The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 3 | Number 3 | Article ID 4252 | Jan 19, 2015

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Never Again: Hiroshima, Auschwitz and the Politics ofCommemoration もう二度と…　広島、アウシュヴィッツと記念の政治学

Ran Zwigenberg

Abstract: Ran Zwigenberg makes a case forrevising the history of Hiroshima and its globalconnections and importance. Focusing on thelittle known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that themarch was a unique point of convergencebetween multiple national narratives ofvictimization. The Peace March illustrates theemergence o f a shared d iscourse o fcommemoration of WW II following theEichmann trial and others, which agents likethe marchers facilitated and which emergedfrom multiple Western and non-Westernsources.

In 1962 a young Jewish American psychiatristby the name of Robert Lifton visited theHiroshima Peace Museum. Lifton described hisvisit to the museum in a letter to his friendDavid Riesman, "I had seen many such picturesbefore…but somehow seeing these pictures inHiroshima was entirely different…we left thispart of the exhibit reeling…Both of us anxious,fearful and depressed–Betty [Lifton's wife] tothe point of being physically ill."1 Lifton decidedto stay in Hiroshima and help its survivors. Hisresearch greatly altered our understanding ofHiroshima and the psychiatry of trauma. Itwould be hard to find similar responses byvisitors today. The Liftons' reaction to themuseum was not just a function of theirencounter with the horror of Hiroshima but ofthe heightened awareness of the importance ofthe city in light of the global tensions thatwould bring the world to the brink of nuclearwar that same year. The museum and PeacePark today are far calmer places. Perhaps even

too calm. The message of peace, felt sourgently by Lifton, has lost its edge inHiroshima. Italian journalist Tiziano Terzanicaptured the mood of the place succinctly whenhe wrote, "In Hiroshima…even the doves arebored with peace."2 The serenity and passivityof the memorial begins right at the entrance tothe museum, where a film opens with thewords, "On the sixth of August, 1945, a nuclearbomb was dropped on Hiroshima and vastnumbers of its citizens died."3 There is nomentioning or way of knowing who dropped thebomb or what had led to the event. Thesewords embody in them the entirety of themessage of the memorial: Hiroshima ispresented like the scene of a natural disaster,separated from any historical chain of events.Carol Gluck called this kind of narrative,"history in the passive voice."4 In a world thatstill has over twenty thousand nuclearweapons, such serenity in the face of past and(possible) future horror is extremely troubling.

When I visited the memorial, forty years afterLifton, the Hiroshima Peace Museum's passivitystood for me in sharp contrast to the shockingphotos and evidence of destruction of that day.The words that framed the images seemed tobe a part of an effort to contain the shock andanger a visitor might feel. The memorialmessage seemed an effort to counter thesubversive potential of Hiroshima. Indeed, thiswas the case not just with the memorial. Thesurvivors themselves, whose stories I heard,seemed restrained; their stories almost alwaysending with a plea for understanding and worldpeace. What I came to understand over the

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course of research on the topic is that theentire edifice of remembrance in and aroundHiroshima was, consciously or not, built aroundcontainment. The very shape of the city and thespatial division between the island of Nakajima,where the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park islocated, and the rest of the city, suggest amuch deeper division between the past and thepresent; as if Hiroshima wished to demarcateand distance itself from the past. It seemed tome that, as a visiting journalist once remarked,"People built this city to forget."5 Hiroshima'smemory, I realized, however, was never, withthe possible exception of the late forties,actively suppressed. Rather, the principalargument of this work is that Hiroshima'stragedy was rendered harmless to the statusquo by the particular way it was remembered.Commemorative work in Hiroshima was largelyused to normalize and domesticate the memoryof the bombing. The bomb was presented notas a probable result of our reliance on scienceand technology but – in the words of theepitaph of the central memorial cenotaph - amistake: a sort of temporal slippage into adarker time.6 Furthermore, Hiroshima'ssacrifice was supposed to somehow rectify thiserror, set history right and put progress backonto its "normal" course. The bomb thereforewas presented as a transforming baptism, onone hand, and a rupture that must be healed,on the other. This phenomenon was not limitedto Hiroshima. The effort to contain the bomb'smemory was profoundly shaped by the largerefforts of elites in the East and West to rebuilda postwar order and to reaffirm, the bomb andthe concentration camps notwithstanding,belief in modernity and science.

Because of the nature of the tragedy and theenormous importance given to the efforts toformulate a proper reply to it, the victims ofHiroshima and Nagasaki came to possessimportant symbolic power. The bombing wasthought to have bequeathed to Hiroshima'svictims a global mission and importance. Thiswas synchronous with and influenced by a

similar view of the place of the victim/witnessin Holocaust discourse. In both discourses, thesurvivor was eventually elevated as theultimate bearer of moral authority; whatAvishai Margalit called "a moral witness."7 Thisdevelopment was a direct consequence of theunprecedented nature of the tragedies and thefailure of conventional means to represent andexplain them. This had important implicationsfor commemoration and politics in Japan andelsewhere, a phenomenon that went wellbeyond the confines of one nation or culture. Asevidenced by Robert Lifton's story, whosemoment of shock in Hiroshima led him on to acareer that impacted profoundly both culturesof memory, Hiroshima had an important role,now largely forgotten, in the making of globalmemory culture. However, the importance ofHiroshima was not appreciated by scholarshipon either Hiroshima or the Holocaust so far(not to mention Nagasaki, which Hiroshimashould not stand for and has a unique history ofits own).

Thus, my recent book Hiroshima: The Originsof Global Memory Culture, (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2014), has three main goals:first, to explain how and why Hiroshima'smemory developed the way it did. Second, toreinsert Hiroshima into the larger globalconversation about memory and, three, toexamine the many links between Hiroshimaand " the wor ld , " main ly through anexamination of its links and comparison withHolocaust discourse in Israel and elsewhere.This is done, first, by examining the way thebomb and, to a lesser extent, the Holocaust,were explained, contained and integrated intothe national and international narratives andideologies which came before them and second,looking at the way that survivors reacted to(and sometimes produced) these discourses,leading to the emergence of the figure of thesurvivor in postwar Japan and the West. In themanuscript, I examine this developmentthrough both a comparative angle and throughlooking at the many connections of Hiroshima

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and Auschwitz. What I realized whileresearching this book is that the histories ofHiroshima and Holocaust commemorations areentangled histories. For a long time after thewar these two tragedies were seen as twinsymbols of modern failure; sites of industrialkilling on an enormous scale, which might evenserve as harbingers of future horrors to come.The symbolic connections between Hiroshimaand Auschwitz were especially strong prior tothe eighties when the enormous rise inimportance of the Holocaust and the end of theCold War caused Hiroshima to somewhatrecede from our collective imagination. Toexamine the connections between Hiroshimaand the Holocaust and the cross over of ideasand narratives, I chose two historical episodes:the history of psychiatry and trauma - focusingespecially on the work of Robert J. Lifton andthe history of an organization called theHiroshima-Auschwitz Committee. This articlefocuses on the latter's history.

The Hiroshima-Auschwitz Committee, aJapanese peace organization that tried toconnect the two tragedies in its work for peace,no longer exists. Not many had heard of itwhen I started making enquiries into it inHiroshima. This is not surprising as for themost part the organization ended up on a noteof failure. Its biggest enterprise, the building ofa grand Hiroshima-Auschwitz memorial (whichI write on extensively in the book) was delayedfor a decade and ended up in controversy withforeign governments protesting brokenpromises, accusations of missing donationmoney and Yakuza connections, and most ofthe articles for the museum - already on loanfrom the Auschwitz Museum and in Hiroshima,shamefully returned to Poland. Such failure,most of it the fault of the Committee's badchoice of partners and unfortunate historicaltiming, obscures a fascinating history of

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exchange between Hiroshima and Auschwitzwhich dates from 1962. In that year apilgrimage by a group of Japanese activists toAuschwitz sought to connect the two places oftragedy for the sake of peace in a world, whichunder the threat of the Berlin and CubanMissile Crisis, was teetering on the edge ofnuclear Armageddon. The climax of thepilgrimage was in Auschwitz itself on liberationday when the young activists marched arm inarm with former prisoners of the camp carryinga banner of peace. But the roots of the marchwent back and encompassed events anddecisions made in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima,Oświęcim and Jerusalem.

The Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March

On January 27, 1963, a particularly cold andsnowy day, a mile- long procession tocommemorate the eighteenth anniversary ofliberation made its way from the city ofAuschwitz to the site of the death camp. Theprocession was headed by four young Japanesemen, among them a Buddhist monk and aveteran of the Japanese imperial army, SatōGyōtsū. These men had traveled over 3000kilometers, mostly by land, from Hiroshima.During their travels they visited numerous sitesof World War II death and memory and metwith scores of survivors. Indeed, one of themain goals of the four men, who had leftHiroshima about ten months earlier, was "tounite the victims and places of tragedy of theSecond World War." 8 In a remarkabledocument issued by the organizing committeein Tokyo, the march's organizers declared:

"We Japanese, as both aggressors and victimsof the war, should have a special duty in callingfor world peace... we, who are of young age,went through the bomb and occupation...but atthe same time must reflect on the sin ofaggression that we committed... thus we decideto set up on this march and: 1) to tell... as manypeople as possible about the horrors ofHiroshima and Auschwitz; 2) Record the

suffering of different people we witness invarious countries; and 3) to tell people about[Hiroshima and others'] suffering and holdpeaceful gathering in all places we will be; 4) tomake international connections based on theworld religious conventions in Prague andTokyo."9

The Hiroshima Auschwitz Peace March(hereafter HAP) was one of a number ofinitiatives that responded to the crisis of thepeace movement in Japan, which broke apartfollowing the passage of ANPO (the US-JapanSecurity Treaty) and set out to spreadHiroshima's message in the world. 1962, withthe Cuban Missile Crisis and rising Cold Wartensions on the one hand and the fracturing ofthe peace movement on the other, was a pivotalyear for Hiroshima's relations with the world.The HAP sought to use the power of hibakushatestimony and the experience of Hiroshima toprevent another world war. Uniquely, in doingso, they also sought to connect with othersurvivors of World War II.

This was lofty sentiment indeed. When themarchers set out on their journey theyencountered cultures of commemoration verydifferent from their own, with very differentethos and drawing very different lessons fromWorld War II. Some of those lessons, as inIsrael, were almost diametrically opposed tothose that peace activists drew for Hiroshima.This caused more than a little anxiety andconfusion for the marchers. At times, the HAPmembers found it hard to reconcile their ownideas, which developed in the context ofHiroshima's commemoration culture, with whatthey experienced in other places. At othertimes, however, there was a remarkableunderstanding and surprisingly smoothexchange between HAP and other groups. Whatthe HAP march illustrates is that the basicformat of commemoration was quite similararound the world. Although the idea of a global"cosmopolitan memory culture" is of relativelyrecent vintage, and it is usually related to the

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"rise" of the Holocaust as a paradigm forcommemoration, the HAP march showed thatthe globalization of WW II memory and theinterplay of different war memories date as farback as the fifties.10 Indeed, it is doubtful if itwas ever only local. The histories of war andcommemoration are, to use Sebastian Conrad'swords, "entangled histories."11 The HAP marchserves as a lens through which we can examinethese entanglements and connections betweenthese different places of memory.

In all these different war memories the figureof the survivor-witness was a common feature.In Hiroshima and elsewhere, the developmentof the survivor-witness was the result of aconvergence of factors both internal to thevictims' experience and external developmentsthat turned the shame of being a victim into thepride of being a survivor. The idea of thesurvivor, which developed mostly separately indifferent places, was in the 1960s in theprocess of convergence. The HAP and groups itworked with, similarly to Robert Lifton and thediscourse of trauma, were among the agents ofthis convergence. The HAP members again andagain emphasized their will to tell and heartestimonies. They had an almost magical beliefin the duty of the witnesses to war crimes tote l l the i r s tory , and o f tes t imony ' stransformative power. Again, this was notlimited to the HAP. The rise of witnessing was aglobal phenomenon and has been examined bya number of scholars, most notably AnnetteWieviorka and Jean-Michel Chaumont inrelation to Holocaust survivors.12 The HAP storydemonstrates that this experience was sharedbeyond Europe. The war was a worldwidetraumatic event. The forced silence that manyvictims encountered, the lack of judicial andother recourse, and the unresolved traumapushed many to talk. In the face of what wasimpossible to fathom there was a need to tellone's story or, to use Shoshana Felman's words(drawing on Walter Benjamin), "in face of theabyss… the express ion less tu rn tostorytell ing." 1 3

The experience of survival and witnessing didnot mean the same thing everywhere. The HAPencounters with survivors in Poland, Singapore,Japan and Israel show that along with muchconvergence of narratives and practices, therewas also much divergence in meaning, leadingto confusion and contradictions. Hiroshima'sethos of the pure and forgiving survivor wasnot warmly received in Asia, where Japanesehad not just been victims but also victimizers inthe war. The HAP marchers were aware of thisand even tried to make it a point of uniquestrength, as the declaration quoted aboveshows. Nevertheless, they continually struggledwith this contradiction. Furthermore, the HAPsolution to this problem, not unlike howH i r o s h i m a C i t y d e a l t w i t h i t s o w ncontradictions, was to use extreme abstractionand universalization of the experience ofvictimization. This was particularly evident inthe way that not only Japanese but also Polesand others abstracted and idealized the realvictims of genocide out of existence, replacingthe Jewish victims of genocide with more noblesacrificial lambs for peace or the struggleagainst fascism. By their actions, however, theHAP and similar groups created a concreteconnection between disparate but similardiscourses. This globalization of the figure ofthe victim-witness enabled a convergence ofthe narratives and contributed, in conjunctionwi th the E ichmann t r ia l s and o therdevelopments, to a process which wouldeventually lead to the "era of the witness."14 Inthe pages that follow this story is told throughthe unusual encounters HAP marchers had withlocal memory cultures in Singapore, Poland andIsrael, as well as the experiences of themarchers themselves in Japan; examining theinteractions and entanglement of warmemories that this unique peace march eventproduced.

Uniting the victims of the world's sites ofatrocity: the peace march departs

The idea to organize a pilgrimage to Auschwitz

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originated in discussions during the sixthannual All-Japan Gensuikyō meeting in Tokyo inAugust 1960. As part of this gathering, therepresentative of the Nihonzan-Miyohoji temple- a Nichiren sect temple in Chiyoda, Tokyo-SatōGyōtsū, proposed an international peacemarch.15 Auschwitz was not yet proposed as adestination and nothing much came out of hisproposal until another major gathering in Kyotoin July 1961, which brought together religiousact iv is ts to d iscuss ways to achievereconciliation and world peace. 16 The 1961congress met at a time when the peacemovement was fast falling apart and was one ofthe many initiatives that tried to bring it backtogether. Father Jan Frankowski, a Roman-Catholic Polish priest, was among thosepresent at the conference and he, inconjunction with Satō and a journalist from theOsaka Yomiuri, Satō Yuki, seem to have beenthe first to initiate a call for forming a PeacePilgrimage to Auschwitz.1 7 During theconference they were introduced to the otherfuture members of the peace march: KajimuraShinjo, Yamazaki Tomichiro and Katō Yuzo,who were all of different denominations andstudent activists, by YMCA Hiroshima GeneralSecretary Ayuhara Wakao. Ayuhara, a bombsurvivor and peace activist, also connectedSatō Gyōtsū and Satō Yuki, and made thesuggestion to start the march in Hiroshima.18

Besides Satō, all other participants in themarch were students in their twenties fromvarious Tokyo universities who were active instudent circles.19

Much of the initial impetus for the march canbe attributed to the post - ANPO mood withinthe Japanese peace movement. While the riftsand violence that accompanied the end of massprotest and breakup of the anti-nuclearmovement led people like Satō and otherreligious leaders to look for reconciliation andavenues of non-violent protest, for manystudents, a feeling of depression and confusionensued.20 Despite enormous counter-efforts, theconservatives passed the treaty and, as the

students saw it, opened the way to a return ofimperialism and repression, which, coincidingwith rising cold war tensions, seemedimminent. We felt, wrote the HAP participants,"that something had to be done [to stop the riseof reaction] but we did not know how toproceed."21 The solution found by both religiousactivists and students was to look outside ofJapan.

