THE ROAD FROM HIROSHIMA: A POWERFUL POETIC DRAMATIZATION OF THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA 80 YEARS AGO

From Pacific Radio in San Francisco, this is FlashPoint. I'm Dennis Bernstein. Today on the show, The Road from Hiroshima, a powerful poetic dramatization on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago, August 6th, 1945. Also, nuclear madness meets AI will feature our regular Thursday live collaboration with Pink Notes, with Code Pink Cynthia Papermaster and company. And their company, their special company tonight, is Patricia Ellsberg, who was arrested this AM for protesting U.S. instigated wars around the globe. What a show. Stay tuned. And you're listening to FlashPoints on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Burrenstein. This is your daily investigative news magazine. We have been coming to you for the last 40 years, five days a week over the Pacifica Radio Network, founded by folks who were willing to go to jail. to resist war. And we continue that tradition here at KPFA. Our guest, and the special guest of our segment called Pink Notes, where we collaborate with Code Pink, our special last minute guest is Patricia Ellsberg, public speaker, meditation teacher, spiritual mentor, and Dan Ellsberg's widow. As she joins us, she was up early this morning. Patricia Ellsberg, what were you doing at sunrise today? Poor sunrise. I'm getting up at 6th, but I went out to Livermore Labs out in Livermore, and 89% of their budget is related to nuclear weapons. They design new nuclear weapons. And every year on August 6th, for obvious reasons, when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, There's a rally out there with some wonderful talks in the morning, and then about probably 45 or 50 us got arrested, which was very moving because we bind up to block cars from coming into this particular gate of Livermore Labs. But there are other Bill Gates, so we weren't, you know, we couldn't go around the whole thing. It's miles big. But there were about 40, 50 of us, just standing and getting arrested. And the policemen actually were, they were bored, but they were.

perfectly polite and you get a slip of paper you know with a summons but you don't have to do anything so but the the thought of a lot of them were gray-haired ladies like myself and the thought of people taking this day in honor of the horror of us dropping bomb on Hiroshima to protest and put their bodies on the line And it's very moving. So the whole thing went on for, it was very hot. I had to lie down. You lie down as if you're, you know, been incinerated or been shocked by the bomb. And so I was lying down in this hot pavement in 90 degree weather. But that, and then we went and lined up to get arrested. very moving. And the more I heard about the incredible, 89% of Livermore Labs, and they have labs throughout the country, you get $4 billion at least, is working on nuclear weapons. And I think Cynthia may speak about this, but that... They also use AI, which is going rogue, as we know, recently. They have a whole huge program on AI research. Can you imagine nuclear weapons and AI? I mean, that is terrifying. Either one of them by themselves is terrified, but you put the two together. So it really was a wonderful experience and a lovely group of people. And of course, Dan, I would go out with Dan, and I missed him. And it was fun because when we lie down with the idea of five minutes of silence imagining the bomb starting to come down on us. and being incinerated. But we'd hold hands, so it was actually quite romantic. So when we'd lie down, we'd hold it. And I really missed him. But then I got to speak instead of him, and that was good. And what's the message that you want to go? We're going to bring Code Pink into this. And they're focusing, like, laser on the defense budget, which is... again, what, over 1.4 trillion, 1.3 trillion and 1.4 trillion who's quivering here on weapons to kill people around the world. I guess, and Code Pink is on this, but what did Dan think? By the way, was he cognizant that we were going to have a problem with... AI with artificial intelligence. Was he already worrying about that? Was it up yet?

