Day the Sun Fell

Susan Bouterey

Description

The Day the Sun Fell captures on a deeply human and personal level the devastating effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. The author, who at fourteen was seriously injured by the A-bomb, skilfully combines tender lyricism and stark realism to recount her own experiences and those of other members of her immediate and extended family in the aftermath of the bombing, and decades later. Not only a harrowing depiction of tragic historical events, nor just a remarkable story of survival, The Day the Sun Fell reveals aspects of the bombing never aired openly before, forcing the reader to pause to reflect on these haunting events and their continuing legacy seventy years on. It also makes for inspiring reading, for Hashizume never fails to discover hope and joy in living even in the darkest of moments.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528955096
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Day the Sun Fell
Memoirs of a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb
Bun Hashizume & Susan Bouterey
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-08-30
The Day the Sun Fell About the Author and Translator Bun Hashizume: Susan Bouterey: Dedication Copyright Information Acknowledgements Preface The Day the Sun Fell My Mother and Brother Hideo Father’s Story My Father, Masao My Older Sister, Mitsuko My Younger Sister, Shizuko Grandmother Doi Grandfather Doi Uncle Torao Radiation Sickness ABCC Hesaka Primary School End of the War Living Beneath the Heavens Sunset and the Crows Verdure Bone Statue of Buddha Children’s World Beneath the Sun, Under the Stars Floating Lanterns in Front of the Atomic Bomb Dome Vision of Levee Frescoes and Aerial Esplanades Requiem Two Cenotaphs Ms. Tomoyanagi Mr. Iida Later Events in My Life Fukushima Appeal from Hiroshima My Health Since the Blast Afterword
About the Author and Translator

Bun Hashizume:
Poet, writer and atomic-bomb survivor Bun Hashizume was fourteen and only 1.5 kilometres from the hypocentre when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, seriously injuring her. In 1985, her first anthology of ‘atomic bomb’ poetry titled The Youth Who Turned into an Insect appeared. Other poetry collections include Like an Abandoned Swing (1990) and Returning to the Earth; Rising to the Heavens (2009). Many of her ‘atomic bomb’ poems have been set to music and performed in concerts in Japan and overseas. Essay collections and memoirs include Turkey – A Mysterious and Wonderful Land (1993), Memoirs of the Atomic Bomb: The Experiences of a Fourteen-Year-Old Girl (2001), and From Hiroshima (2014) . Currently residing in Tokyo, Hashizume continues to write and give talks nationwide, and occasionally overseas.

Image of Bun at around 18 years old (1949). Taken inside the Atomic Bomb Dome where graffiti is clearly visible on the inner walls – today it is no longer possible to enter the Dome. Bun is wearing a suit that she hand made from a woolen blanket distributed with the relief supplies after the bombing, and a white jabot (neck ruffle) made from fabric scraps.

