‘A sense of loss and confusion’

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This article was published 09/08/2023 (837 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Junko Bailey and her two sons placed candles at the centre of their painted Japanese lanterns and released them into a fountain Wednesday evening to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The U.S. military attacks on the Japanese mainland cities — Aug. 6 (Hiroshima) and Aug. 9 (Nagasaki), 1945 — ushered in the end of the Second World War. An estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people were killed, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website.

Bailey released her lantern in memory of her father, 82, who died in Japan in February. He often shared stories about the Second World War, and how his family had fled Nagasaki when he was five years old, before the bombing.

“Summer is always the time to remember,” said Bailey, who has been attending the annual Lanterns for Peace ceremony outside the Manitoba Legislative Building for 10 years.

Letting the lanterns float away in the water represents the spirit of those who’ve died transitioning to the afterlife, said Bailey.

She recalled releasing a lantern every summer in the city of Sasebo, north of Nagasaki, before moving to Canada in 1998.

There’s a lot of generational trauma in her family, said Bailey. “I think there’s a sense of loss and confusion, and a continuous grudge against that terrible event — the atomic bomb — and I feel that loss will probably never go away.”

One of her distant relatives was close to the centre of the bombing, Bailey said, and his mother searched the debris until she found him. He died seven days later from the effects of radiation illness, at age 22.

Bailey’s grandfather was a sergeant in the Japanese military, and was killed in an engagement with the U.S. military on a ship in the Pacific Ocean.

Fifteen years after the bombing, Bailey’s then-teenage father returned to the city of Nagasaki to attend high school. He would tell her stories about friends experiencing the effects of radiation illness and being diagnosed with leukemia.

The threat of nuclear weapons still exists today, Bailey said Wednesday.

“I would like participants to know that the war is not a thing of the past, especially the war in Ukraine. People are facing this ever-increasing danger and the threat of nuclear weapons.”

This year’s Lanterns for Peace ceremony focused on advocates’ desire for Canada to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the United Nations on July 7, 2017.

The first step of learning is to be aware of what happened and then urge the federal government to sign the treaty, working toward global peace, Bailey said.

The recently released movie Oppenheimer, which follows the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and a team of scientists in their design of the first atomic weapon, has driven increased discussion of the 1945 bombings and understanding the impact of generational trauma within the Japanese culture, Bailey said.

“I hope people are more aware of the situation and really understand that our peace is something that is very fragile.”

During the ceremony, the Hinode Taiko performing arts group drummed to a sombre and quiet tune, as people placed their lanterns into the fountain to glow in the night sky.

tessa.adamski@freepress.mb.ca