As Hiraoka Takashi, a leading Hiroshimajournalist (and future mayor) noted, the peacemarch was only part of a growing trend ofinternational initiatives. In 1961, EarleReynolds, an American peace activist residingin Hiroshima, in one of the first of theseendeavors, organized a group of hibakusha thattrave led around the wor ld and gavetestimonies. Reynolds's Hiroshima peacepilgrimage was launched in March 1962, and,in the same year, anti-nuclear activists formeda joint group that went to Accra and Moscow toattend international peace gatherings. Theseinitiatives and the march, wrote Hiraoka,looking back on 1962, were making "theexperience of being bombed the base (root)from which we could lead the peace movementout of the strife-ridden desert (fumō)."22 By1962, the assumption of an organic linkbetween the atomic bombings and the politicalgoals of the peace movement had become acommon strategy, in Hiroshima and elsewhere.For example, similar to the way Hiroshimareached out to Auschwitz, Hans Bonn, themayor of the East German city Dresden, wroteto Hiroshima's mayor in June 1961 calling for,"a partnership in the fight for peace andagainst rising militarism to transcend thedivisions of East and West." Hiroshima honoredneither this nor a similar request from Dresdenin 1963 with a reply. Making common causewith a city in the Soviet East Bloc was probablyanathema, given Hiroshima's own divisivepolitics of "peace".23

This game of competing victimization took anunexpected twist when, as the peace march

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organizers were applying for Japanesepassports, they were denied help by what theycalled, "pre-modern feudalist bureaucrats," onthe grounds that they "show unfa i rdiscrimination by going to a site of genocide byGerman soldiers in Auschwitz but not for theone committed by Soviet soldiers in the Katynforest" (site of a massacre of Polish officers in1940, which played an important role in Polishmemory of victimization by the Soviets).24 Thenas now, the right in Japan and elsewhere wasdisposed to reverting to the "counter-victim"discourse. As Alyson Cole pointed out inrelation to "counter-victim" discourse in theUnited States, conservatives often claim forthemselves the status of "true victims" bypointing out that their own victimization isforgotten and obscured by the leftist media.25

German conservative historians would also playthis game of "contextualization" during theHistorikerstreit in the nineties. The Katynepisode shows a similar inclination on the partof Japanese conservatives, and is quiteremarkable given the time and the context ofJapanese political infighting. It demonstratesthat the counter-victim discourse was thereside by side with the victim discourse from thevery beginning.

By January 1962, everything was ready fordeparture. In an interview with ChūgokuShinbun, Satō declared, in what became amantra, his desire "to deepen the connectionbetween these two places of utmost sufferingand tragedy in World War II."26 Before thedeparture ceremony, Satō and the studentsvisited the A-Bomb hospital and met withhibakusha representatives. From a sick girl atthe A-Bomb hospital they received 3000 papercranes, a symbol (through the martyrdom ofSasaki Sadako) of Hiroshima's ultimatesacrifice and innocence, and they vowed to"spread the voice of Hiroshima and unite it withthat of Auschwitz where untold numbers ofJews were murdered at the hands of theNazis."27 They left these cranes everywherethey went.28

Until 1962, references to Jews or Auschwitzhad been entirely absent in the Hiroshimadiscourse. So, why Auschwitz? Why at thistime? Rising tensions both domestically andinternationally supply us with some context,and Father Frankowski supplies us with aconcrete connection, but the timing of themarch was crucial. It was the Eichmann trial-aglobal media event-that brought Auschwitz topublic consciousness in Hiroshima aselsewhere. Indeed, according to KuwaharaHideki, the head of the Hiroshima-AuschwitzCommittee, it was the enormous publicity ofthe trial that first brought Auschwitz to theattention of Hiroshima's activists.29 Yet, theEichmann trial in Japan, and the Holocaust as awhole, was not quite what it was in Israel,Germany or the United States. This hadimportant implications for the way the pilgrimsand Japanese as a whole would view Auschwitzand the Holocaust.

Eichmann in Hiroshima: the Holocaustthrough Japanese eyes

The Eichmann trial was front-page news inHiroshima and Japan as a whole.30 Eichmann'scapture in Argentina in a daring Mossadoperation was headlined in the internationalpress. The Asahi Shinbun called it "thrilling",and a "suspense story."31 The first reactions tothe story expressed fascination with the "manin the glass cage," and the "man responsible forthe killing of millions."32 Much of the trialcoverage remained at this level, a sort of a-historical, human-interest drama withinteresting characters and dramatic turns.Nevertheless, as the trial progressed, ittouched upon fundamental issues: the Israelis'right to judge Eichmann, the place of warresponsibility and remorse, the issue ofgenocide, the plight of its victims and itscontemporary importance, came to the fore.Rarely mentioned but always in the backgroundwas Japan's own war. Discussions about thetrial in Japan, in many ways, were more aboutJapan's own guilt and its own self- perception

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than about Adolf Eichmann or the Holocaust.As David Goodman and Miyazawa Masanoriargued, the Jews in Japan, a country withalmost no Jews but with a developed discourseabout them, often are used as a foil fordomestic contestation, different playersabstracting the figure of the Jew and using itfor their own agenda.33 The way that Eichmannwas perceived, and, in our case, the way thatthe marchers perceived Jewish survivors, wasno different.

The first publication about the Holocaust inJapan was the 1952 translation of The Diary ofAnne Frank. The diary was a runaway bestseller; it is doubtful, though, how muchinformation on the Holocaust or the Jews itconveyed to Japanese readers. Frank'sJewishness is not emphasized and she isportrayed, more or less, as a victim of war ingeneral rather than of racism and persecutionor of the Germans. As Goodman and Miyazawaargued, Anne Frank's Diary was popular inJapan precisely because it allowed the Japaneseto relate to the Holocaust and WW II withouttackling the hard historical realities.34 This wasconsistent with how the Japanese treated theirown war as a whole. The Hiroshima figure ofSasaki Sadako, the child victim of the bomb,was also portrayed and conceptualized as theepitome of victimization by an abstract war and"the bomb."35

There were some notable exceptions to thistrend. In 1956, the anonymous editors of atranslation of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search forMeaning directly connected the Holocaust andJapanese crimes on the continent. In a verydifferent pairing than our pilgrims' coupling ofAuschwitz and Hiroshima, the editorscommented, "there are two events that are somonstrous that they make one ashamed ofbeing human... the first is the rape of Nankingin 1937... The second was the organized massslaughter perpetrated in the concentrationcamps." 3 6 They went on to argue thatknowledge of the Holocaust was absolutely

essential in order for the Japanese tocomprehend their own war guilt.37 Similarintellectual work on the Holocaust, like JeanPaul Sartre's The Jew and the Anti-Semite orE l i Cohen ' s Human Behav ior in theConcentration Camps, appeared in 1957. Filmssuch as the German Thirteen Steps or AlainResnais' Night and Fog (Resnais would alsomake Hiroshima Mon amour) also had someimpact.38 These works were important but aswas typical with Western works on theHolocaust dur ing these years , theyconcentrated mostly on the plight of politicalprisoners rather than specifically on the Jewsqua Jews, and tended to blur the distinctionbetween the concentration and exterminationcamps, as illustrated by Frankl's editors'reference to crimes in concentration camps(rather than death camps).39 The Holocaust wasnot seen as a separate phenomenon but wassubsumed under the rubric of Nazi crimes.These cr imes were , in turn , in moreconservative publications (in Japan and theWest), connected to Soviet crimes and the fightagainst totalitarianism. On the left, anti-fascistmartyrs replaced the Jews, and Nazi crimeswere portrayed as a "logical" continuation ofcapitalism's crimes (a topic we will return tobelow). Racism, anti-Semitism and thehistorical peculiarity of the Holocaust werevictims of this attitude.

