Children in Hiroshima learn about atomic bombing aboard restored streetcar
A total of 31 third-grade students from Hiroshima University Elementary School took part in the annual event ahead of August 6, which will mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic attack on the city.
The students boarded the restored street car, which is still in service, and toured the city.
An official from Hiroshima Electric Railway, which operates the streetcar, told them that the train's wooden parts had been burned in the bombing. But its metal parts remained, making it possible to restore the train and keep it in use.
The children also compared the landscapes they could see from the train's windows with photographs taken shortly after the atomic bombing.
A boy riding the train for the first time said he was amazed to realize that the once-devastated city has transformed into a beautiful place where people live happily in peace.
A girl said the trip helped her understand how strong the atomic bomb blast was.
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'Zen,' he writes, 'speaks of the sword of life and the sword of death, and it is the work of a great Zen master to know when and how to wield either of them. Manjusri (the bodhisattva of supreme wisdom) carries a sword in his right hand and a sutra in his left ... but the sword of Manjusri is not to kill any sentient beings, but (to kill) our own greed, anger and folly.' Maybe so, and yet, undeniably, as we read in the 18th-century 'Hagakure,' which Suzuki quotes with approval, 'The essence of swordsmanship consists in giving yourself up altogether to the business of striking down the opponent. If the enemy, too, is ready to give his life to it, you are then well-matched. The final outcome will depend on faith and fate.' 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And when that state is reached, there is no pain, no pleasure, no victory, no defeat, no deprivation, no possession.' Zen's sword might have repelled him but there was Zen salt in him, and a dialogue, we imagine, between him and Suzuki would have been friendly; no doubt fruitful as well. We'd arrange it if we could. Gandhi's fate was tragic. Ours is not the world he strove for, and he died staring in the face the overwhelming probability that it would not be. The spinning of cloth, which he strove to spread among the masses as their liberation from poverty and India's from modern industrial capitalism, which he abhorred, failed to take root. Nonviolence stronger than the atom bomb? It was not stronger than Hindu-Muslim hatred; there they were, India's two great religions, their devotees slaughtering each other en masse and without mercy before his very eyes even as India celebrated its rebirth as an independent nation. Brotherhood? The execrated, persecuted 'untouchables' of the Hindu caste system remain execrated and persecuted, despite his exhausting campaigning on their behalf. Circumstances, the world, human nature, call it what you will, may have defeated him — but victory over himself he did win. Months before he was assassinated by a Muslim zealot, he foresaw his assassination (given the emotional climate it was not difficult). He said, 'If I am to die by the bullet of a madman I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.' And so it was. His last words, as he breathed his last: 'Oh, God.' Michael Hoffman is the author of 'Arimasen.'
