Experience and Storytelling as Living Education (A Story of Hiroshima)

My thesis ("Homogeneous Schooling and the Perpetuation of Gender Bias and Racial Discrimination in Japanese and Kentucky Classrooms") has been consuming my time lately. I have hardly left my apartment, except to go to Bagelman's to write...so tonight, no thesis, just spirits. So I offer you some insights into my madness....If you have any thoughts, post your comments.

I know many of you won't want to read such a verbose post, so I offer you this: skip all of my blah, blah, blah, and read Kuniko's personal experience, as a young girl living in Hiroshima at the time of the Atomic Bombing (in quotes). She shares an amazing memoir.


STORYTELLING TO REMEMBER

Teachers College lives up to its reputation. As we sit in the chilled room on the 4th floor of the Mitsui Seimei Building, it’s raining outside. Other towering complexes surround us and the sound of subway trains passing comes in through the windows. The walls are freckled with poster paper. We’re here to study peacemaking and conflict resolution, and our friend Kuniko Soga is telling a story from her youth. She begins the narrative following a sociodrama, and when I realize what she’s talking about I’m awestruck.

Hiroshima 1945

"All of a sudden, a flash of light, similar to what is often emitted by a light bulb when it goes out, but is much, much stronger and sharper, blinded our eyes. Then, a big exploding sound pierced our ears, and strong and uncomfortably lukewarm wind almost knocked us down, shaking the whole house and shattering into pieces all the windowpanes of the rooms facing toward the city. Terrified, we all ran into a half-finished shelter my uncle had carved out on the side of a hill right behind the house. After a while, it became very quiet as if nothing had happened. We came out of the shelter and walked up to the top of the hill. There up in the sky, we saw a strange-looking cloud, somewhat like a huge mushroom, in shiny bright pink. We said to each other, “What is it? I haven’t seen anything like that in all my life. The color is so beautiful.” Then, we all fell into silence, stunned by the extremely unusual sight in the sky. I said to myself, “Yes, it is beautiful. It is “my color,” the girls’ color,” the color of clothes and toys for me, an only girl child of the family.

However, it didn’t take long before we realized that what had happened and was happening in the city then was nothing at all beautiful. Thousands of people were thrown alive into hell. Two hours later, breaking the silence of bewildered villagers, badly–injured or severely–burned relatives and friends from the city came running into their houses. Mother’s younger brother who owned a sake shop near the central train station was among them with his wife and two boys whose faces were all covered with blood. They were hit in their heads by falling roof tiles as they escaped from the sea of fire.

That evening, we eagerly and anxiously waited for the two cousins to return home from their schools. Masae, the girl, finally dragged herself home late at night, walking all 20 kilometers from the city. Tsutomu, the boy, did not come home. The following day, my uncle and aunt walked into the city and to the junior high school Tsutomu attended, and saw the school building completely demolished; but they found metal lunchboxes left there placed in a neat line, one after another about 50 centimeters apart. The students who were to eat those lunches their mothers had packed that morning were nowhere to be seen. For nearly a month afterwards, my uncle and aunt went into the city every day, visiting makeshift clinics to look for their son. Tsutomu has never made it home.

One day in late September when the weather got a bit cooler, we had a funeral for Tsutomu. We put in a small wooden coffin his uniform and satchel from his elementary school days, his books and his carpenter’s knife. He was fond of carving broken branches he found in the yard into objects of various shapes for his younger brother and cousins. My mother told me to put something in, too. I didn’t want to put anything pink in the coffin. I chose a white seashell I found by the beach when we went swimming on a more peaceful day a few years earlier.

Sixty–one years later, I still see that huge pink mushroom whenever I look up at the sky and close my eyes. The image of the color is beautiful, but all those ugly scenes underneath keep coming back into my mind, too. Yes, any nation or group can start a war with such beautiful slogans as “Love your country”, “Save those oppressed”, “Bring peace to the world”, etc. Under those beautiful words, lie agony, misery, and the inconsolable sorrow of individual families."


I was studying in the Peace Education program at Teachers College Columbia University in Tokyo with Dr. Betty Reardon, Janet Gerson and Tony Jenkins; and Kuniko, with her wisdom and kindness, had become a good friend. As the story recounts, Kuniko witnessed the tragedy and the dawn of the nuclear age from the distant safety of her home on the outskirts of Hiroshima city. She continues to teach for peace and seek answers to the questions in her heart; but what followed for her that day was a bombardment of psyche and a long reconcilable process between her world, of distant horizons and a shared future.