This kind of Cold War logic can also be seen inmany Japanese accounts of the Eichmann trial.The Yomiuri Shinbun, a right-of-center daily,argued in an April 1961 editorial thatEichmann was the product of totalitarianism:"... [One] can find Eichmann-like fanaticism inother dictatorships... this is the result of thesame kind of group thinking when one personthinks like ten thousand."40 Takeyama Michio, aliberal humanist (anti-communist), made amore nuanced argument regarding Eichmann'sdefense, stating that he was just followingorders, "Khrushchev answered [Eichmann's]complaint (in his speech denouncing Stalin)...first, one says 'I was just following orders' ...

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[then] he claims the nation was deceived."41

Both Takeyama and the Yomiuri editor werebasically restating arguments from theimmediate postwar era. Takeyama, inparticular, was referring to the connectionbetween Fascism and false consciousness.Takeyama mocks both Eichmann and manyJapanese who claimed to have been deceived(dama sareta) by the militarists, thus feigningignorance and innocence.

Takeyama, the celebrated author of the anti-war nove l The Harp o f Burma, had adistinguished track record in tackling Japanesewar crimes. Takeyama was also one of theearliest commentators on the Holocaust inJapan. But Takeyama had a peculiar view of theFinal Solution. Seeing it as an "irrationalendeavor", he traced it to theology and thescriptures; Hitler was basically fulfilling theanti-Semitism embedded in Western civilizationand Christianity.42 Takeyama, like many otherJapanese intellectuals, saw in fascism a sort ofgroup madness. He saw the same madnesstaking place in Germany and in Japan. While,"Japanese had dementia, Germans becamedevils."43 The disease of Nazism had pre-modern roots in re l ig ion . Th is v iewdepoliticized Nazism and made it a sort ofaberration. Like similar discourse thatdescribed the A-bomb as a mistake, it took itssubject out of history and placed it in theologyand psychology. "The Germans and the World,"wrote Takeyama, "lost their mental balanceafter WW I."44 Unlike most commentators onthe bomb, however, Takeyama did acknowledgethat the problem was deeper than a momentaryslip into darker times. Irrationality, which forhim was the religious foundation of Westernculture, was hidden within the very foundationsof culture. "The foundations of Civilization,"Takeyama argued, "were shown to have beenbuilt on fragile foundations and were destroyedby this one push of fanaticism." 4 5 Theimplications for Japan's own modernization andpostwar embrace of Western culture are clear.

Unlike Takeyama, who acknowledged Japan'sown war crimes, other commentators seemedto treat WW II as a morality play in which Japanwas noth ing but a specta tor . Othercommentators employed the Jews' postwar"vindictiveness" towards the Nazis (as opposedto Japanese "humanity" in forgiving theAmericans) to extol their own moral position.The aforementioned Yomiuri editorial called onJews to use the trial for "constructivepurposes." "We understand the feeling of theJews," the editors wrote, "but the memory ofthe cruelty … should end with this trial [as] wehumans are trying to forget the cruelty of thewar… eye for an eye is a Jewish tradition, butthe world has to give up on it, to forget revengeand the past in order to establish a new peacefor society. We should not throw stone afterstone into the lake that tries to recover itsserenity."46 The writer's clear implication wasthat Japan's own lake had recovered itsserenity via its re-invention as a nation ofpeace; a notion given concrete substance byHiroshima's "sacrifice for peace."

"The eye for an eye" theme was repeated bymany other commentators, especially after itbecame clear that Eichmann would beexecuted. Inukai Michiko wrote that shewanted a more universal solution. "I am nottrying to save his life but I'm against thispunishment." Referring to Martin Buber, whoopposed the death penalty, she wrote, "Israelshould be one step above Nazis. We shouldrefrain from killingEichmann."47 A Vox Populicolumn in the Asahi argued on the same lines:"Israel should not kill him for revenge. If he isguilty of crimes against humanity, a deathsentence is inhuman as well."48 Anothercolumnist wrote that the trial left him with the"aftertaste of public lynching," and that, "Israelusurped the right to kill Eichmann."49 InoueMakoto went perhaps to the furthest extreme,equating the Israeli court with Nazi crimes: "Ican find no more words to defend the Israelicourt than I can for [Eichmann's crimes]. Thepsychology in this Kangaroo court is the

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psychology that makes war possible… [and] willlead humankind to destruction."50

From Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi,Hiroshima Panels

Also linking the trial to larger issues of war andpeace, the Asahi wrote in a similar fashion asthe Yomiuri: "The trial should not be used forsimple revenge but for constructive purposes...[It] should be used to establish internationallyrecognized laws and determine, acrosscultures, standards of cruelty... Beheading bysamurai sword was cruel for Westerners but itwas not [for us]... [Now] the entire worldshould recognize the use of nuclear weapons ascruel."51 Another implied criticism of theWestern Allies was a caricature published thesame week showing the four nuclear powersmarching in Nazi uniforms, goose-stepping in aNazi salute and casting a shadow in the form ofa swastika, with the caption "Eichmann'sreplacements."52 The Asahi's complaint overWestern "cultural misunderstanding" of Japan'sown war conduct, coupled with Japaneseliberals' admonishments of Israel for holding an"eye for an eye" mentality and for failing to liveup to ideals of international peace and justiceare, to say the least, hypocritical. This is not tosay that familiar and painful issues regardingJapan were not debated here. But it seems thatmany felt superior to the Jews insofar as they

themselves "overcame" their hatred to theAmericans who had destroyed their cities.

If assertions of superiority were mostly impliedin the papers, non-intellectuals had no scruplesin making such statements outright. Robert J.Lifton conducted an interview with a technicianand Hiroshima resident who reported thatduring the Eichmann trial, "a Japanese fromHiroshima went to Jerusalem [this would beShikiba Ryuzaburō – a volleyball coach whowent to Israel with a Japanese team], peoplethere asked him why the Japanese don't hatethe people who dropped the A-bomb as theydid, all their lives, hate Eichmann… Jewishpeople maintain that hatred and the wish to puttheir hands on the enemy. Now they tell thepeople of Hiroshima that we should have thesame feeling."53 With Eichmann and the A-bomb, the technician argued, [this] could notbe avoided, as "they did these things on ordersfrom superiors."54 The technician then went onto chide Koreans, using racist and derogatorylanguage, over their supposedly inflated thirstfor revenge and inability to forgive [Japan]. 55

Thus, both Koreans' and Jews' vindictivenessserved here to highlight Hiroshima's highermoral standards.

It must be said that some Eichmann relatedarticles show a pretty detailed knowledge ofthe Holocaust and Israel. Reports discussed atlength though, unfortunately did not directlycomment on , K . Tzetn ik and others 'testimonies. International (especially German)reactions, described the mood on the street andexamined the judges' backgrounds.56 However,most articles did not dwell on the complexitiesof the trial, the Holocaust or the Middle Eastconflict (the Palestinians are completelyabsent). Jews, as well as Germans, are used asabstractions against which Japanesecommentators hold their own discussions aboutwar responsibility, memory and history. Thiskind of attitude is consistent with the way manyHiroshima intellectuals used the Holocaustduring the postwar years. Hiroshima and

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Auschwitz were seen as symbols of a breakwithin the project of modernity. KuriharaS a d a k o , p e r h a p s o n e o f t h e m o s tphilosophically-minded of the hibakushawriters, wrote that Hiroshima and Auschwitzwere the culmination of "progress," as"mankind has stopped being mankind andcompletely became a machine."57 For ŌeKenzaburō as well, Hiroshima and Auschwitzrepresented a "decisive turn in civilization."58

These writers and others were right to point tos imi lar i t ies and the shared log ic o fextermination and bureaucratically organizedkilling, but that was a fine line to walk.Hiroshima writers were sometime inclined tosee their own predicament as worse or, assome did, to voice frustrations with the wayAuschwitz has distracted attention from "theirholocaust" or even suppressed it. Kuriharawrote that while many wrote about theHolocaust, "facts about Hiroshima weresuppressed by the occupation."59 KanaiToshihiko, a well-known journalist, wrote in1962, "The Hiroshima experience is not so wellknown…even though the scope of misery farexceeds that of Auschwitz."60 But there werealso many compelling works of art andliterature, such as the Marukis' Auschwitzmurals, which came out of their Hiroshimapanels and displayed profound sensitivity to thetragedy of the Holocaust.

