The shadow of nuclear conflict grows. There are fears of a new ‘Cold War’ and a renewed arms race. In a previous blog, I talked about the post-war Mayor of Hiroshima, Shinzo Hamai, and the wooden crosses that he gave in 1950 as a symbol of reconciliation. I’ve been haunted by this story, and have done more research on it. We thought that there were 12 crosses; now we discover that there may have been 50. A new historical fact was found recently to support this spirit of reconciliation.
Victims met both Oppenheimer and President Truman in 1964
The Japanese state TV, NHK reported in June that Robert Oppenheimer, known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, apologized to atomic bomb victims from Hiroshima during a meeting in the United States in 1964. This was mentioned by Yoko Teichler, an interpreter, in a recently found video a few years before she passed away. She said that Oppenheimer had started crying as soon as he entered the room and apologized repeatedly. This closed-door meeting was never made public before this video. The video was made in 2015 by the World Friendship Center (WFC) which was founded by Quakers in Hiroshima to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its foundation.
Teichler also mentions a meeting between President Harry Truman who ordered to dropping of A-bombs and the same group of victims just before meeting Oppenheimer. The Kansas City Times of May 6 1964 which was kept in the WFC reports the meeting between the President and Dr. Matsumoto and seven other victims. Matsumoto was a college head who lost his wife and 350 of his students (there were only seven survivors). The President said, ‘The objective that you’re interested in is to end the war in such a way that there would not be half a million people killed on each side…. that’s all there was to it.’ She mentioned that there was a contrasting reaction of Truman and Oppenheimer when they met the Hiroshima victims.
I met Teichler Yoko at MRA conferences at Caux, Switzerland many times in the 1980s and 90s as we hired her to interpret for Japanese delegations. I regret that we never talked about Hiroshima as we were mostly dealing with the trade war at the Caux Round Table.
A cross was said to be given to Truman by Hiroshima Mayor Hamai
I wondered why Truman met the A-bomb victims as early as 1964. Later, President Obama met victims in 2016 and President Biden again in 2023. I wondered if Truman met them because he was said to have received a cross made out of a camphor tree which survived the atomic blast from Hiroshima Mayor Hamai in 1950. The Mayor was part of a delegation of about 70 Japanese political and business leaders to visit Caux. He witnessed dramatic reconciliations between Germans and French there. From there, they went to several European nations and the U.S. He gave crosses to leaders of the countries he visited. At the U.Ｓ. Senate two Japanese Members of Parliament apologized for what Japan had done during the war. Eventually, the Mayor decided to build a memorial in Hiroshima after a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery. It says in Japanese, ‘Sleep in peace. We shall not make the same mistake again.’ That meant the whole of humanity including Japan and the U.S. Director Tachibana Shizuo of the WFC is now searching to see if the Truman Library has a cross.
Buchman said, ‘I now decide clearly under this cross what my path should be’
A cross was given to Frank Buchman at Caux. Mayor Hamai wrote about it in the Chugoku Shimbun (newspaper) in 1955, under the headline: ‘MRA Assembly Unfolding at the Peace Village. I was moved to tears by the welcome of the Hinomaru (Japanese national flag)’. ‘I gave one of the crosses to Buchman. I was greeted with thunderous applause, but the applause suddenly stopped and the room returned to dead silence. I saw Buchman who had taken the cross in his hand and was looking at it intently. He said, “I now decide clearly under this cross what my path should be. Today, by this cross, I have received a good lesson,” he said to himself.’
Oppenheimer’s Grandson, ‘fear of the other drove the policy into the arms race’
Charles Oppenheimer, a grandson of Robert Oppenheimer, visited Hiroshima for the first time in June this year, 79 years after the nuclear attack. Although his grandfather visited Japan in 1960, he did not travel to Hiroshima.
The grandson told the Kyodo News, ‘My words and actions are driven from the family philosophy that nuclear weapons are dangerous in the first place, and that we can get over that danger by increasing dialogue and cooperation. They (The U.S. and Russia) ran into “fear of the other”. That is what drove the policy into the arms race, which my grandfather was most afraid of. As Robert Oppenheimer said, “The people of this world,” meaning all humanity, “must unite or they will perish.”’
Common thinking among Oppenheimer, Mayor Hamai and Buchman
I have observed that there is a common thread linking Oppenheimer, Mayor Hamai and Buchman. The threat to use nuclear weapons has increased over these years. Artificial intelligence can press the ‘nuclear button’ now. There are more stakeholders who have more to gain the longer a war goes on. Until the Ukrainian war, the so-called military-industrial complex profited from selling weapons, but now more industries can profit from war, including the food, energy, pharmaceutical, IT and space industries. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have become wars that the UN and larger countries cannot stop.
Should we not work together to stop this dangerous trend in the world by this common thread between Oppenheimer, Mayor Hamai and Buchman? ‘We shall not make the same mistake again.’
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