Japan will recover

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster bitterly ironic for Japanese people

Shortly after sunrise more than 20 years ago. while on an assignment in Japan, I stood in the shadows of the skeletal steel of the Genbaku Dome that towers over the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Koi stirred in the ponds that dot the park. Birds sang as the morning sun rose higher. Butterflies fluttered among the shrubs, trees and beautiful greenspaces – all creating a stark contrast to the still-charred remains of the dome, which was an industrial exposition building in the minutes before the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945.

The dome has been kept as the centerpiece for the park because it was the only thing standing after the bomb detonated.

A museum at the park is a horror show, meant as a reminder to everyone about the price of war.

I remember later chatting with the late Gen. Paul Tibbetts, during an air show at Monroe Custer Airport in 2001. He was the guy who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima from the Enola Gay, a B-29 named after his mom.

He explained that Hiroshima was chosen for this experimental weapon because it sits on a river delta, surrounded by mountains that would form a natural bowl to contain the effects of the blast and radiation.

It worked very well. About 75,000 people were wiped out.

Gen. Tibbetts told me he didn't regret dropping the bomb, figuring he saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives that would have been lost if the U.S. had opted for a land invasion instead.

His point is well taken. Regardless, while standing in the park on that quiet morning, I was overcome by melancholy, similar to the sadness that rolled over me like the fog on the spring night years later when I visited "The Wall" in Washington.

A sense of loss and wasted lives shrouds these places, not unlike the sense of loss and waste many feel for Japan today as the death toll estimates from earthquakes and tsunami edge over 20,000.

I learned much about Japanese culture while visiting the country and speaking with its citizens – ranging from company presidents, to elevator operators, to geishas and shopkeepers. One of the common themes, grounded in the Shinto religion, is that the Japanese try to live in harmony with nature.

Another thing I learned is that the Japanese strive to be self-sufficient, if not independent.

I learned, too, that the Japanese are organized, slavish to detail and highly industrious. Japanese business is well-orchestrated, if not regimented. Individuality isn't necessarily a virtue. In business, an old Japanese saying essentially is "the nail that sticks up, gets pounded down." Uniformity and predictability often are desired traits.

This was hammered home to me when a police officer waved vigorously and scolded me in Japanese for the crime of strolling outside the bounds of a crosswalk painted on a Tokyo street.

So the earthquake and tsumani that struck Japan recently not only have disordered a country so orderly that its cabbies wear white driving gloves, it has dealt the Japanese a dose of bitter irony.

This must shake the faith of many Japanese, including businesspeople who try to make their businesses and factories meld with nature in various ways, from the plumbing systems to the colors of the buildings.

Their philosophy of living in harmony with nature must have been jarred when Mother Nature suddenly became very unharmonious and very merciless.

In addition, the Japanese quest for independence led them to build nuclear plants, which they saw as a clean source of energy that would free them from importing oil from other nations.

Until the tsunami hit, Japan was getting 30 percent of the nation's electricity from nuclear and shooting for 50 percent. On the Japanese NHK network last week, they aired video from 1968 showing a Shinto priest blessing one of the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors during construction. Who could have predicted one of the worst earthquakes in human history would dash their plans and, in the process, raise the specter of nuclear horrors from their past?

But despite these bitter ironies, Japan will recover because its people are inventive and industrious. With help, they will clean up, rebuild and regenerate. They did it after World War II.

Therein lies the final irony: The Japanese disaster got bumped from the headlines by the attack on Libya, the start of the world's latest war.

You may reach Charles Slat by e-mail at ctslat@monroenews.com.

More like this story:

Read More »