An immersive perspective of a historical event

Why did we invite the survivors of the atomic bomb to an event celebrating the atomic missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and what do we hope to accomplish?

To be quite honest it was never our intention to bring the victims of the atomic bomb, or the Hibakusha, to ceremonies that are centered around the U.S. veterans who served on Tinian and Saipan. And, I hope to take this opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about the reasons behind inviting the Hibakusha to Tinian in early August.

Three years ago on a gentle evening at the main pavilion at Kammer beach, the people of Tinian held the very first Tinian Nagasaki Hiroshima Peace Ceremony. It was a small and humble ceremony with a few local officials speaking by the dim light of candles to a crowd of about 80 to 100 people of all ages. It was a beautiful event filled with the genuine desire to echo the message of peace from the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now in its third year, the organizers for the ceremony have moved to properly mark the 60th year after the events that had forever tied our small island in the Pacific to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by inviting three victims of the atomic bombs to the CNMI. We have created a venue for the Hibakusha to share their experiences on the islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian, called the Hibakusha Experience, as preliminary events leading up to the 3rd annual peace ceremony.

We did this not to stir controversy or to cause problems to the U.S. veteran events occurring simultaneously on the island but for the genuine desire to share with the people of the Commonwealth the experiences of those that had survived one of the tragic events in World War II and the beauty of their message for peace. And, it is perhaps that genuine desire for peace and the unified hope that no other human will ever suffer the horror of a nuclear attack embraced by the Hibakusha that has compelled our peace ceremony to invite them to our peaceful shores.

We have been asked by our critics to justify the choice for bringing the Hibakusha to the CNMI and not the survivors of the Bataan Death March or survivors of the Nanking Massacre. And, the simplest answer we can provide through this opportunity is that we chose to ask the Hibakusha to come to the CNMI because of their connection to Tinian and because of the positive efforts for peace and the messages of hope that they carried wherever they spoke.

As for what we hope to accomplish by bringing the Hibakusha, we simply wanted to provide to the members of our community, and particularly the youth of our Commonwealth, the opportunity to listen to the unique perspectives of our guests this summer. We wanted to expand the minds of our youth by giving them a perspective of a historical event that is far more immersive than the facts and figures of a history book. We wanted to encourage our people to value and understand the reason for the peace that we have enjoyed on our islands since the end of World War II. And, we wanted an opportunity to bring to life genuine discourse, dialogue, and exchange to the generations who must live with the threat of infinitely destructive nuclear weapons and the nine nations that posses them.

We hope that by giving a face and a voice to the unfathomable figures of death and destruction caused by one of the tragic events from the Second World War, we can compel people to give thought to the subject of peace and war so that we may guard against the repetition of those tragic events 60 years ago. We may not understand the true tragedy of 210,000 lives extinguished by the effects of the atomic bombs, but we can understand the experiences a child crawling out of the aftermath of the atomic bomb. Our ages, nationalities, and cultures may separate our lives from those that had lived through the events, but the basic humanity within each of us, our ability to empathize, to love, and to feel loss will bring us closer to understanding the true fact that war failed to distinguish a soldier from a child or a weapons factory from a home; and, therefore, we must look to putting all effort into the peaceful resolution of conflict.

It is our sincere hope that the people of the CNMI welcome both the veterans of the Second World War and the Hibakusha to our beautiful islands. We are not bringing together two combatants, but citizens of two nations that have built a peaceful and mutually prosperous relationship for the last 60 years. Some of our Japanese and American guests have met each other before in the past, and look forward to meeting each other in August. The events are separate from each other in venues and times, but we have always kept alive the possibility that at least two of the guests from the different ceremonies would want to meet each other and talk.

On these warm and peaceful shores we have the opportunity to bring to life something beautiful, and learn a little more of the history which had shaped our place in the Pacific.

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James Mendiola is the executive director of the 10th Tinian Municipal Council.