No, it wasn't, he hadn't made the connection yet because he died three years ago. And AI wasn't, you know, such a topic and such a threat as it's become with the billions of dollars that are being invested in it. But I just was looking up Dan Sullivan book, The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Because when I read it, it came out a couple of years ago. The prologue had a very beautiful passage, and it's very short, and we'll summarize it in a couple of sentences. But he had gotten a question up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was working under McNamara and in the Pentagon, in the State Department. And he got this question to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The question to the Joint Chiefs was this. If your plans for general nuclear war are carried out as planned, how many people will be killed in the Soviet Union and China? And the answer came back in various graphs and Europe and how many deaths. But it added up. The total death toll is calculated by the Joint Chiefs from a U.S. first strike aimed at the Soviet Union until the wars are packed in China would be roughly 6 million dead. That's from our attacks. I mean, and then what Dan did become really obsessed by in the last years of his life was the thought that nuclear winter, if enough nuclear bombs such as nuclear war here, which... And we are using it. We are using nuclear weapons in the sense that Vladimir Putin said, if Ukraine goes badly, he'll use a nuclear weapon. And it's at the core of NATO. So we're using them the way, if I pointed a gun at you, I don't have to shoot it to be using it to make a robbery or whatever it is I'm doing. It's actually at the center. And so Dan... just said that he would devote the rest of his life to trying to avert that the plans for general nuclear war would ever be enacted. And the last thing I'll say now, because we want to have a discussion, not a monologue here, is that it's...

The thought of nuclear, the thought of Vladimir Putin and Trump having their one pudgy thumb with Trump, I don't know about Vladimir Putin's thumb, but those two thumbs are those two despotic, cruel, vicious leaders, despots. It's insane, that we are subject to that kind of degradated morality, you know, immorality. It's a very present problem. When we got the terminal diagnosis three years ago that Dan had terminal pancreatic cancer, the first words, we got the definitive answer. he said was, I'm relieved. because I don't want to be around of what I fear might happen happens. And he was referring to Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons if things go against him. And Dan Sullivan analysis of that to just finish my monologue is that it would have escalated. It would have been devastating to Ukraine. but that we would then respond and that it might be curtains if a nuclear winter could happen from that escalation. So this is not... a thing of the past or a thing of the future. It's right now and, of course, the future. Well, your protest and your arrest, Patricia Ellsberg, has everything to do with what Code Pink has been up to in terms of one of the key organizations resisting, expanding warfare and the kind of hegemony that goes along with a cruel power. despot. You've been talking about them. Joining us to talk more about the defense budget, we're hoping that you'll stay by with us. And joining us now is Danaka Kadyakovich. She is very deeply engaged as the national co-director of Code Pink. She's based in Washington, I'm sorry, in Chicago. She's an activist writer, and as I said, works very closely with code pink. The budget, am I right there? The budget's one, the budget is $1.3 or $1.4 billion? I mean, it's hard. I don't even know how many zeros that is.

Yeah, the request from the Trump administration was $1.5 trillion. The number that was authorized by the most recent Senate bill is about $1.1 trillion, but we can expect with various supplemental funding bills for it to reach $1.5 trillion. But I'll also say because of the way... The Pentagon works, but also other agencies like the Department of Energy, which gets a lot of nuclear funding for nuclear weapons. A lot of what we spend on the military isn't traditionally counted in the Pentagon budget or the NDAA or the war budget or whatever you want to call it. I think the highest estimate on what our actual spending was for last year. was $2.2 trillion if it includes the Coast Guard, which is also not counted in the Department of Defense budget. All the DOE nuclear weapons are also not counted. The lowest estimate including interest was $1.7 trillion, and that's from last year. So the funding's actually higher, but the most recent passage, which will not be the final. We won't see the final Pentagon budget for next year for a couple months. was $1.1 trillion. Wow. And Cynthia, you want to jump in here and talk a little bit about what you've been focusing on? And we'll talk more about this budget and what these weapons are used for. Yeah, I just, thank you, Dennis. I just want to talk really quickly about the National Defense Authorization Act and what happened on July 15 in the House of Representatives. They took a vote on what's called the Thomas Massie Amendment. The Thomas Massie Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act was to... prohibit the merging of the United States and Israeli militaries. That amendment that Thomas Massie, a Republican, put forward, failed. But here's what's so interesting. 103 Democrats courageously voted yes on that amendment to prevent the Israeli and U.S. militaries to merge, including Nancy Pelosi. And many of what, you know, the progressive Democrats in Congress, 98 Democrats voted no on it, and that includes Hakeem Jeffries, who. was the Speaker of the House no longer because the Democrats are in the minority now. And 10 Democrats voted present, including my representative, Jared Huffman and the other Sonoma County Representative Mike Thompson. And we went to a town hall yesterday that Huffman and Thompson had. And we ended up disrupting it because they wouldn't call on us to allow us to ask a question about that. So five of us or six of us stood up with our pink.