Contemporary photo of Hiroshima. APPhoto/Shizuo Kambayashi.

Furthermore, not only Japanese but Jewishintellectuals as well connected Auschwitz andHiroshima. Elie Wiesel, Nelly Sachs, and PrimoLevi all made these connections. Levi, in a 1978poem, The Girl-Child of Pompeii, speaks of"Anne Frank and the Hiroshima schoolgirl/ ashadow printed on the wall by the light of athousand suns/ a victim on the altar of fear."61

The connect ion between the s i tes isundeniable. Industrial killings, genocide andthe nuclear menace are linked not justtemporally, in that they all originated duringWW II, but also through the very mind frameswhich reduced populations to equations ofki l l ings. Nevertheless, making theseconnections without proper contextualizationalso runs the risk of simplifying and abstractingthese two tragedies beyond recognition.Especially in Hiroshima's case, this could havetroubling consequences as equating thecarnage of Hiroshima and Auschwitzobfuscates the fact that Hiroshima was a majormilitary center of a nation at war (which wasalso the Nazis' ally and committed atrocities ofits own), while the Jews did not do anything tothe Germans. The pilgrims were actuallyconfronted with this very question by an Israelion the French vessel that carried them toVietnam who pointed out that "in Auschwitzthere were no combatants… [And] all werekilled indiscriminately." The pilgrims' answer isnot recorded.62 The pilgrims, however, weresoon confronted with the reality of Japan's warin Asia when they continued, after a brief stopin Saigon, to Singapore, where they wereliterally brought face to face with the results ofJapanese terror on the continent. Theseencounters, which I expand on in themanuscript and related articles, mostly showedhow different was Hiroshima's remembranceculture from others around the world.In Singapore, the Hiroshima delegationwas confronted with accusations of complicity

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in Japan's crimes and with an actual site ofmass killings of Chinese citizens, in Siglap, while in Israel, they were confronted with avery different memorialization ethoswhich challenged their view of the victim as apacifist hero. But what were even morefascinating were the similarities and manypoints of convergence between Hiroshima andother discourses. These were on display mostclearly in Poland, the HAP's final destination.

Exchanging mementos of death: the PeaceMarch arrives at Auschwitz

The HAP left Israel on November 6, 1962, withtensions over the Cuban missile crisis subsidingand the world returning to a somewhat morenormal state. They traveled by boat to Greecewhere they met with the head of the localSalonika-Auschwitz Committee, Mr. Pinkhas. InSalonika, the HAP members met with survivorsand learned from them about the deportationsand suffering of Greek Jews in Salonika, whoseJewish past, following the Holocaust, was in theprocess of being eradicated by urbandevelopment and Greek nationalism, which wasdestroying synagogues and mosques andbuilding over cemeteries.63 Pinkhas learnedabout the HAP member's arrival from theInternational Auschwitz Committee (hereafterIAC) headquarters in Warsaw. The IAC andJewish partisan organizations were alsoresponsible for the warm welcome themarchers received in Yugoslavia and Hungarywhere they were received as semi-officialguests. The connection with the IAC seems tohave been made through Father Frankowski,back in 1961. The IAC, founded in 1954 byrepresentat ives of var ious surv ivororganizations, was the principal internationalorganization that dealt with commemoration inAuschwitz.

Unlike Yad Vashem or Hiroshima, there was anac t i ve in terna t iona l component tocommemoration activities in Auschwitz(foreigners were a big part of the process in

Hiroshima but were never given an officialrole). Understanding this context is crucial forunderstanding why the Poles cooperated soreadily with the HAP march and later with thecommemoration of Auschwitz in Hiroshima.The Auschwitz site that the HAP would reach inJanuary 1962 was already the third incarnationof the memorial. Founded in 1946, Auschwitzwent through a Polish national phase in whichit was presented as a site of Polish martyrdom,a Stalinist phase which eradicated almost allmention of Polish victimization and then, in theearly sixties, shifted back to a Polish nationalemphasis but with an international componentto it.64 This was part of the general post-Stalinist thaw and the move to a slightly moreopen "national communism" in Poland. Thegovernment sought to use internationalorganizations to forward its ideological aims.But this was not a one-way street. The IAC lentits prestige to the government but also got avoice in the design of the Birkenau monumentand Auschwitz's character. The HAP mission fiti n w i t h t h e P o l i s h g o v e r n m e n t ' scommemoration strategy and ideology. Byconnecting Hiroshima and Auschwitz, the HAPwas highlighting the crimes of the Americanimperialists and connecting it with those of theGerman Nazis, exactly the kind of ideologicalconnection which, although much lesshyperbolic than during Stalinist times, stilldominated Auschwitz's message.65 As inSingapore, the HAP was once again becoming atool in local memory politics.

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The Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace Marche inIsrael (Source: Davar, October 13 1962)

As in Hiroshima and other places, in Poland aswell there was a well-established victim-narrative. This was mostly about Polishvictimization. The fact of Auschwitz-Birkenaubeing the "largest Jewish cemetery in theworld," with over one million Jewish dead in itssoil, was completely marginalized.66 As IrwinZarecka pointed out, Auschwitz for Poles "wasnot a symbol of Jewish suffering but a symbol ofman's inhumanity to man and a place of Polishtragedy."67 In a similar way to Hiroshima, theAuschwitz museum sought to make it to a placeof international tragedy but with an emphasison a very specific Polish victimization. As inHiroshima, which long discriminated againstthe Korean dead, Auschwitz as well was usedas a tool for marginalization of the dead Jews.In Auschwitz, however, the Jews were anabsolute majority of victims with about amillion dead, in comparison to the horrendousbut much smaller number of 75,000 Polishvictims.68 In the immediate postwar and up tothe nineties, Poles would speak of six millionPoles who died in World War II; incorporating

the Jewish dead as their own. That was also thenumber that was conveyed to the HAP whilethey were in Warsaw.69 Even in 1995, KazimierzSmolen, the former director of Auschwitz whoplayed a key role in negotiations with Japan,stated, "half of the Poles killed in Auschwitzwere Jews and half ethnic Poles.70 The Jews,however, mostly did not survive and those whodid left Poland. Poland was a harsh place forJews in 1945-46, with returning Jews facingpogroms, stolen and destroyed property andpolitical mayhem.71 Commemoration was leftfor the Polish political prisoners, the churchand the fledging communist regime, all ofwhich could agree at this point on only onetheme: Polish suffering.

Polish martyrdom, a loaded term connected to19th century romantic nationalism andCatholicism, dominated Auschwitz's message inthe first few years, and would return in manyforms since. Polish victims' consciousness cameout of Poland's unique history of nationalfailures and suffering. Poland, in the nineteenthcentury and after, saw itself as the "Christ ofnations"; holding off the Russian hordes withits sacred mission to redeem the nations ofEurope through its suffering and example.72

This idea was strengthened after the war. As inHiroshima, Poles as well sought to rescuemoral victory out of the jaws of defeat andhumiliation. Poles saw themselves as having apostwar mission to serve as a beacon ofwarning against fascism under the slogan:"never again Auschwitz." Creating a Polishmartyrology made it essential to blurdistinctions between Jews and Poles. One couldnot be the "Christ of nations" while being "only"victim number two. In addition, Poles sawthemselves, with some justification, as beingthe next in line for the gas chambers, their"difference [from Jews] only in timing."73

Whether the Nazis meant to exterminate theSlavs or not is rather beside the point. ThePoles did suffer horribly and in their eyes, thegas chambers were a logical extension of thatsuffering. Polish prisoners of Auschwitz had a

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special place in this scheme as the ultimatebearers of the Polish cross. This cross,however, became increasingly an "antifascistand socia l ist" cross with increasingStalinization in the late forties.

