Hiding the Scars of War: Hiroshima's Atomic Slum and the Peace Memorial City Construction Law

Abstract

In present Day Hiroshima, the elderly Ishikawa Asahi sits on the peaceful, idyllic banks of Hiroshima's Ōta River staring off into the distance. Following his gaze, we are transported back some fifty years to an equally peaceful scene of cramped wooden shacks huddled along the riverbank, with nothing but storms to keep the roves from falling off. And there on the bank, sitting in the same spot is Ishikawa. We see now that we are looking at the same scene, one that exists in the present (reality), and one in the past (memory). This temporal juxtaposition, graphically presented in Kōno Fumiyo's 2004 manga Yūnagi No Machi Sakura No Kuni, illustrates a historical moment that is now masked by the physical reality of present day Hiroshima. If one were to have surveyed the city of Hiroshima from the apex of Hiroshima castle in mid-August 1945 the view would have been of a vast radius of destruction with almost no buildings left intact. Leaping forward in time to the present day, surrounded by high-rises, the visitor is now visually aware of the city's rebirth as a modern regional metropole. To the east and south lie the vast complex of public administrative buildings (national, prefectural, and city), and beyond the multi-story buildings of Hiroshima's commercial heart. To the southwest are the buildings of the city's cultural hub: Central Park (chuō kōen), the city's public and children's libraries, the City Art Museum, the Green Arena, public pool, and the former Municipal Baseball Stadium. Perhaps most prominent, due to both its size and proximity is the massive Motomachi Chojuen High-rise Apartment Complex (motomachi chojuen kōsō apāto), a vast and strikingly designed housing project. As impressive as these buildings may be, they physically and figuratively cover up a highly contentious and tragic past. poorly constructed illegal residences that locals derogatorily referred to as the Atomic Slum. The residents of the slum were mostly victims of the war: A-bomb survivors (hibakusha), ethnic Koreans, and the poor. These victims, reminders of Japan's wartime past, became an impediment to the city's plan for redevelopment. Not only was the slum physically in the way of construction, those who lived there were living proof of the city's inability to rebuild. Then, by the mid 1970's, the slum and its residents were gone, replaced by the thriving city center we see today. Hiroshima's reconstruction from nuclear devastation, its journey from what Hiroshima native and A-bomb survivor Ōta Yōko called a "city of corpses" (shikabane no machi) to an international symbol of peace, is a process that has largely been overlooked. Far from simply putting up buildings and planting trees, Hiroshima's reconstruction was in many ways emblematic of the move to reconstruct the memory of the city. By tying the reconstruction efforts to the national movement for peace, the city would prioritize bright future over bleak past at the expense of the city's war victims who continued to suffer. It would eliminate or control the reminders of war, be they place or person. Further, the elimination of the slum has enabled its reemergence in popular memory as an idealized moment of nostalgia that continues to render silent the voices of its residents.