signs questioning their vote for their present vote. What was that? That vote You know, I mean, we're very, very disappointed. We're very disappointed. If Nancy Pelosi can vote for that amendment, then I think that our representatives, all of our representatives should have voted for it. But anyway, I just wanted to say that because it's really important for people to look at the records, the voting records of their representatives and to confront them if they're voting for more weapons for Israel, if they're voting for a one point... one trillion or whatever it ends up to be budget um for for endless war and endless weapons so thank thank you for letting me rant but i'd love to hear more from danica because um she has a hard i loved i was going to say i was going to ask donica now to talk about what's new uh in the budget which uh clearly includes AI in all its incarnations. I'm wondering when people ask you what's really happening, what really concerns you in terms of what's in that budget now. Talk a little bit about what's in there and why. Yeah. So like Cynthia said, the merging of the Israeli and U.S. militaries in terms of fighting and intelligence is definitely concerning. A lot of people have been talking about that, which is great. There's also a $30 billion investment to build an AI arsenal. It's called the AI Arsenal Initiative to use AI and military targeting and other sort of functions of the U.S. military, which is... Very, very frightening. AI Now and Air Wars just came out with this visual investigation report. I think it was last week called, it's called Anatomy of an AI kill chain. And you scroll through it and it shows you how all the ways AI could be used in a targeted strike and also every single instance of where it could go wrong and where without human. human eyes looking at it, it could kill civilians. Like we've seen already in the U.S. war on Iran, where Claude, which is a tool from Anthropic, the AI company, was used to target an elementary school that killed 120 people, mostly children, and at 23 of their teachers, I believe. So. There's a huge investment into AI, which will bolster this spike of the building of data centers that we're seeing all over this country, that activists who are opposing it are being prosecuted, that they're being called foreign agents. It's very, very frightening. And then also huge, huge investments into nuclear weapons, which...

I will say, isn't exactly new, but it is still frightening that we are spending billions and billions of dollars building up a nuclear arsenal while people like Pete Hegseth are saying and pleading to Congress for more money for the war and Iranics, we've ran out of weapons. It's a little concerning that they're pouring billions of more dollars into nuclear weapons at the same time. And like I said, it split up between the DOD, the Department of Defense or Department of War. in the NDAA or Pentagon budget, there's so many names for it. So I don't want people to get confused. That's all the same thing. And then also the Department of Energy. And I can't really make out how they split these things up, for example. In the DoD side, in the Department of War side, in the Pentagon budget, you know, it's B-21 strategic bombers. That's where you'll see funding for the ballistic missile submarine in the tune of $16 billion. The B-52 bombers are in the DoD, same for dual-capable, nuclear-capable F-35 warplanes. And then in the DOE, it's the... B-61-13 gravity bomb, nuclear warheads, the Sentinel is also in the DOE budget as well, and then stockpile sustainment to the tune of $1.9 billion. Listening to flashpoints on Pacific Radio, that is the voice of Naka Kidovich. She is national co-director of Code Pink. She's been keeping an eye on the Pentagon, and you could hear the extraordinary sums of money and plans that the Pentagon has for the future of the world. It's absolutely terrifying. think about it, the more we understand why Patricia Ellsberg, you feel it necessary to get arrested. And why do you think you need to take that extra step? What do you want people to hear when you decide to get arrested, that it's not just enough to show up at a protest? You know, it's interesting. My husband, Daniel, was so happy when he was getting arrested. And I would go along with him because I wanted to do it. And it's not that scary. And, you know, you get a citation. I mean, I don't want to be puffed up here. I have been in a pen around Livermore, you know, with a bunch of women, but we got let out after an hour or something, crowded, probably 80 women, gray-haired also. But... But it's a spiritual testimony. You know, I felt so inspired, so connected to something higher than myself. In standing there in a line of, as I say, often gray-haired with it, but there were young ones as well. There's something uplifting. And in this case, there wasn't much.