Susan Bouterey:
Susan Bouterey (DPhil, Tokyo University) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Key areas of research are contemporary Japanese literature including Japanese women writers’ fiction, atomic bomb literature, and Okinawan fiction. She also specializes in literary translation and has translated a number of Hashizume’s works to date. Monographs include Medoruma Shun’s World: History, Memory, Narrative (2011) . Literary translations include Water’s Edge by Tsushima Yūko in More Stories by Japanese Women Writers (2011), Fellow Humans! Let Us Foster Love & Wisdom – From Hiroshima (1997), Living Together and Little Brother in Australian Multicultural Book Review (1996).
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the children of the world and future generations.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Bun Hashizume and Susan Bouterey (2019)
The right of Bun Hashizume and Susan Bouterey (translation and annotations) to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788780889 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788780896 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528955096 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
It is through the untiring efforts of Watanabe Tomoko, the Executive Director of ANT-Hiroshima, an NGO that pursues projects in international cooperation, international peace-building, and peace education, that I have been able to record these events for posterity. I express my immense gratitude to her for publishing the original Japanese version of this book.
If my encounter with Watanabe Tomoko was a meeting of like minds, I had an even more miraculous encounter with her mother. On August 6 th , 1945, as Hiroshima city was consumed in flames, we lay on either side of the same bush in the gardens of the Red Cross Hospital – a fact that I only discovered in the midst of the Fukushima disaster by which time we were eighty-one and eighty respectively. We are now like sisters, addressing each other with the familiar terms ‘Teru-chan’ and ‘Fumi-chan’.
An earlier version of this book was published as Shōjo, Jūyonsai no Genbaku Taiken-ki ( Record of a Fourteen-Year-Old Girl’s Experiences of the Atomic Bomb ) in 2001 by Kōbunken and immediately translated into French by Pierre Regnier. Elizabeth Leeper, the partner of Steven Leeper, former President of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, spent much time with atomic-bomb survivors when she was in Hiroshima. When she discovered this book , she exclaimed, “This is just the work that I had been looking for!” and started working on translating it into English. However, she had to return to America in order to look after her parents and was unable to get any further than the first chapter.
The current book is the result of extensive revisions and additions to Record of a Fourteen-Year-Old Girl’s Experiences of the Atomic Bomb . I am indebted to Kikkawa Hikaru for his helpful comments and editing of my work in the original, and for dispatching each and every chapter to Susan Bouterey for translating.
Susan and my friendship goes back more than twenty years. Whenever I visit New Zealand, she welcomes me like family into her home and on my solo travels around the world to spread the anti-nuclear message, I always take along copies of a booklet containing her translations of my essay and poems on my atomic-bomb experiences. These I distribute, sowing ‘anti-nuclear seeds’ that have now taken root in many places across the globe.
Susan likewise wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance of Mr Kikkawa. Additionally, she expresses her deep gratitude to friends and family for their unwavering support and encouragement. Without this, and their invaluable comments on the translation, this translation may not have materialized.
Susan and I would also like to acknowledge the generous grant in support of the publication made by the School of Language, Social and Political Sciences, College of Arts, University of Canterbury.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the production team and editors at Austin Macauley. We are grateful to Rebecca Ponting, who welcomed us to Austin Macauley in the first instance; and to Harry Robinson for his patience, efficiency, and professionalism in bringing this publishing project to fruition.
Preface
This book of memoirs is in the form of a loose collection of essays, many on Hiroshima – especially my experience of the atomic bombing of the city – and the people living in Hiroshima at the time of the blast, some on my solo travels overseas from my late sixties, and others that capture events from the time of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in March 2011 through to the present day. People who have read my memoirs pass comment that they are ‘not gloomy’, ‘quite unlike most memoirs on the blast’. I wonder why that is? The horror of the atomic bombing can never be fully captured in the written or spoken word. Neither do I have the power to fully express in writing the painful struggles I have faced over the years as I endured illnesses and other hardships. Or perhaps it is the case that something transcending immense suffering, beyond reason – a sad acceptance and compassion for all things – has been cultivated in me.
Hashizume Bun
The Day the Sun Fell
On the morning of August 6, 1945, I stepped outside and looked up at another serene blue Hiroshima sky. The air raid siren had shattered the air earlier but they’d soon given the all clear. Had it been a false alarm? 1 The cicadas in the garden cedars were awake and chirping loudly; it promised to be another hot day.
I was fourteen, in my third year at girls’ college, and had been assigned under the student mobilization scheme 2 to work in the Savings Bureau of the Department of Communications. My family lived in a northern district of the city, near Hiroshima Castle, while the Savings Bureau was situated in the south of the city, close to the Red Cross Hospital. Consequently, I spent an hour each morning traversing the city on foot to get to work as students were forbidden from travelling on the trams at the time. Life was such that people typically walked distances of two to three kilometers.
When the air raid siren went off that morning, I had been en route to work. I returned home briefly then headed out again, arriving at work just after 8 am, some thirty or so minutes late. As usual, I slipped through the side entrance and climbed the narrow back staircase to the office on the third floor. The Savings Bureau was in a box-shaped, four-story building made of ferroconcrete. I vaguely recall that the ground floor was the customer service section, providing postal services and the like. Administrative work was conducted on the upper floors, with each of the floors from the second upwards named Savings Division Two, Three, and Four respectively. I was assigned to Savings Division Three on the third floor. My close friends were working in Savings Division Four.
Each floor, with the exception I imagine of the ground floor, featured a large open office area with a mezzanine floor in one corner. The mezzanine floor held a vault for keeping the ledgers, st