Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN: Documentary: A Hiroshima Story

“A Hiroshima Story”
produced & Presented by David Swatling

A 76 year old retired English teacher and survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima tells his story because he doubts whether kids today know anything about the event at all. But at Amsterdam’s International School, an American teacher is having his 11th grade World Literature class read Masuji Ibuse’s novel “Black Rain.”

Interviews: Keijiro Matsushima, Hiroshima survivor (Sigrid Deter)
Kevin Hogan, English teacher International School A’dam
11th Grade World Literature Class, ISA

Readings: from “Black Rain” by Masuji Ibuse (ISA students)
Music: Kohachiro Miyata, shakuhachi (Japanese flute) CD208229

SCRIPT

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MUSIC: Japanese Flute
TRK. 3 – from beginning

MATSUSHIMA: I’m afraid the memory of Hiroshima is being lost among younger generations, I think… Sixty years – a long time. (As you see, many students come on school excursions to Hiroshima, but still the number is very small.) If I go out of the city one step, many people say, “Oh, I know Hiroshima. A-bomb. Oh, I know that.” Things like that. They really don’t know. It’s very difficult to transmit our experience to next generation. Yes, I feel some difficulty. But we have to try, see… Sometimes I can’t understand young people. (-laugh- ) I hope they are learning something. I hope! But I don’t know. It’s very hard to tell… DUR: 1’08”

MUSIC Continues

DAVID: Keijiro Matsushima is a 76 year old retired English teacher. He was in Middle School when World War II began. His two older brothers were soldiers, and when schools were suspended, he worked in a factory. His father died in the spring of 1945, and his mother decided to move to the quieter countryside north of Hiroshima. So he was alone in the city when his school reopened at the beginning of August and he could return to his engineering studies. He was 16 years old. Sixty years later, half a world away, another English teacher is interested in sharing Matsushima’s story with his own students.

HOGAN: I understand that their problems and their concerns are as real to them at their ages as mine are to me at my age and I think we forget that when we get older… And for me personally, there is something incredibly refreshing about the age where now you do realize these life-changing circumstances can come along – even at this age things can happen that will change you for the rest of your life. We can look at that age group sometimes and say, Ugh! Grow up. But they are whether we like it or not… And since the story isn’t over yet, and the story really in some ways is just beginning to play out for them, I’m forever jealous of them. DUR: 50”

SOUND 1: students arriving at ISA, airplane flies overhead
SOUND 2: students in hallway
SOUND 3: Hogan’s class (discussion 31/05)

DAVID: As students arrive at the International School Amsterdam, a plane passes high above in the clear blue sky. Being so close to the airport, no one takes any notice. (X-fade 1x2) I’m here to meet Kevin Hogan and his 11th grade World Literature class – eight bright teenagers from four continents, one year away from graduation. Outside Mr. Hogan’s room, a poster quotes the Dalai Lama: “We all have a responsibility to create a better world…” (X-Fade 2x3)
Mr. Hogan is an energetic, popular teacher. Originally from Boston, he’s an avid Red Sox fan prone to baseball metaphors – even when discussing the heavy topics of their current coursework – novels in translation. Dutch author Harry Mulisch’s World War II novel “The Assault,” was followed by “The Sorrow of War” by Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh – who fought for North Vietnam at the same age as the students reading his book. But the novel they’ve just started, and the reason for Mr. Hogan’s interest in Mr. Matsushima’s story, is “Black Rain” by Masuji Ibuse, based on journals and interviews with victims of Hiroshima.

HOGAN: Well, they’ve been doing their own journal writing. What I like to do is try to bring that full circle and after their own journal writing they then get to actually see how Ibuse has used journal entries in such a way that it constructs a cohesive plot there – something that is interesting. So that’s why I’ve always done it. They’ve already been doing their own journal writing, they have to write a paper in the future, and now I think it actually gives more richness to their own ideas when they see other journal writing used at a literary level that still has a plot involved. DUR: 33”

MUSIC: Japanese Flute

READING: “Black Rain” DUR: 2’00”

DAVID: The students seem somewhat detached as they read a powerful early excerpt from “Black Rain.” Will Mr. Matsushima’s own story invoke in these teenagers any deeper understanding of the novel?

MATSUSHIMA: August 6th DUR: 11’27”
FW: “A bomb exploded at 8.15 in the morning…
LW: …Many, many sad stories, of course.”

SOUND - Class Ambience

DAVID: Mr. Hogan’s class is silent for a moment. But it takes little encouragement from their teacher before they begin to express themselves.

STUDENTS: first reactions – confusion, identification, loss of innocence
Jan: I do think listening helps with Black Rain…
Chris: I think listening gives sincere, innocent look…
Ria: It makes him more human…
Abhishek: I think what’s fascinating…
Ria: I was him for a while…quite scary, very powerful… (+/-2’50” TOTAL)

SOUND: Ambience/Kevin’s story (fades out)

MUSIC: Japanese Flute

DAVID: Mr. Hogan tells his students a personal story about a fatal car crash. In turn, they reveal some of their own life-altering experiences. Mr. Matsushima’s tale, it seems, is more than just a Hiroshima story. But there are two sides to every story, and though I don’t wish to dispel their sympathetic feelings for the kindly Mr. Matsushima, there’s something more I think he’d want them to hear.

MATSUSHIMA: I thought it’s very difficult to win this war but I couldn’t believe in surrender. That means we were ready to kill ourselves if Americans land in Japan. We were educated like that those days. (It sounds very silly these days, but those days it was common sense for us boys.) So you can understand kamikaze attack. (But in a war, anything can happen.) This is my personal opinion: if Japan had invented the A-bomb, we might have used it in New York. Of course, some Japanese friends say, “Never say that. We Japanese would never use it. Even if we had won, we would never use.” So I said, “Oh, I don’t believe it. In a war, military people would do anything to beat the enemy. If Japan had the bomb and we had the bomber plane, we might have carried it to New York. It could happen.” DUR: 1’30”

STUDENTS: more confusion
Hogan: How does that make you feel?
Ria: puts you in a weaker spot
Chris: idea of innocence
Margaret: also what Ria said… all wrong
Hogan: life changing events at your age?
Chris: I think that he’s our age…
Abhishek: …without this taste of the past, we cannot go on as full human beings.
Hogan: what would you ask
Chris: I thought – what for the future? (+/-4’00” Total)

MUSIC: Japanese Flute

MATSUSHIMA: The problem is in the future. The lives or victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a very valuable sacrifice for peace. You know, mankind is not so clever. We repeated war and war in the history and each time killing machine was improved and improved and improved. And finally the worst thing was invented in the 20th century. It was used two times. That’s enough. Never third bomb. That’s the idea of Hiroshima citizens, I think. We just hope these things never be used again on any place on any nation. DUR: 1’10”

MUSIC: Japanese Flute
TRK. 3 – to end

DAVID: “A Hiroshima Story” featured survivor Keijiro Matsushima, Kevin Hogan and his 11th graders at the International School Amsterdam, and shakuhachi player Kohachiro Miyata. Special thanks to Sigrid Deter for research and interviews in Japan, and sound engineers Robert Giesselbach and Ronald Hoffmann. I’m David Swatling.

MUSIC ENDS

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