I was interested in the anniversary today because we have some family history connected to this bleak event. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki 70 years ago, my grandfather was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp about 10km away. He was a captain in the merchant navy and their ship had been sunk by German U-boats. The Germans handed him and his crew over to the Japanese. Which was probably far worse for them than being in a Geman camp.
My father told me that there was one guard there who was kind to them and tried his best to look after the prisoners. Years later my grandfather went back to Japan and saw him again. We have some beautiful objects collected from Japan from some of his voyages. I think there was a collection of netsuke but they were misplaced or sold at some point in time.
My father and grandfather didn't get to meet until my father was 4 years old as he had been conceived just before my grandfather left for sea so was born while my he was imprisoned. My grandmother thought he was dead for those years. My fathers first sight of his father was of a complete stranger who has just returned from the most dire conditions, you can probably imagine what he looked like after years of near starvation. I imagine it was very scary for my father and very confusing for my grandfather who didn't even know that he had a son.
Sadly I never got to meet those grandparents as they both died a few years before I was born. I have been reading a bit about the political context of this part of the war today. Nothing but dirty games on all sides really. But it is believed by many that the dropping of the atomic bomb saved the thousands of prisoners interred there. The bomb was dropped on the 9th and it has been suggested that they were all to be massacred on the 12th but I'm not sure how or if this can be proven.
The Japanese people had also been commanded to kill themselves if the country was defeated including the womens and children and it is said that many did. Does that remind you of anything? They lived in a culture which was ruled by an emperor who was believed to be a God and so his command as the word of God. There is a film about Emperor Hirohito a made by Alexander Sokhorukov called The Sun which I saw a few years ago. He seemed like a very odd and obsessive character. I was fascinated by the scenes describing how he has set up huge tanks with crabs and other sea creatures to carry out biological studies while his country crumbled about him.
There is a diary left from my grandfathers time in Japan. The first page says that they have been asked by those in command of the prison camp to keep a diary. He had been ordered to look after the prisoners in his group due to his rank as captain. He mentions he will do his best to help their conditions. All the other pages say "same as the day before, same as the day before, same as the day before".
I finished reading the Kazantzakis last month. I liked this part very much -
"There was a time when I used to say: that man's a Turk, or a Bulgar, or a Greek. I've done things for my country that would make your hair stand on end, boss. I've cut people's throats, burned villages, robbed and raped women, wiped out entire families. Why? Because they were Bulgars, or Turks. 'Bah! To hell with you, you swine!' I say to myself sometimes. 'To hell with you right away, you ass.' Nowadays I say this man is a good fellow, that one's a bastard. They can be Greeks or Bulgars or Turks, it doesn't matter. Is he good? Or is he bad? That's the only thing I ask nowadays. And as I grow older-I'd swear this on the last crust I eat-I feel I shan't even go on asking that! Whether a man's good or bad, I'm sorry for him, for all of 'em. The sight of a man just rends my insides, even if I act as though I don't care a damn! There he is, poor devil, I think; he also eats and drinks and makes love and is frightened, whoever he is: he has his God and his devil just the same, and he'll peg out and lie as stiff as a board beneath the ground and be food for worms, just the same. Poor devil! We're all brothers! All worm meat!"
Yesterday the cat caught a wren. I managed to pick her up quickly so she would drop it out of her mouth. The little bird ran across the kitchen floor and hid under the washing machine until a few hours until I got someone to help me move it and it flew up onto the kitchen bells and hopped around until it realised we had a window open for it. It proceeded to wedge itself awkwardly between the two panes of glass until eventually it found its way back to the garden and flew off into the dark.