Former prisoners became especially importantin Stalinist propaganda as having "a specialright to criticize Anglo-American Capitalism."74

Like their partisan counterparts in Israel andhibakusha in Hiroshima, they too enlisted in orwere conscripted to serve the cause. Manyformer prisoners, however, were notcomfortable with the crude instrumentalizationof the camp and the state encountered muchopposition from former prisoners whose "saint"status afforded them some leeway even withinthe Stalinist system. Auschwitz, commentedone of them, "has become a peddler booth ofcheap anti-imperialist propaganda."75 This,together with the general "thaw" after thedeath of Stalin, enabled a change in Auschwitz,with much more autonomy for the staff andgreater reliance on historical research andartifacts. This also meant, with the "nationalCommunism" of Wladyslaw Gomulka, thereturn of the Polish victim narrative albeit in amodified form.

This narrative was clearly visible when the HAPcame to Poland, where the HAP were treated asstate guests and were taken around with theiro f f ic ia l minders to a whole array o fcommemorative and other events. The anti-fascism was spiced up with a good dose ofPolish suffering. Father Frankowski, who metthem at the station together with IACrepresentatives, gave the HAP a long speech,duly recorded by Katō, about Polish sufferingthrough the ages, recounting how "during thelast war, one in every five Poles died in thehands of the Germans," claiming the Jewishdead as Poles.76 The HAP were taken to anexhibit of "survivors' art" and met Poles fromall walks of life who all seemed to speak in onevoice, recounting the Nazis' brutal treatment ofPoland, its heroic resistance, and the wonderful

job of reconstruction done in Warsaw, all underthe banner of "never forget" and for the sake of"all of humanity."77 "Out of the suffering,"declared one survivor artist, "we will create thefuture. We feel that the experience of thosewho were in the camps… could lead to thecreation of a culture for all humanity."78 Thiswas language the HAP could definitely relateto. The Poles' lofty idealistic talk of peace wasstandard discourse in the Eastern bloc. As wesaw, the HAP were wary of identifying tooclosely with communist causes, however, theyseemed to take it at face value when it camefrom survivors.

There was a strange reciprocity between thesides. In the art event where survivors'drawings were shown, the HAP presented apainting of the bombing done by schoolchildren. Upon hearing survivors' stories, "theyreciprocated with stories of Hiroshima andNagasaki," and when they received artifactsand human remains from the Auschwitzmemorial "they presented a charred roof tilefrom the ruins of Hiroshima [in return] to beplaced in the cenotaph in Auschwitz."79 Thematter-of-factness of these exchanges and theway they are reported on as natural anddesirable, demonstrate the common languageof commemoration both places of death shared.The fact that this language – the testimonies,use of art, enshrining of ashes in cenotaphs,and the relic-like status of remains - evolvedseparately, without cross-reference and incompletely different cultural and historicalsettings, is quite astonishing. This convergencepoints to the emergence during these years,out of separate strands, of a common victim-witness or survivor narrative. The commonframe of reference for both sites wascommemoration of soldiers in general and WWI in particular. As James Young, HaroldMarcuse and others have demonstrated, withininterwar Europe, commemoration developed asa genre of sorts.80 But what happened after WWII was different. The HAP demonstrates theglobalization of this language after the war and

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was one of its agents; it literally carriedelements of commemoration – in the forms ofAuschwitz and Hiroshima remains - from Eastto West.

The most bizarre part of this exchange cameafter the marchers' arrival at Auschwitz, when,following the ceremony, they received fromHołuj, a "present of human hair, cloth, shoes,and a t in o f Cyc lon B" to be taken toHiroshima.81 Following this, Satō received "theremains (bone ash – ikotu) of the 4,000.000(sic)… so the tragedy of Hiroshima andAuschwitz will never return (repeat)."82 Theashes were supposed to be taken back toHiroshima and be buried together with theashes of the Hiroshima survivors "foreveruniting the victims." 83 This final act of"exchanging mementos of death," as theChūgoku Shinbun, called it, sealed the pactbetween Auschwitz and the HAP.84 This wasneither the first nor the last time the dead werephysically enlisted in the service of politics inAuschwitz. During the April 1955 ceremonyashes from camps across Europe were broughtby different delegations of survivors, unitingthe ashes of victims across Europe in a highlyliturgical act.85 Ashes from Auschwitz and othercamps were also sent to Yad Vashem inJerusalem, in another highly symbolic act,which, this time returned the Jewish victims"home" to Zion.86 The Auschwitz Museumwould, on at least one other occasion, useashes to cement ties with other organizations.In another act of "death diplomacy," a 1972delegation to Bologna, which attended aceremony to commemorate the Nazi massacresof Italian civilians in Marzabotto, also broughtwith it a can of ashes to be buried togetherwith the Ital ian vict ims. 8 7 Neither inMarzabotto, nor in Hiroshima, was the ashes'(very probable) Jewish identity mentioned. Onthe contrary, these remains were universalizedand robbed of any personal or other identity. Inorder to become the quintessential symbol ofan alliance of victims, they had to be abstractedand taken out of any context. This left no place

for the uniqueness of the Jewish tragedy, letalone for Roma and other more marginalizedvictims. This was much the same trajectory thatthe whole of the HAP enterprise had to follow,from the particular to the universal, from theconcrete to the ideal. This also allowed variouslocal interest groups to use the HAP mission fortheir own needs. The result was that, for all itslofty and good intentions, far from being analliance of victims, the HAP journey actuallyparticipated in marginalizing and obscuring theexperiences of other, less powerful groups ofvictims.

Conclusion – the Founding of the HiroshimaAuschwitz Committee and the mobilization ofsolidarity

Even in Hiroshima, from which the HAPderived its rhetoric and message, abstraction ofvictimization on the level practiced by the HAPproved impossible in the face of local memorypolitics. Upon their return to Hiroshima inAugust 1963, Satō presented the ashes andother remains to mayor Hamai, requesting thatthey be interned in the Peace Park. The mayor,in the presence of a representative of the Polishembassy and other dignitaries, respectfullyreceived them, only to return them thefollowing week.88 Hiroshima City, as we saw,was in no mood for controversy. Hiroshima Cityargued they had "no space" for the remains andthat, for now, it would not be possible to erectany kind of new memorials in the Peace Park.89

Commemoration in Hiroshima was movingaway from anti-nuclear activities and into anemphasis on solemnity and "silent prayer." Asfar as the HAP were concerned, the city,already accused by conservatives of beingsympathetic to radicals, was wary of receivingthese "mementos" from a communist country.Although Satō and the rest of the HAPdesperately tried not to be associated withcommunism or any other kind of politics,eventually they could not escape it; theirabstract victim turned back into a socialist herothat Hiroshima, in its current political mood,

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could not accept.

This led to the rather awkward question ofwhat to do with the remains. Yamada and Satōcontacted Kuwahara Hideki, who headed theHiroshima Religious Association and togetherthey issued a call for men of faith to help themdeal with the situation. Satō Tetsuro from theHiroshima Mitaki Buddhist temple thenstepped forward and offered to keep theremains. The following month Satō Tetsuro,Kuwahara, Yamada and others conferred anddecided to set up a permanent body whichwould raise funds to erect a monument at thetemple for the victims' ashes.90 In October,representatives from the Religious Association,hibakusha organizations and other peacegroups, in the presence of Polish officials, metat the Prefectural Medical Association Hall indowntown Hiroshima and created theHiroshima-Auschwitz Committee. Thecommittee's goals were: "1) to introduce [to theworld] the true state of Hiroshima, Nagasakiand Auschwitz victims; 2) To erect a finalresting place for the ashes of Auschwitz victimsbrought back by the Hiroshima-AuschwitzPeace March; 3) To uphold (promote) the goalsof the international peace appeal movement."91

The Hiroshima Auschwitz Memorial inHiroshima where the Auschwitz remainswere enshrined (photograph by author).