It was in this learning moment, in this space, when Kuniko first shared her story with us that opened me up to, as an educator, for the possibility of using storytelling as a substantial teaching methodology for education for peace. This moment of experience sharing gave me a personal connection to one of the most horrific moments in the annals of humanity, and gave a grim face to old, yellowed pages in a history textbook. Suddenly history was very real, it was a part of today—today yesterday, yesterday today, and both informing the future—and the periphery of the present broadened for me. It was a collision of the famous words of T.S. Eliot—Time present and time past are perhaps present in time future and contained in time past…In my beginning is my end…In succession houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass—and a living, breathing encounter of Elise Boulding’s concept ‘the 200-year present.’ Boulding (1988) contends that in our 200 year present—those living today born a hundred years ago, and those living a hundred years from their birth today—we will have met many people, created great networks, and made great possibility. In that moment with Kuniko I met another world, and in the span of time of ‘the 200-year present’ extraordinary change is possible.



STORYTELLING AS PEACE PEDAGOGY

The fundamental thesis behind this research is that schooling in homogeneous contexts perpetuates racist and sexist attitudes because students, teachers, administrators, and parents have not been exposed to non-dominant life perspectives, and the diversity that does exist within these schools goes unnoticed. However, this is not to suggest that growing up in homogeneous conditions warrants discriminatory attitudes, but that the singular context may reinforce such beliefs. Consequently, the subordinate groups quietly present within homogeneous situations experience a type of ‘blind’ oppression; and so long as the educators within these homogeneous schooling locales do not experience education and life within diverse areas, they are probably doomed to replicating the homogeneous education they received with all its insidious power dynamics.

If educators leave these contexts to later return, travel to metropolitan regions, study in different locales, and appropriate cosmopolitanism, then they bring back to their schools a radically different education. This education is not necessarily to be valued over, which in so doing would contradict the value of diversity, but is to appreciate the intercultural experiences gained through such an education. These experiences hopefully accompany greater understanding and sensitization toward others, particularly if gained through an experience of oppression, hence developing increased comprehension of motives of oppressors.

Christine Sleeter (1996) writes:

Teachers bring to their work a worldview that is constructed within unequal racial relationships, but they usually do not recognize it as such…Most whites live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, families, social groups, and churches, and consume media that are dominated by whites. Most whites spend little or no extended time on non-white “turf,” although they may incorporate a few people of color into their own worlds…Travel and contact experiences can sometimes help whites realize how much they do not understand about race relations and sensitize them to injustices and to perspectives and experiences of other groups. (pp. 79-80).

One of the great successes of the feminist movement and other movements of the 20th century has been to expose the injustices that perpetuate social institutions (i.e., schools, governments, patriarchy, marriage, etc.). In unclothing these injustices feminist scholars have documented struggles by sharing and recording histories. This process of sharing, listening, and recording lived experiences of the marginalized empowers those ‘without a voice’ by giving the silenced vociferation. Essentially this act is accomplished through the art of storytelling. Listening to, respecting and earnestly being interested in the experiences of all helps to counter the hegemony of the dominant groups. Mies (1983) writes:

Women have so far not been able to appropriate, i.e., make their own, the social changes to which they have been subjected passively in the course of history. Women do make history, but in the past they have not appropriated their history as subjects. Such a subjective appropriation of their history would lead to something like a collective women’s consciousness (in analogy to class consciousness) without which no struggle for emancipation can be successful. The appropriation of women’s history can be promoted by feminist scholars who can inspire and help other women to document their campaigns and struggles. (p. 127).

Senehi (2000) claims storytelling is a means of peacebuilding:

Storytelling—like all cultural production is a means through which community is constructed. Through stories, groups and societies create, recreate, and alter social identities, power relations, knowledge, memory, and emotion…Thus, peacebuilding involves community building in a way that is driven forward by the parties themselves and not imposed from above or without. (p. 97).

This style of respecting and being engaged with others’ experiences is potentially accrediting for the subjected and presents the opportunity to rehear and understand the world from varied perspectives, especially those of the subjugated classes. And what is storytelling but an act of art. Like the recording of oral histories, storytelling also acts as a form of historical documentation. Storytelling is one of the great forms that give song to the unsung. As discussed above, this thesis proposes the intervention of Peace Education and the arts to deal with issues of injustice in the classroom. Cynthia Cohen (2005) writes:

Engaging with the arts can generate, for both individuals and collectivities, for creators and spectators, special qualities of attention and response -- such as disinterestedness, committed participation, meta-cognitive alertness, receptivity, and blissful serenity. These qualities of attention and response afford unique opportunities for learning, empathy, reflexivity, creativity, innovation and experimentation. The engagement with a work of art or cultural form that gives rise to these special qualities of attention and response can best be understood within the framework of aesthetic experience. (n.p.).

Storytelling is, therefore, apparatus for conflict transformation. Through the use of storytelling an opportunity is given for participants to share their lived experiences, affirm each other, and create and internalize new possibilities. The use of the arts in the classroom leads to richer discussion and more complete engagement by the students who are aesthetically engaged, as well as scientifically, which in return promises deeper reflection, altered attitudes, and changed behaviors.

