JOIN USOn August sixth every year, the seven rivers of Hiroshima are filled with lanterns.
Painted with the names of fathers, mothers, and sisters, they float on their way to the sea.
Almost there, pushed back flame snuffed out.
Darkly coming back in pieces.
Tossed by ocean waves.
That time, years past, these same rivers were filled.
With the corpses of those fathers, mothers and sisters.
(‘The Hiroshima Panels’; XII
FLOATING LANTERNS; 1969)
It was a bloody August 70 years ago in Japan. At 0920 hours on August 6, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by America. The ‘Little Boy’ killed at least 70,000 residents immediately and destroyed 69 per cent of the buildings of the city. The scale of death and destruction was unprecedented. Among the dead was Mayor Senkichi Awaya, who was having breakfast with his son and granddaughter at the mayoral residence.
On the other side, US President Harry Truman addressed his nation from the White House. “We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history,” he gloated. “And won.”
Three days later — on August 9, 1945 — another powerful bomb (‘Fat Man’) flattened large parts of the seaport Nagasaki killing immediately at least 39,000 people. More died later.
Following these two noxious attacks, Japanese Emperor Hirohito recorded his capitulation announcement.
On August 15, 1945, the emperor’s voice beamed across the country. Acknowledging that “the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage.” Hirohito concluded by saying: “It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is not sufferable.”
Although he never used the word “surrender”, his four-minute radio address effectively meant that.
Back in the US, the dropping of bombs evoked strong reactions, particularly from the scientific community. “The minds of the atomic physicists at Los Alamos had been greatly disturbed by the news of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima,” recounts Robert Jungk in his book, Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists. “August 6, 1945, was a black day for people like Einstein, Franck, Szilard, and Robinowitch who had done their best to prevent use of the bomb.”
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings had a direct impact on Maruki Toshi (1912-2000) and Maruki Iri (1901-1995). Already established artists at the time in Japan, Iri was trained in the traditional suiboku ink-and-water techniques of Nihonga painting, while his wife was more inclined towards Western-style painting.
Witnessing the tragic aftermath of Hiroshima bombing from close quarters, they plunged into action on finding that their badly damaged family house was packed to the brim by bomb victims. “We carried the injured, cremated the dead, searched for food and found scorched sheets of tin to patch the roof. With the stench of death and the flies and the maggots all around us, we wandered about in the same manner as those who had experienced the bomb... We lost our uncle to the atomic bomb and our two young nieces; our younger sister suffered burns and our father died after six months; many friends perished.”
Massive decision
Expectedly, a month-long stay in Hiroshima left a deep impression on the artists. But it took three years for them to decide on an artistic project to paint what they had seen and experienced. “We began to paint our own nude bodies to bring back the images of that time, and others came to pose for us because we were painting the Atomic Bomb. Nine hundred sketches were merged together to create the first paintings. We thought we had painted a tremendous number of people, but there were 2,60,000 people who died in Hiroshima... We prayed for the blessing of the dead, and prayed that the bomb would never fall again and destroy life.”
The Marukis continued to paint their experience for more than 30 years (1950-1982). The extraordinary effort culminated in the monumental anti-war work, The Hiroshima Panels, comprising a set of 15 painted screens.
The paintings offered a chilling view of the tragic and heart-rending scenes they had witnessed and heard in Hiroshima. In their final works they depicted poignantly the conditions of victims of not only the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings but also other nuclear disasters. Each panel, charged with emotional intensity and depth, portrayed specific aspects of the war and was titled Ghosts, Fire, Water, Rainbow, Atomic Desert and so on. Accompanying each panel were short prose-poems explaining the subject of the work.
Art expansion
In due course, The Hiroshima Panels featured in many travelling exhibitions overseas. The Marukis toured the world, campaigning for nuclear disarmament and world peace. They produced a succession of influential works including Auschwitz, Nanking Massacre, Minamata and Okinawa disasters, raising a broad range of social, ethical and political issues concerning man-made tragedies and human suffering. In 1953, they were honoured with the World Peace Culture Prize.
In 1995, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, an American documentary based on their path-breaking artistic work, was nominated for the 1987 Academy Awards.
Looking back, Marukis’s prose-poem Ghosts (1950) serves as a grim reminder of the Hiroshima holocaust to this day:
It was a procession of ghosts...
...Burned charred faces,no one could tell one from another.
Voices weakened,they told their names but even then were unrecognized.
An infant with innocent face and delicate skin lay asleep.
Was it saved in its mother’s tender breast?
Oh, even this one babe will awake to rise up again.