at stake so i don't want to make it you know it sounds i was arrested it was civil disobedience and it seems that that is a very important thing um i have been in jail i have dan was arrested 80 or 90 times 80 or 90 times you know i i was in a hotel room with uh Daniel Ellsberg while he was getting ready, getting dressed, getting ready to go to Rocky Flats, a nuclear trigger center where he and Alan Ginsberg were about to get arrested. And it was an extraordinary combination, the poet and the sort of the... The technological visionary there together at Rocky Flats, where they make the triggers for the nuclear, for the hydrogen bombs, the big bombs. And, you know, he really did seem like it was an exalted moment, and he felt like he couldn't be. Yes, please. Well, I mean, it just, there's something uplifting about it and taking a stand, you know, and it's different from talking. And you just, the police are coming and they happen to be nice gentlemen, just they wouldn't know, you know, nothing mean. I mean, the warning was kind of scary because it said, um, force can be used and some other kind of. I forget what it was. I'd never heard of it. But they were saying you could be subject to being doused with water and streams. And so you get a little, whoa, am I doing the right thing here? Thank you, Patricia. I'd just want to thank you very much for going out. I've been arrested there many times myself. Probably together we have. Absolutely not. I used to go on field trips there, and I didn't know until after I moved away that they worked on nuclear weapons there. Obviously, they didn't mention it to the fifth graders they had walking around the joint. Eighty-nine percent of their budget is nuclear. And now they're combining with AI. I mean, you know, there's a threat from AI, there's a threat from nuclear and climate change, and all the money is going to the nuclear and the AI. and not to climate change because that's supposedly a hoax. Patricia, who's your congressperson? Is it Latifah Simon? I'm sorry, who's what? Your congressperson. Do you know? Oh, I don't know who the local one is, which I don't get, but the senators shift in the city or somebody. Yeah. Somebody. It's some good person. Alex Padilla. I'm going to get very involved with the midterms. Wonderful.

That seems to me one of the most important things, and we have a chance because Trump has, you know, just gone down in the tubes. We would like your help to defeat the National Defense Authorization Act, the one point, whatever trillion dollars it is, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure that Schiff and Alex Padilla, our two California senators, vote no on that. And strip the provision out to merge the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Young, will that be calling me? Okay. To do whatever I can. Yay. No, it's true. Organizing in motion on the air. You heard it here on FlashPoint on Pacifica Radio. Let me tell you who these beautiful voices are. This is Patricia Ellsberg, the wife of the late Daniel Ellsberg, a very close person to this show. And anything, every time, any way I could get an excuse. to get him in front of the microphone. I did. And he was always very generous with this time, but obviously more generous with his vision and his role in trying to transform this country before it turns into World War IV. We thank you, of course, before we let you go, Cynthia, I think you had a few. Program those stuff you wanted to talk to people about or encourage them to do. We've got a minute or two here. Okay. I'd like Danica to have the last word, but I'm going to just say really quickly, we're having a peace camp. up here in Occidental. It's a two-day peace camp, August 22 and 23. We'll have sessions on the National Defense Authorization Act, Cuba, Palestine, and we're going to have a guest speaker on the taxpayers against genocide petition to hold our government officials accountable on the genocide. So that's happening. Danica, do you have a final? Yeah, we have a lot of programming coming up because we're approaching the 25th anniversary of the start of the war on terror. So we'll have a lot of programming. Next week we have a webinar on the Red Scare. And if you're interested, because it came up here a lot on the implications of merging AI in the military, I will be putting together a webinar with the authors of the study I mentioned earlier. And that will be coming up soon. And people can just sign up for web updates at codpink.org. All right. Anything else? Well, again...