If all societies have elements of peaceful behavior (Boulding, 2000), the practice of peace storytelling then could be utilized as a technique for eliciting stories of peace, as well as for envisioning peaceful futures. This would in effect help to raise problems, dialogue solutions, and potentially lead to reconciliation through storytelling. Essentially this is a participative process of community building between the individual and society. Boulding refers to the influence of Fred Polak’s work on her research as a sociologist. Polak discovered that the images of the future that peoples hold for themselves in fact influences their behaviors. Societies ‘tended to be empowered by positive images of the future.’ (ibid, p.105). Peace storytelling acquaints us with stories of peace from the past and constructive ways of dealing with adversity, conflict and injustices today and in the future. Each society has numerous peace heroes of the past to write volumes on and to share with children. Augusto Boal’s Theatre as a form of storytelling aids education cohorts in imaging peaceful culture through the exploration of microcosmic relations, particularly transition images from a system of oppression to a world of liberation.


STORYTELLING FOR TRANSFORMATION

We return to Kuniko Soga’s story. Her vision of the future, 100 years following the bombardment, and several generations after but connected to that catastrophic morning of August 1945. Kuniko’s vision offers faith, healing, and a critical mind. This chapter ends with her story as it exemplifies one possible classroom activity for schoolteachers—creative writing and storytelling as sharing and envisioning a better world—and is an exploration of values and, not least of all, hope. Storytelling is a means to remember, to share, and to create possibilities.


Hiroshima 2045

"In July, 2045, Taro is sitting in a peace education class at a junior high school in Hiroshima. The class meets once a week, and what he learns has helped him a lot to resolve conflicts peacefully with his friends, siblings and parents. Since childhood Taro has been told by his parents and grandparents that an atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima by a US bomber in 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of people instantly. His great-grandmother was at school in Hiroshima city then, but she narrowly escaped from the sea of fire, by running for her life all the way home. Her younger brother was killed at the age of 12.

At that time in 1942-45 when Japan was at war with the United States, many young people went to battlefields, with the firm determination that they would put even their lives at risk in order to protect their own country, their parents or their families from the enemy. They believed that fighting fiercely was the only right way to resolve the conflict between the two countries, because information about situations in other parts of the world was not easily available due to the lack in information technology. The radio and the newspapers were practically the only means of mass media, and the news sources were strictly controlled by the government and the military. At school, students were indoctrinated to believe only what the military government wanted the young people to know.

Taro is 12 years old now, the same age of his great-grandmother’s brother when he was killed by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima 100 years ago. Education and information technology have changed greatly ever since. The global network of the Internet has made it possible for anyone, even a young boy like Taro, to access information he needs to investigate and get hold of social and physical environments he’s currently surrounded with. Good English education has enabled the students to understand the vast pool of English information put out by diverse sources in the world. At school, students are taught how to analyze the information they acquire and raise proper questions to lead them into the next step in their search for the truth. Bringing together the results of their research to the classroom, the teacher and the students discuss a lot to broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of situations that surround them in the world.

In the past 30 years, Japan has maintained independent defense capability against a military or other violent attacks by any aggressive nation. It had taken Japan a long time since the end of WWII in 1945 to came out free of the US military umbrella by terminating the bilateral agreement of the Japan-US Security Treaty. Japan has put in efforts to train professionals who can develop advanced scientific knowledge and skills in defending the country. They have also been educated about high moral values of non-violence and respect for the basic human rights of any person on earth. At the same time, our diplomats are well disciplined in negotiating with others to arrive at a peaceful resolution to any conflict. With the strong defense body staffed and supported by these capable scientific, technical and diplomatic professionals, Japan can now stand firmly on her own in dealing with other independent nations.

Such change in the attitude and structure of Japan’s self-defense body has been promoted by the increasingly strong commitment of all the UN member countries to the multilateral efforts in maintaining peace in the world. Whenever any disruption to world peace or any conflict among nations should take place anywhere in the world, the revitalized UN takes an initiative in listening to parties involved, and bringing their cases to the discussion table of the UN. After the deliberate and fair judgment of each case, the UN negotiates with parties concerned or organizes some defense body for action, if necessary, to restore peace. In the latter case, every member country contributes their defense capability in one form or another in accordance to what the UN decides.

One-hundred years after the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Taro lives in a much safer world, because of good education, a strong sense of responsibility and capability by Japan for her own self-defense, and the firm commitment by all the UN member nations for cooperative and multilateral efforts in maintaining peace in the world. His life won’t be violently nipped off early like his great-grandmother’s brother was, but he can look forward to putting what he received through education to the service of making the world a better and safer place for the next generation of people. On the other hand, Taro feels grateful to his great-grandmother for running for her life from the atomic-bomb catastrophe.　Because she had survived he’s here today to enjoy a happy and peaceful life."