In this act, the Hiroshima Auschwitz Committee(HAC) institutionalized the "victim diplomacy"of the HAP. The HAC now embarked on a grandscheme to develop and expand theseconnections. One of its first acts was toenshrine the remains received from Auschwitzat a shrine in Hiroshima. This was part of amuch larger worldwide trend in which victimsof WW II came to hold a special place in globalmoral d iscourse as wi tnesses of theunspeakable. The idea that survivors hadspecial insight or moral authority should not betaken for granted; it has a complex, non-linearand transnational history. Much of it can betraced to the Eichmann and other trials, butthey do not tell the whole story. The HACrepresents a significant piece of this puzzle. Inthe HAC and the HAP journey, one could see aconvergence of sorts, of different local memorystrands in which the victim/survivor came tohold a special role. Whether it was thehibakusha in Hiroshima and their role inuniting a fractured peace movement; thenational (multi-ethnic) victims in Singapore, oranonymous victims of fascism in Auschwitz, allhad survivors stepping up and using theirvictimization as a tool and, more crucially,abstracting and turning the experience of massdeath into a unifying experience. In bothHiroshima and Auschwitz this was also anexperience that would have internationalsignificance and implications. The exceptionwas the particular and peculiar victimdiscourse in Israel, which did not seek aninternational role for itself. The Jews' emphasison the ethnic character and anti-Semitism ofNazi persecution did not fit in with thepriorities of either Hiroshima or Auschwitz.They were left out; even their dead were nowinstrumentalized and carried as a "memento ofdeath" between the "places of tragedy." Thiswas consistent with the way Japanesecommentators saw the Jews and the wholedrama of WW II and genocide outside of Asiaduring the Eichmann trial, and was evident inthe way the HAC and Hiroshima in generaldealt with others' tragedies in the next three

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decades of its existence.

This article was adapted from the introductionand chapter 5 of my manuscript, Hiroshima:The Origins of Global Memory Culture(http://www.betterread.com.au/book/hiroshima-the-origins-of-global-memory-culture.do),(Cambridge University Press, 2014). A differentmuch extended version appeared at "TheHiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March and theGlobalization of the Moral Witness," Dapim:Studies on the Holocaust, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2013),p p . 1 9 5 – 2 1 1(http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rdap20/27/3).I thank Cambridge University Press forgenerously agreeing to let me use this materialhere.

Ran Zwigenberg is assistant professor ofhistory and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania StateUniversity. He is the author of Hiroshima: TheOr ig in s o f G loba l Memory Cu l tu re(http://www.betterread.com.au/book/hiroshima-the-origins-of-global-memory-culture.do),(Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Recommended citation: Ran Zwigenberg,"Never Again: Hiroshima, Auschwitz and thePolitics of Commemoration," The Asia-PacificJournal, Vol. 13, Issue 3, No. 1, January 19,2015.

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Notes

1 Robert Lifton to David Riesman, 10April 1962,Box 15, Folder 8 (1962) Robert Jay Liftonpapers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. TheNew York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, andTilden Foundations. (NYPL- MSA).

2 Quoted by Ian Buruma, "The Devils ofHiroshima," in the New York Review of Books,25 October, 1990.

3 See Daniel Seltz, "Remembering the War andthe Atomic Bombs: New Museums, NewApproaches," Radical History Review, No. 75,(Fall 1999), p. 95.

4 Carol Gluck, "The Idea of Showa," Deadalus,Vol. 119, No. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 12-13.

5 The quote is from visiting Nigerian Journalistnamed James Boon, who told a Japanesecolleague, "People built this city in order toforget about the bomb…[they] are trying reallyhard to live just like people in other cities."Cited in the Yo miuri Shinbun, 18 June 1962.

6 The epitaph, it must be said, has historicallyraised a fair share of controversy. It states,according to Hiroshima City's official

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translation "Please rest in peace for we shallnot repeat the mistake" (Yasuraka ni nemuttekudasai, ayamachi ha kurikaeshimasenu kara).According to (Saika Tadayoshi, the framer ofthe epitaph (according to a note in hishandwriting in the archives), "Let all the soulshere rest in peace, for we shall not repeat theevil." Who is the "we" and whether it was an"evil" or an "error" or "mistake," have been atopic of great controversy since. The epitaphwas vandalized a number of times, mostrecently in 2005 by a right-wing activist.

7 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory(Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 182.

8 "Hiroshima- Auschwitzu Heiwa Koshin,"Newsletter No. 1, Hiroshima Peace MemorialPark Archive, Kawamato Collection, Box 38,folder 1, No. 911.

9 Ibid.,p. 1.

10 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, "MemoryUnbound: The Holocaust and the Formation ofCosmopolitan Memory," European Journal ofSocial Theory, vol. 5, no. 1 (2002), pp.1063-1087.

11 Sebastian Conrad," Entangled Memories:Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan,1945-2001,"Journal of Contemporary History,Vol. 38, No. 1, Redesigning the Past (Jan.,2003), pp. 86.

12 Jean-Michel Chaumont, La Concurrence desVictimes: Génocide, Identité, Reconnaissance(Paris : La Découverte, 2002); Annett AnnetteWieviorka, The Era of the Witness (CornellUniversity Press, 2006).

13 Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious:Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century,(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,2002), p. 14.

14 The phrase is from Annette Wieviorka's TheEra of the Witness.

15 HAP Newsletter I, P 3.

16 Ibid.,p. 2.

17 Interview with Kuwahara Hideki, Hiroshima,2 July 2010. Kuwahara was the head of theHiroshima Auschwitz committee from itsfounding in 1962 and was involved in the HAPas well. Kato Yuzo and Kajimura Shingo,Hiroshima-Auschwitz Heiwa Koshin: seinen nokiroku, (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1965), p 168; JanFrankowski and others who were involved inorganizing the march (like Satō,Yamada andKuwahara) were also involved in the WorldFederalist Movement through which theyachieved most of their institutional support.See Yamada and Kuwahara's recollections inSekai renbō undō hiroshima niju go nen shiiinkai (ed.), Sekai renbō undō hiroshima niju gonen shi, (Hiroshima: Kawamoto, 1973), pp.138,162 .

18 Interview with Morishita Mineko, Hiroshima,2 July 2010. Morishita is the acting secretarygeneral of the Hiroshima Auschwitz Committee.

19 Katō, who later became a Professor ofChinese History, denies in his memoirs anypolitical involvement in the student movement.Although he wrote a book about the march in1965, which appears in his resume, Katō alsobrushed out the peace march from hisautobiography. He presented it as a studenttrip (or poverty trip-bimbo na ryoko), on whichhe embarked with three friends. He does notacknowledge any connection to the peacemarch or any political activities. Katō refusedto speak to me about the subject for reasonsthat are not clear to me. His 1965 work,however, co-written with Kajimura (whom healso does not give credit to in his list ofpublications), is quite specific about hisinvolvement in demonstrations and otheractivities. See his, Shiken to taiken womegutte, in Yokohama shiritu daigaku ronsōjinbun gakukeiretu, Vol. 54 No. 123 (2003), p.54.

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20 Satō was very bitter and pessimistic aboutthe peace movement. He rightly saw a split inthe movement as imminent and decried themindless rush to violence and sloganeeringamong his colleagues who had "violence,recklessness and rioting as their three sacredregalia," referring ironically to the emperor'sregalia. Katō and Kajimura, p.13.

21 HAP Newsletter I, p. 5.

22 Chūgoku Shinbun, 22 December 1962.

23 Chūgoku Shinbun, 15 June 1961. Dresdensent another message on 6 August. Coventry inthe U.K. as well sent a message to Hiroshima,"wishing to become one of 15 'world peacecities.'" See Chūgoku Shinbun 6 August and 21September 1961.

24 HAP Newsletter I. p. 10: Until 1964 Japanesewere not permitted to travel freely abroad, thegovernment being wary of foreign currencyleaving the country. Thus, the marchers had toget special permission to leave Japan.

25 Alyson M. Cole, the Cult of True Victimhood:From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,2007), pp. 8-9.

26 Chūgoku Shinbun, 6 February 1962. SasakiSadako was a child victim of the A-bomb. Shefamously tried to fold a thousand origamicranes before her death, but failed. Childrenfrom her class were joined by thousandsthroughout the world after Sadako's story waspopularized worldwide through the work ofAustrian writer Karl Bruckner in his workSadako will leben.

27 Ibid; Chūgoku Shinbun, 7 February 1962.

28 The Yomiuri (English edition), 5 August 1963.

29 Kuwahara interview. 2 July 2010.

3 0 The Yomiuri Shinbun had 192 stories

concerning Eichmann in 1962 alone. TheChūgoku Shinbun, had around fifty. There wereas many references for the Holocaust that yearas there were in the Chūgoku Shinbun, for thewhole fifties' decade.