I want to say thank you to the three of you. What a wonderful segment. Obviously, you're all welcome. Open Door Policy. We'll be continuing our Pink Notes with Code Pink and with Cynthia Papermaster. We appreciate all the incredibly important information. So thank you all. You are listening to FlashPoint on Pacifica Radio. We're going to take a short musical break, and then I'm going to introduce you to the road. from Hiroshima. Stay tuned. And you're listening to Flash Points on Pacifica Radio on August 6, 1988. I had the honor of producing the powerful extended prose poem, The Road from Hiroshima by Mark Kaminsky. The production was originally broadcast nationally 40 years ago on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it is more relevant now than ever on the 80th anniversary. with the U.S. nuclear subs hovering off the shores of Russia and the atomic clock shows we are a hairline away from a nuclear war. Listen to this, The Road from Hiroshima. In Berkeley, I'm Dennis Bernstein. You're listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. 20 years ago today, I produced a 29-minute documentary, The Road from Hiroshima, based on the book-length poem of that name by Mark Kaminsky. The work was widely acclaimed and received the National Art of Peace Award. On the 60th anniversary of the only atomic civilian bombings, we rebroadcast, this 24-track production of Kaminsky's very moving poem with the original compositions, The Road from Hiroshima. Here's my original introduction some 20 years ago. The route from Hiroshima tells a story of the nuclear age. The poems are the voices of survivors of the first atomic bombing. A poet, a shopkeeper's assistant, a doctor, an old woman, a missionary, a girl in a white blouse. We journey with them from the anxiety of waiting through the horror of a nuclear attack, past numbness and shock, to a gradual return to feeling and a sense of responsibility. The Road from Hiroshima is a road we must all travel in order to live sanely in the nuclear age. We now present Mark Kaminsky's The Road from Hiroshima. The Road from Hiroshima.

Part 1. Field of Lost Edges From the journals of the poet Nakajima Hiroshi. Year's Day, 1945. The screeching alarm bells and rattle of anti-aircraft fire woke me at 3 o'clock this morning. The enemy planes had already passed over our house and were dropping incendiary bombs in the far distance. After they all clear, my daughters went up to Gobinden Shrine to pray. Today. The temple bells that signaled the end of the year did not sound. And it began to snow just before dawn. Bit by bit in unison, the sky and the earth became one color, and the seven rivers froze. In the afternoon, the snowfall grew heavier. From the hills at Futavana Osato, I looked down at Hiroshima, and I saw the many bridges of the city bleed into the white rivers, and the rivers meld with the unaccustomed whiteness of the streets, and the sun breaks through onto this field of lost edges, turning it into a blinding sheet of light.

