Bangor marks 60th Hiroshima anniversary

BANGOR – Never again.

This simple message – delivered in both spoken words and the universal language of music – was at the heart of a gathering Friday to mark the 60th anniversary of the World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The bombings devastated the two cities.

Tens of thousands of people were killed outright, many of them incinerated. Still more died over time from illnesses ranging from burns and radiation poisoning to various forms of cancer and genetic mutations.

At least 150 people representing a range of ages, races, political leanings and religious backgrounds gathered Friday to commemorate Hiroshima in a small sunken courtyard off the children’s wing of the Bangor Public Library.

Featured was a free concert by classical pianist Masanobu Ikemiya, who performed works – some haunting, some uplifting – by composers from around the world. In between, he read from the works of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and others.

A Mount Desert Island resident who is the son of Japanese missionaries, Ikemiya said his family and friends had instilled in him since childhood a desire for peace.

Though he wasn’t born when the bombings occurred, Ikemiya said a close friend of his family’s, a woman who was like an aunt to him, was a survivor, or hibakusha, a Japanese word that translates to “bomb affected people.”

“She lost all of her relatives. So overnight she became a person without relatives,” Ikemiya said. Despite her personal losses, he said, the woman did not live with bitterness or hatred, but said she wished she had been kinder to her family members before they died. “She said, ‘Life is precious. We should not kill.'”

And although they lived through the bombing, Japanese of his parents’ generation also harbored little resentment. “They are feeling, never war again,” he said, describing their sentiments as “a sort of yearning for peace.”

While many Americans believe the bomb had to be dropped in order to end the war, Ikemiya said that by the time the bombs were dropped, “there was no more Japanese army” to speak of. The troops were virtually out of ammunition, he said, and were attempting to end the war.

“So there was no need to drop this bomb, from the Japanese side,” he said.

In addition to Ikemiya’s performance Friday, Bangor churches tolled their bells, and City Council Chairman Frank Farrington, who served with the 4th Marine Regiment in Japan in the mid-1950s, read excerpts from a 2003 speech delivered by Tadatoshi Akiba, mayor of Hiroshima.

Hiroshima, which has a population of more than 1 million, has been designated by the Japanese parliament as a “City of Peace.” Its government actively advocates the abolition of nuclear weapons.

“Having witnessed the ultimate consequence of animosity, hibakusha deliberately envisioned a world beyond war in which the human family learns to cooperate to ensure the well-being of all. In fact, they believed for decades that the human family was evolving slowly but steadily in that direction,” Akiba wrote.

“Now, however, they see the world being forced into a framework of fear and hatred. They see gullible publics being persuaded that only a powerful military backed by nuclear weapons can protect them from their enemies. They see the world diving headlong toward a militarism far too reminiscent of the militaristic fascism that commandeered their nation prior to World War II.

“If we hope to survive the 21st century, we must emphasize that understanding the experience of the A-bomb survivors is among the most important tasks we face,” he said, citing as their achievements a decision to live “not as desperate animals but as decent human beings,” a willingness and determination to tell their story to prevent additional uses of nuclear weapons, and their rejection of revenge and pursuit of reconciliation.

Afterward, Ikemiya and violist Hope Brogunier of Bangor performed a slow, moving Vivaldi piece while participants held a symbolic “die-in” in nearby Peirce Memorial Park. As a way to remember those who were vaporized by the bombings, people spread out on a paved square while others traced their outlines in chalk.

“For me, this brings two things together,” Brogunier said. It combined her love of playing the viola with her feelings about the bombings. “I’ve been feeling quite sad about Hiroshima. And to be able to speak about it in a universal language of music is wonderful.”

The Bangor commemoration, one of several in Maine cities, was organized by a coalition of peace-oriented groups: Interfaith Response, Veterans for Peace, the Bangor chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

Participants also lined up to sign letters to Maine’s congressional delegation to encourage them to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The letters were hand-delivered to local congressional offices after the ceremony.