31 Asahi Shinbun 14 June 1960.

32 See for instance Chūgoku Shinbun, 24 March1961 and Yomiuri Shinbun 7 March 1961

33 David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa,Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History andUses of a Cultural Stereotype, (New York:Lexington Books, 2000), pp. 18-19.

34 Goodman and Miyazawa, pp. 139-140.

35 The Anne Frank story was connected toSasaki Sadako's. Both figures, as DavidGoodman and Miyazawa Masanori point out,served to de-historicize and de-politicize theHolocaust and Hiroshima. Americanresponsibility for Sasaki's death was notmentioned. In the case of Anne Frank, it wasnot only in Japan, but also in the U.S. andEurope that Anne Frank's Jewishness wasobscured. For marketing and other reasons,Otto Frank, Anne's father, was eager topromote her image as (an almost American)"every-girl." The universalization and de-Judaization of Anne Frank was particularlynoticeable in Germany For a comparison, seeRoni Sarig, "Sadako Sasaki and Anne Frank:Myths in the Japanese and Israeli Memory ofWW II," in War and Militarism in ModernJapan: Issues of History and Identity, edited byGuy Podoler and Ben-Ami Shillony (Folkestone:Global Oriental, 2009), p. 172.

36 Goodman and Miyazawa, p. 140.

37Ibid. 141.

38 Ibid., p.142.

39 The concentration camps where mostpolitical prisoners were kept received much

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attention, together with the political prisoners -heroes of the resistance, in early postwarsocieties while the death camps, where mostlyJews perished and which had only a fewsurvivors, received much less coverage. SeeSamuel Moyn, A Holocaust controversy: theTreblinka affair in postwar France, (Waltham,Mass: Brandeis University Press, 2005)

40 Yomiuri Shinbun, 26 April 1961.

41 Asahi Shinbun, 16 December 1961.

42 Goodman and Miyazawa, p. 146.

43 Asahi Shinbun, 16 December 1961.

44 Ibid.

45 Asahi Shinbun, 6 April 1961.

46 Yomiuri Shinbun, 14 April 1961.

47 Asahi Shinbun, 16 December 1961.

48 Asahi Shinbun, 17 December 1961.

49 Asahi Shinbun, 2 June 1962.

50 Quoted in Goodman and Mizawa, p. 152.

51 Asahi Shinbun, 12 April 1961 .

52 Yomiuri Shinbun, 11 April 1961.

53 Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors ofHiroshima (University of N. Carolina Press,1991) pp. 321-322.

54 Ibid., p. 322.

55 Ibid.,pp. 322-323.

56 See for instance, Chūgoku Shinbun, 11 April1961. The last discussion included a fascinatingand nuanced account of Judge Landau'sinvolvement in an earlier case, the Kfar Qasimmassacre, where Landau established thejudicial principal of disobeying immoral orders.

57 John Treat, Writing Ground Zero: JapaneseLiterature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1995) p. 10.

58 Ibid.,p. 19.

59 Kurihara Sadako, "Hiroshima no bungaku omegutte: aushiwitzu to hiroshima," in OdaMakoto and Takeda Taijun (ed.) Nihon nogenbaku bungaku (Tokyo, 1983), p. 258.

60 Goodman and Miyazawa, p. 177.

61 Ibid.

62 Katō and Kajimura, p. 9.

63 Out of a population of 50,000, there were lessthen 1,000 Jews left in Salonika. HAPNewsletter 5, p.10; Also Mark Mazower,Salonica City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslimsand Jews 1430-1950 (London, Harper CollinsPublishers, 2004).

64See Jonathan Huener's introduction toAuschwitz, Poland, and the Politics ofCommemoration, 1945-1979, (Athens: OhioUniversity Press, 2003).

65Huener, Auschwitz, p. 92.

66 Ibid., p. 34.

67 Iwona Irwin-Zerecka, "Poland after theHolocaust," in Remembering for the Future:Jews and Christians During and After theHolocaust, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), p.145.

68 Jonathan Webber, "Personal Reflections onAuschwitz Today," in Teresa Swiebocka andJonathan Webber (ed.), Auschwitz: A History inPhotographs (Bloomington:University ofIndiana Press, 1993), p. 283.

69 Katō and Kajimura, p. 174; HAP Newsletter5, p. 15.

70 Kazimierz Smolen, "Auschwitz Today: The

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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum," inAuschwitz: a History at Photographs, p. 261.Smolen makes this outrageous remark just apage or so before emphasizing the solidarity ofPoles and Jews. The incorporation of the Jewishdead as Polish citizens is not unique to Poland.Israel as well annexed their memory andclaimed the Jewish dead as its own. The victimswere treated as martyrs for the state, whosomehow gave their life so that Israel would beborn. There were even serious discussions ofgiving Israeli citizenship ex post facto toHolocaust victims, most of whom werecertainly not Zionists. Israel, however, wheremost survivors lived, had some claim to theHolocaust, whereas in Poland, where Jews werekilled in the thousands after the war andenormous amounts of Jewish property wereexpropriated with no compensation, this usageof the dead was particularly disturbing.

71 See Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism inPoland After Auschwitz. (New York: RandomHouse, 2006).

72 Huener, Auschwitz. p. 49.

73Ibid., 54.

74 Ibid., p. 80.

75 Ibid., p. 112.

76 Katō and Kajimura, p.175.

77 Ibid. pp. 169-174.

78 Ibid., 175.

79 The Yomiuri (English edition), 5 August 1963.

80 Harold Marcuse, "Holocaust Memorials: TheEmergence of a Genre," in American HistoricalReview (Feb. 2010): James E. Young, TheTexture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials andMeaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,1993) I include Israel in this genre. AlthoughYoung and others look at memorials through a

national prism, as Marcuse points out there aretransnational trends (for instance towardsabstraction from the sixties on), which defiednational and ideological boundaries.

81 The Yomiuri (English edition), August 5,1963. These were to be the basis of anexhibition in the Peace Park.

82 Katō and Kajimura, p. 190, the figure of fourmillion was the accepted figure in Poland.

83 The Yomiuri (English edition), August 5,1963. The quote is from the Chūgoku Shinbun,6 February 1963; HAP Newsletter 5 and Katōand Kajimura also discuss the Auschwitzceremony at length.

84Chūgoku Shinbun, 6 February 1963

85 Huener, Auschwitz, p. 117.

8 6 Mooli Brog," Yad la'hayalim ve'shemlachalalim: nisyonot ha'vaad ha'leumi lahakimet yad vashem: 1946-1949, Katedra, No. 199(September, 2005), pp. 116-117.

87 I thank Marta Petrusewicz, a Professor at theCUNY Graduate Center in New York, who wasthen working as an Italian interpreter for thedelegation, for this reference. According toHarold Marcuse, there were quite a lot of ashescirculating around Europe at the time. Theorigin of this custom is obscure but it seemsthat it started right after the war. Survivorsleaving Buchenwald in mid-1945 took eighteenurns of human ash with them to creatememorials around the world. The 1949Hamburg-Ohlsdorf memorial has 105 urns ofashes in it. See Harold Marcuse, "DasG e d e n k e n a n d i e V e r - f o l g t e n d e sNationalsozialismus, exemplarisch analysiertanhand des Hamburger 'Denkmals fu ̈r dieOpfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung unddes Widerstandskampfes' " (M.A. thesis,University of Hamburg, 1985), 59 (citingHamburger Volkszeitung, May 3, 1949), 96–98;Some took the use of ashes a step too far.

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There were a couple of incidents involvingvictims' ashes in Dachau and Flossenbuerg. InDachau, the curator of the exhibition in thecrematorium was accused of selling humanashes to visitors and was fired. (Privatecorrespondence with Marcuse, November 7,2010).

88 Chūgoku Shinbun, 8 August 1963; KuwaharaInterview.

89 Ibid.

90 Kuwahara interview.

91 Chūgoku Shinbun, 18 October 1963.