What can this mean? Snowfall in January. They walked side by side, with their heads bowed, speaking in whispers, old and young, walking home from the factories. When was the last time this happened? Snow on the inland sea, in the warmth of our winter? The old ones tried to remember details of the storm which befell their grandparents, and what followed that cancelling of our climate. The young ones insisted, it is not a sign that some catastrophe will come before the year is out. In whispers, the questions, in whispers, the answers, the repetitions. It is an omen that the B-29s will continue to pass over Hiroshima without dropping their load. Our luck will hold good. Listening as always to the conversations among which I walk, I measure the intervals between these exchanges of the correct views. Each day they get longer. The list of things we dare not say has gotten so huge it blots out nearly all discussion. Once we had victories of the Imperial Army to talk about. Then there was rationing. Then factory work. Then the black market. Then the air raids. But all that was used up. Today, we have snow in January. Walking side by side, with their heads bowed, the young and the old have trouble managing even a few words of encouragement. They sputter and fall silent. And that's when I hear them crying that the war has gone on too long. that our luck can't hold, that holidays can't be told apart from days of hunger, and every day beaten into nightmare by the erratic air raid warnings and lack of sleep, the endless drills and hours of volunteer labor. Nothing exists now but the war. In the snow, I heard them crying out against the monotony, the terror. Let them get it over with. We've been at it so long. Let the worst of it be over. Let me come. Part two. The Passion. The German Missionary. The shopkeeper's assistant. August 6th, 1945. August 6th, 1945. A terrible flash rushed from east to west and became everywhere at once. There was a wave of heat that reached under my clothes and scorched my skin. It passed. The sky held its breath. Trees broke into flame. There was a blank in time. It happened. Something like an electric short. A bluish-white light blanked out everything. There was noise. More than the ground beneath me could take. Then a huge boom came thundering toward the mountain. I felt great heat. Even inside the house. I was underneath the destroyed house. A violent rush of a... took my body and flung it against the ground. My hair tangled in branches. A wall of wind pressed my being into the earth. I thought a bomb has fallen directly upon me. Our house has been directly hit. There was a silence. Then a series of shattering sounds. I became furious. A mass of clouds rose and climbed rapidly into the sky. A column of boiling clouds spread and climbed, erupted. Unfolded sideways, constantly changing shape and color, climbed higher and wider.

then burst at the summit and put out a monstrous head that loomed over everything. Then I felt a kind of danger. I looked out over a ledge of rock. I didn't know where I was or what I was under. And what I felt then and what I feel now, I can't explain. It was not shock or horror I became mute with. I thought, I'm going to die. I could see streets in the distance, a few buildings standing here and there, but Hiroshima didn't exist. I saw. Hiroshima did not exist. A white blouse. Even now, I can't remember how I threw off the bodies that boxed me in and got to my feet. How I thrust aside the passengers swarming against me. How I climbed back onto the platform. I took one step, then another, but they came upon me like lava. They scalded. They knocked me off balance. They carried me toward the burning cars. I hit against something hard. I threw my arms around it, wrapped my legs around it, not aware of what I was doing. I held on as wave after wave beat against me, smashing my chin against steel, pulling my arms from their sockets. My whole body racked and numb. I clung to that pillar.

Eventually, it was quiet. I tried to open my eyes. I thought, Lord, why have you blinded me? I thought, this is happening in a dream. Then I saw a light brown haze, obscure everything. A chalky ash fell through the air. There wasn't a soul on the platform, but they're shoes. Hundreds of shoes, left and right, separated. Clogs, sandals, slippers, all overturned, under hoods and parasols. Only the shoes and hats, like headstones and footstones. And I, the only one left? Black smoke rising here and there. And Nakahirocho, where my parents lived. Already in flames. Apologizing in my heart, I turned away from their home to seek shelter. Leaving Yalkagawa station, I couldn't make out the road. I walked through what had once been a house. Shreds with someone's daily routine, a clock, an ironing ward. A photograph of a sailor with a boy on his back. Pieces of white blouse and mattress hanging from telegraph poles. Anyone here? I realized I was together with a dead woman in her bedroom. Only we weren't really inside the house. All the walls between outside and inside missing.

Beginning to fan out before me, around me, everywhere was out of doors and cemetery. Bits of sky fluttered into view were swallowed and spat out elsewhere. Light dropped through holes in the whirling cloud cover. And I was not alone. A boy. Clinging to an emergency bucket of sand. I went toward him. I wanted to take his hand. But he shivered away from me, hugging his bucket as if it could keep him from floating off. Another strand of black smoke. The debris was populated. Naked and half-naked men and women reeled against me. And a small voice under the wreckage. Only a pair of legs could be seen, but a group formed around the block of concrete that sealed her in. Pushing in five different directions, we couldn't move it. Forgive us, the others said. But I stayed how long I can't say, praying with her. Then I too went away. One thing consoled me. My watch was still ticking. It was 8.31, only 16 minutes since the blast. I began counting footsteps, timing my progress. 9.15 a.m. From a distance, I could see only the woman lying on her side, half-blocking the other end of the bridge. And the refugees, as they approached her, hesitated. One turned back and ran toward the burning city. What is it? I cried, but she didn't answer. You'll get past this, I told myself, if you don't look. But after counting a hundred steps, afraid something bad was about to happen, I dropped my hands. And a baby girl was undoing the buttons of her mother's blouse. I drew close, and I saw her clutch at the breasts of a corpse. She looked up at me, terrified. What could I possibly do for her? Go on. I said to my legs, step over the body and go on. 9.20 a.m. A girl my age was standing with vacant eyes in the middle of...

