Robert Stanger

The Japanese promote visits by foreigners to their atom-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where some 214,000 perished in the final throes of World War II so that those from abroad can bear testimony to the beyond- comprehension happenings that occurred there.

I am sure that such was the case with the recent visit to those two cities by Pope Francis who repeated his 2017 denunciation of the possession of nuclear weapons as “immoral.” Previous popes have not gone so far, saying only that to have such weapons was acceptable if they were held as disarmament proceeded.

“In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance, and sale of ever more destructive weapons are an affront crying out to heaven,” he said in Nagasaki. The four-day visit to Japan by Francis was the first by a pontiff to that country in 38 years.

There is a chasm that of course goes far beyond time between a visit I made to Hiroshima many years ago and the one made there recently by the pope.

But the visits had a similar refrain, I’m sure. The Japanese want to make sure that the world never forgets what happened to the two Japanese cities.

In Hiroshima, the pope met with survivors of the bombings including Yoshiko Kajimoto, who was a 14-year-old factory worker when the bomb exploded, causing the building she was in to collapse on top of her.

“No one in the world can imagine such a scene of hell,” she said, describing her evacuation route. “There were more and more people coming by. Their bodies were burned so badly and totally red. Their faces were swollen to double size, their lips hanging loose, with both hands held out with burnt skin hanging from them. They no longer looked human.”

Kajimoto’s health has suffered greatly in the years since the bombing. She had most of her stomach removed in 1999 due to cancer, and she now has leukemia.

I was in Japan many years ago following Navy service. English teaching jobs were readily available in Tokyo, and I took advantage of that situation. On the American Presidents line ship that I boarded in Honolulu, I met Jerry Stanoff, who was also ex-Navy, and two Japanese girls returning home from stints at U.S. colleges. One had studied at the University of California, the other at a Catholic college in Arizona.

One of the girls, Nobuko Fuji, was from Hiroshima and she invited both Jerry and me to visit her there (even though she was engaged to be married).

I’m sure that Nobuko didn’t intend that the possible visits by Jerry and me were to be just of a tourist nature, even though Hiroshima’s site on the Inland Sea is a beautiful one.

What she quite likely had in mind was a visit (like the recent one there by the pontiff) that would focus on the atomic explosion at 8 a.m. Aug. 6, 1945, that killed 140,000 of her fellow Hiroshima residents, including so many children just starting their day in school.

After some months of teaching English in Tokyo, I decided to wind up my stay in Japan by taking Nobuko up on her offer to visit her in Hiroshima. My decision may have come as a surprise to her, but she did agree to my visit, and I took a train south for the 500-mile trip from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

I think that it was a credit to the Japanese that I could live in Tokyo and travel in Japan without fear of recrimination from the inhabitants for savage World War II bombing that reduced their cities to rubble. The incendiary bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, killed some 100,00 and left a million homeless. It is regarded as the single most destructive air raid in human history.

Nobuko first took me to the Peace Memorial Museum near the center of Hiroshima, where there is an extensive display of material that conveys the horror of the bombing. The exhibits describe Hiroshima before and after the bombing, and they also cover the current status of the nuclear age.

Not far from the museum was the shattered dome of an industrial exhibit hall which was close to ground zero for the blast. The bomb missed a bridge over which it was to have exploded and instead exploded over a hospital.

Nobuko asked me if I would like to visit victims of the atomic bombing who were then still alive at local hospitals. I declined, although perhaps I shouldn’t have since sympathy from an American certainly wouldn’t have been misplaced.

Nobuko also led me on visits to non-bomb related sites in the area, including wooden stages built out over the Inland Sea, where traditional Japanese theatrical enactments were held.

We also visited the University of Hiroshima where she had studied psychology. She introduced me to psychology students there who were using mice in their experiments. Each one had its own “ratsonality,” I was assured.

Lunch one day was at the home of a bachelor or widowed relative of hers who lived on the outskirts of Hiroshima. He prepared a traditional Japanese dish of thin strips of stewed meat and seaweed which was delicious.

On a visit to Hiroshima Castle, which is perhaps the area’s most famous tourist-related attraction, we encountered a group of American servicemen who were descending a flight of stairs up which we were climbing.

They surveyed me with some seeming amazement, perhaps wondering how I had arranged the companionship of such an attractive Japanese girl.

Jerry, my companion on the ship to Japan, later decided that he, too, would like to take Nobuko up on her offer to guide him around Hiroshima.

She replied that she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to do that as she was too busy preparing for her wedding. I had been the lucky one.

For a thorough study of the nuclear attacks on Japan I recommend “Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath,” by Paul Ham, published in 2014.