From Etajima to Hiroshima
By Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen, Tokyo
Etajima navy museum is located in the southern part of central Japan within the Etajima military school, an institution with long traditions of educating soldiers for the Japanese navy and army. Although the emphasis of the museum is on national history, the beautiful, Greek-style building houses memoralia not only from Japanese military history but also curious items from other nations' such as some of admiral Nelson's hair.The museum seems to require a good deal of background knowledge from its visitors. There are numerous artists' impressions of important sea battles from past wars - smoking canons on impressive-looking ships from various periods surrounded by columns of water where the enemy's shots have missed their target - but at least in the English guide texts the battles are rarely put in any context beyond the names and dates of wars. Even so one gets a sense that big stories of sacrifice and bravery are being told, mostly from the meticulously painted portraits of past navy admirals and the displays of their personal effects such as musical instruments they used.
Unexpectedly, as the visitor reaches the most recent war in the chronologically arranged route, the admirals suddenly disappear from the walls. The second world war was a lost war, and leaders vilified by the winners for entering and by their own side for loosing it do not get a portrait or a piedestal in this world of successes, besides the fact that it is still politically impossible to honour those judged war criminals by the US. Deprived of general portraits, the stories the museum chooses to tell us from this period are those of kamikaze volunteers. Events, individuals, their instruments of suicidal killing, their last letters to their families - an entire room is dedicated to the suicide troups.. Even clearer than the rest of the museum the sad displays makes me question how to remember soldiers.
Of course it is a human act to raise memorials. A chapter in John Dower's book about Japanese postwar history is called "What do you tell the dead when you loose?". It is an obvious and complicated question, not only in postwar Japan coming to terms with the fruitlessness of years of suffering and heroic sacrifice but in all countries after a war where nothing but damage and suffering has been won. How can the survivors honour the dead relatives and friends after realising that the ill-adviced war was pointless and should not have been fought, and that the emperor's army committed cruelties beyond imagination? Is it possible to separate bravery and sacrifice from action, honour the character aspects and develop human rites of sorrow for the persons while detesting their destructive achievements?
Etajima museum does not even attempt to create this divide or question the actions. This is after all a museum established by officers to educate - not to say inspire - the future soldiers of the Japanese defense army, and thus not even the usual blame-the-leaders-praise-the-soldiers approach to WW2 is used. Whatever the obvious brainwashed insanity of the brave kamikaze soldiers, Etajima is not an institution to question military discipline. For these inspirational purposes throughout the museum the stories told are biased towards either successes or heroes, leaving little space for the ordinary soldiers and no room whatsoever for the victims of Japan's past wars. The curators must be afraid of developing empathy with victims of wars in the soldiers to be.Less than a couple of hours travel from Etajima is a city not afraid of empathy, a city deliberately using its symbolic status and world-famous name to create compassion with people who suffer in wars: Hiroshima. With effective simplicity the gruesome consequences of the world's most powerful weapon are spelled out in the memorial museum for the victims of the first A-bomb used in a war. Touch the rooftiles melted underneath the man-made sun, see the permanent shadows created by this inverse Icaros action. And read the Daedalic warning letters the city keeps sending every time a powerful state detonates another test.
From the brown atomic desert seen in the museum, modern Hiroshima is rebuilt in concrete much like any other Japanese city. But when leaving the memorial buildings I am grateful for the grey concrete buildings and busy multicoloured advertising I normally detest because they suddenly turn into symbols of the destruction overcome, symbols of growth and life even after the devastations we just have witnessed.
Two museums in the same region, yet from two different ages and with mindsets that are miles apart. I want to remember Hiroshima as the forward-looking and death-defying symbol it is, but the questions Etajima made me ask can not be ignored:When will we practise the idea that killing is not an act to be honored? Then how can we remember soldiers without honouring their actions? I would like to see the consequences, war victims and suffering in the same monter as the soldiers' memorabilia. Since this isn't shown, do we avoid teaching our soldiers the full truth about wars to prevent them from developing normal human compassion and empathy? Is it then necessary to brutalise individuals in our society in order to defend it?
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