I ran my fingers across the skin of my face. When I looked down at my hands, there was blood on them. So I got the mirror out of my emergency kit and located a small cut on my eyebrow, which I washed with spittle. And I did up my hair in a handkerchief, neatly, and went on. 9.40 a.m. I was wearing a white blouse with a blue pattern. It was free of dirt, and it didn't get torn. 4.30 p.m. I reached my aunt's village, and I went to the river to wash my clothes. The moment I dipped my blouse in the water, it fell apart. Days of terror from the journals of the poet Nakajima Hiroshi. September 1st. One by one those who escaped with light injuries began to sicken. Nosebleeds, bloody vomit, bleeding from the vagina, blood spots under the skin. With these signs, the bomb took up its second life among us. Without privacy, we open every fold of our bodies to anyone who happens to be looking, hundreds of times a day looking for the hidden spot that tells how soon each of us is going to turn the mulberry color of worms and die.

endless every night this new death draws refugees to the hospital the front entrance and courtyard covered each morning anew with bloody feces corridors and stairwells crowded with dying each in his own black cloud of flies and the odor On the night I pulled a clump of hair out of my skull. I lost control. And I, too, lay there in a pool of self-loathing. Corpse duty, the social worker. On one of those nights, I met a soldier who I just returned to the city. where I, for days, had been losing count of the hours, collecting and cremating corpses. On the site of one of the burnt-out shrines near Matoba Bridge, suddenly we saw blue phosphorescent flames, slender blue flames around the bodies of the dead. To those who had just come from the outside, it looked like a devastated plain on which the spirits of our kin were leaving Hiroshima. Blue phosphorescent flames are what we had always looked upon as spirits rising from the dead. Yet I in those days had gone into a state in which I feared nothing. The soldier fell to the ground, unable to speak or go on. I said, the dead are still burning. In another hour, you will get used to it.

the doctor. Even those who looked like they were going to be spared were not spared. Weeks after the bombing, after what turned out to be a deceptive period of remission, many of the survivors began to develop peteckii. I know it is terrible to say, but those spots were beautiful. Red, green, yellow, and black. All over the body. by the stories survivors tell when they first arrive, I turn my back to the wall. Even so, I take down everything they say, incessantly feeding the pages of my diary.

Part 4 in Morning to give comfort from the journals of the poet Nakajima Hiroshi September 3rd. He tells me he is a scrivener. He tells me he is sorry for talking too much. And he tells me this story. In Danbarashin Machi, he came upon four girls at the side of the road, and he wouldn't have stopped, but they were sitting in a circle. They were sitting and facing each other in a circle. And this struck him as a remarkable thing. More than that, an act of resistance, something like meditation, like women in a temple courtyard. So he was drawn to them. And their eyes, unlike those of the victims around them, their eyes were open. And they were looking into each other's faces, a circle of eyes. And this, more than anything else he saw that day, kept death from taking dominion everywhere. He asked one of them where her home was. She said, this is my home. I am Yoshiko, oldest daughter of the poet Nakajima Hiroshi. If you meet my father or mother, tell them not to waste time looking for me, or Nanai, or Misa, or Aunt Missau. We are all going to die right here. The others nodded in agreement. And the tears came. and he was helpless before them. Yoshiko said, if you would shield us from the sun, if you would find a way to shield us from the wind, it would make us quite happy. So he built them a lean-to of straw mats and a few sheets of corrugated steel, and he went inside and sat with them for a while. In his lunchbox, three ripe tomatoes, which he sliced into halves, and he squeezed the juice onto the lips and into the mouths of my daughters. And though they could barely swallow, each one mumbled, Oishi-e, delicious.

