Hiroshima - A Model for Recovery

​2024: Hiroshima, Japan
At 8.15 each morning in Hiroshima Peace Park a bell rings to commemorate the atmomic bombing that took place here, at the same hour, on the sixth of August 1945.
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It’s 8am and I’m walking through the park to the tree-covered benches opposite the A-bomb dome to listen for the bell. It’s my fourth visit to Hiroshima, and this time I’m here with my husband Alan and three colleagues from the UK, Hel Spandler,  Professor of Mad Studies at the University of Central Lancashire and lead on the Madzines Research Project with which I have collaborated for the past 18 months, Jill Anderson, also of UCLan and Madzines, and wearer of many hats besides, and Danny Taggart, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Essex and lead on the Truth Project. We four share an interest in restorative approaches to harm in the treatment of mental health and trauma, and we’re here because we hope there’s much that we can learn from the devastation and reconstruction of Hiroshima.

​Last night at dinner Jill suggested “Why don’t we all walk through the peace park together in the morning and listen to the bell?”

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​We mostly stroll in slience, contemplating our unusual mission and surroundings. I am awe-struck by the life force of this place that is so deeply associated with death. There’s an extraordinary vitality in the green of the grass, the vivid hues of flowers, the thick foliage of trees made lush by the humidity that steams the air. 

But it’s not just climate that contributes to this vibrancy. It’s the park’s surprising contrast to the monochromatic horror of those images, ghastly and iconic, that populate my generation's collective psyche when we think about this place.

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​As young peace activists during the Cold War, my friends and I all had the same A2 poster on our walls, depicting the debris-strewn wasteland that was this area in 1945. Taken in the aftermath of the bombing, the image showed the remains of just one building amid the rubble; an eerie, skeletal, strangely beautiful structure that, just days before, had been an exhibition and retail centre, and would become known as the A-Bomb Dome; the hallowed memorial that stands behind me now. Across the bottom of the poster loomed the demand “NO MORE HIROSHIMAS”.

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​​My friends and I were motivated by that image, and those words. We lived in Reading, close to London, closer still to the village where I’d grown up, and home to a sizeable community of radical groups and campaigners. We were situated in the “nuclear triangle”, uncomfortably near Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston, site of the research and production of nuclear weapons, Royal Ordinance Factory (ROF) Burghfield, where nuclear warheads were and still are assembled, and USAF Greenham Common, the US air base that was home to 96 American cruise missiles. Many locals were concerned not only about the roles of these establishments in a potential nuclear conflict, but also the health risks of living so close to three sites containing highly radioactive materials. The location of the Strike Command Headquarters in nearby High Wycombe, which controlled all the United Kingdom's front-line aircraft world-wide, was also a concern, as it seemed a likely target should a nuclear attack on the UK take place.

​After the bombing in Hiroshima, scientists said nothing would grow for 75 years. But within months, the bright red oleander flower sprung forth across the rubble. Blackened tree stumps that had appeared dead began to sprout new leaves; beacons of hope for desperate survivors. Today, as the eightieth anniversary approaches, the established trees and gardens that have thrived for decades demonstrate nature’s triumph over humankind’s brutality.

Birdsong serenades the few who walk the paths this summer morning, alone, in pairs or small groups, the early hour not yet ushering in the throngs that will arrive by midday; pilgrims of peace or curiosity. We four sit on benches beneath a wooden structure covered by abundant foliage;  protection from the sun, whose fierce rays burn even this early in the day. A nearby American-accented voice observes “Looks like another scorcher”. A second responds “Sure does”. My back is to the dome, but I am very much aware of its proximity. It is 8.14.
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On That Day, I’m told, the sun was bright and people went about their business, mothers pegging washing on the line with babies tethered to their backs, older children hurrying to school, mobilised youth training with bamboo spears. The B29 plane, bizarrely named “Little Boy”, had already flown over the busy homes and businesses, toting its terrible cargo. The all-clear siren had sounded, indicating safety.

At 8.15 a blinding light, a ball of fire unlike anything the citizens below had ever seen, exploded in the sky. ​

​The bell rings; an incongruously cheerful tune that resounds around the park. I close my eyes for a long moment. When I open them, Hel is still there next to me. The trees and gardens, buildings, statues and paths remain the same. The river, one of seven flowing through the city to the Seto Inland Sea, laps quietly, keeping its terrible history to itself. Survivors of the blast remember burned and bloated bodies floating in the water a short distance away. (No-one survived this close to the hypocentre.) Injured people jumped in to escape the fires and searing heat, but the water was boiling and they died in their thousands. 

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​A large black crow, perched on the circular top of a metal rubbish bin, is pulling at a plastic bag that’s sticking out. It raises its head and lets out a loud “caw”. Two more appear, and land on tree branches nearby. 
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​On That Day no birds remained. No trees or pathways stayed intact. In the time it has just taken for me to close my eyes and open them again, this landscape was destroyed, all life within a two-kilometre radius liquidated. The busy people, adults and babies, children and youth, simply disappeared.

​I feel gratitude that I’m alive. Grief at both the brutality and fragility that come with being human. And I feel a profound resonance with the experience of devastation and rebuilding that defines Hiroshima. I too have suffered a sudden, catastrophic end to everything I knew and held dear; a slow, painstaking journey to a new “after” that could never replicate the simpler “before”.

While it may seem an incongruous comparison, the ravaging that comes with mental health catastrophe is also a hell that devastates. In the testimony of those A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) who moved forward to rebuild their lives and city, and in the gradual journey of a place and members of its community through chaos, confusion and shame to restoration, transformation, and the resolute pursuit of peace, I see hope, and a way forward for survivors of all kinds – including me. For individuals whose internal landscapes have been blasted to oblivion, leaving only terror, psychic rubble, turmoil and hopelessness, the lessons of Hiroshima can offer a route out of despair, towards reconciliation and new beginnings. 

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​The first time I passed through this unique city, thirteen years ago, as a tourist on my way to somewhere else, it changed my life in half a day, inspiring me to start an NGO (Hope in the Heart CIC) and develop a model of recovery that has since helped me and countless others, on several continents, to find healing, purpose and connection. I came here that first time expecting monochrome hostility. Instead I found a radiant, if complex, community that emanated welcome and exuded peace.

Now, the chimes still ringing in my ears, I find myself picturing a close wartime neighbourhood, its members going about their morning tasks, greeting each other with a friendly “Konichiwa” and a respectful bow, with no idea that their lives will end, and history be made, in the next few moments. I am thinking also of the people who survived, a little further from “Ground Zero”, some of whom I have come to know, whose lives exploded along with the bomb, and could never be the same again.

I realise anew how much my own recovery has been inspired by their example. What happened here was madness on a scale never before imagined. Its impact reverberated across the world, and is reverberating still.
While the personal madness I experienced affected only me and my immediate community of beloved souls, multiple individuals and those who love them are experiening similar devastation every day; a global crisis with its own reverberating impact, desperately in need of a role model for resilience and recovery.

My madness may seem small compared to the insanity that spawned the A-bomb, but both were cataclysmic in their own way. Each left an unrecognisable, hellish landscape where peace and hope could find no resting place. Until eventually, against all odds, they did.