My mother was bombed by the Americans for nearly a year. Charred bodies, dreams, hopes. Destruction of a cultural self imagined. Towards the American century.
My mother’s sister perished in Hiroshima. My mother was supposed to go with her that day, but her sister went in place of her. And then……………the mushroom, the fire.
Then……….the looking and searching. The stench. The orange glow sky. The tears. The gaping gape, a darkness. Still here today in the minds and hearts of people who love to destroy and hate.
But until we can be smarter, stronger, more strategic, more concerned, have different worldviews, I offer a prayer.
Prayer:
I KEEP IN MIND, for myself, my mother, and all ancestors, that we seek understanding, thought, peace, connectedness returned and revisited and lived. BUT ALL THIS in CONTEXT OF THOSE WHO WRITE TO ME to tell me that THE ATOMIC BOMBS on JAPAN were NOT ENOUGH and that ALL JAPANESE should’ve been killed. I hear this from some VETS (usually white, black, or Latino), from some Koreans, Filipinos, Chinese), from some Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, White Australian and White Brits. SO WE LIVE CONNECTED to PASTS of HATRED alongside PASTS of HOPE. May we all Survive with Better Hearts, Intellects, and Strategies……….
Marshall Islands Nuclear Displacements – Al Jazeera Article: Invisible and Ignored Oppressions by the U.S.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the recipients of United Statian democracy with the Atomic Bombs dropped. Japan, like Korea would later, had almost all major cities destroyed in daily bombings on them in the great second world war. Now it was Hydrogen bombs. How large would the “democratic” United States build their destructive powers?
New PUBLISHING DATE for my Book
Well, as previously hinted, my book — Dream of the Water Children: Memory and Mourning in the Black Pacific 水子の夢 — will, once again, be a little late getting out. New target date for publication: Spring 2016.
Hiroshima Freedom
She perished.
死んだ女 の子
Dead Girl.
August 1945.
So in 2005, Ryuichi Sakamoto, famous composer-musician from Japan, translated the song, remembered widely by many Japanese as the powerful song sung by Roots singer Chitose Hajime, accompanied by Ryuichi Sakamoto, on Japanese national television in August 2005 on the grounds of the Peace Dome in Hiroshima, observing the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima by the US.
OUT NOW! New Book by Walter Hamilton!
Walter Hamilton has come out with his great book: Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.
KARTIKA REVIEW: my poem is published in Latest Issue!
One of the best Asian-American literary journals in the United States is The Kartika Review.
The Spring 2012 issue was just released, with my first published poem entitled: For Kiyoko, Epitaph/Chikai published in the issue.
It is a poem dedicated to my mother, who just passed away this past September.