Past one o'clock, Dr. Murai stops at my bedside before going to sleep. He tells me, your daughters had the good fortune not to die like a piece of debris, a blackened tile, a piece of sentient debris no longer human. Today I walked through fields of carbonized flesh and rubble, and I thought, Those who had someone's cry for them, those who died hearing the Hot Sutra chanted for them, or with any sign that their death concerned the living, those who were sheltered in any form from the bounderlessness of the A-bomb. Those few died a happy death in Hiroshima. September 9th, days of torrential rain relieve us of the August sun. weeds and wildflowers bloom riotously at their first taste of sweet potato since the bombing patients throughout the ward murmur oishi and i startle everyone and myself crying violently and without shame for my daughters

The old woman. The German missionary. Two men were pushing a hand card up the sloping street, chairs, hymnals, altar gear, the organ console, carrying our church in pieces out of Hiroshima. And I was not with them. I, John, sent into the mountains before them, was building an altar among pine roots. And I saw a blinding flash cut across the sky, and there was a blank in time. And the two men that had fallen on their knees to cry, Lord Jesus, have pity on us, were immediately in the spirit, in the sheet of sun in which they were taken. The moment of their vanishing into prayer printed on rock. This happened 36 years ago. The power that binds the atom ceased being invisible and separated my brothers from the shadows they cast on a rock. In the fan-shaped city on the road to Coy stands the rock. And I go there each day to bear witness.

Part 5. Watchmen. Unable to sleep during the days of terror that followed the bombing. An old song repeated itself in my head till its words emptied me of words, leaving in their wake a lullaby belief in nothing more than the daily round. Stop this chanting and fell asleep. Nothing could contain my curses. August 6, 1983. As I step off the platform after reciting my poems, I am abashed. I feel more frail than ever. Facing the tears and gratitude I evoked and my immense hunger for both. Suddenly, I can't tell the difference between being a profiteer on the spiritual black market and a prophet who must tear everyone's heart to shred. As I wrote, I felt possessed by the dead calling for peace. Now I wonder, is it so laudable to spend my days summoning images of nuclear war? Yet how can I give up this fire without betraying myself and all that I love?

been listening to a dramatic reading of Mark Kaminsky's The Road from Hiroshima, directed by author Strimling with original compositions by Stephen Brahman. The actors were Diane Dowling and Arthur Strimling. Musicians included Stephen Brahman on piano, Nancy Chesidanovo, English horn, and recorder, Julie Lionley women on violin and vocals, and Lu Gracian percussion. The Road from Hiroshima was engineered by Frank Eaton with technical support from Connie Blitz. This program was produced four new letters on the air by Dennis Bernstein. Thank you for listening. You've been listening to The Road from Hiroshima. based on the original book-length poem of that name by Mark Kaminsky. It was recorded some 20 years ago and aired nationally on New Letters of the Air in 1985 for the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And that does it for another episode of FlashPoints. Our executive producer is Dennis Bernstein. Senior producers, Miguel Gavalon Malina and Kevin Pina. Technical producer, Rod Akil. Our theme music written and produced by Charlie Lang. For questions and comments, email Dennis Bernstein at Dennis at kpFA.org. Thank you for listening. The stakes are high as the U.S. speeds toward midterm elections. KPFA brings you the latest on election suppression, insurgent and pro-Palestine candidates challenging the democratic establishment, ballot measures to tax billionaires, regulate dark money, and more. Join KPFA's Election Watch program, The Stakes, airing every Thursday at 10 a.m. and online anytime at kpFA.org and wherever you get your podcasts. You can touch that dial if you miss being told what to think. This is 94.1, KPFA, 89.3, KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno, and online everywhere at kpFA.org.org.