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Hiroshima Lacrimosa
Tears for Hiroshima

- Toge Sankichi** (1917-53) - Japanese

the voice of Gaku Ishimura

A-no seng-kou ga
That flash of light!

Wa-su-re e yo-ka
How could I ever forget!,

Shun-ji-ni gai-tou no san-man wa ki-e
In a moment thirty thousand people vanished

Ch-chi o kaese
Bring back the fathers

Ha-ha o kaese
Bring back the mothers

Toshi-yori o kaese
Bring back the old people

Kodomo o kaese
Bring back the children

Watashi o kaese
Bring me back

Watashi ni tsunagaru nin-gen o kaese
Bring back the human beings I had contact with.

Ningen no ningen no yo no alu kagili*
For as long as there are human beings, a world of human beings

Kuzurenu heiwa o
unbroken peace,

Heiwa o kaese
bring back peace.

*This isn’t Kagiri is it? Kagidi. Kagidi? Di – di – di. Kagidi! Di. Almost sounds like a "di" – Kagidi. Not di –Di! Di, - in Japanese we have alphabet, it’s ___? – that is a “di” sound ___? So, ahh .. So what is the closest thing to it in English, though? Wouldn’t it just be “di”? Kagidi? With a di – di – di – di –di. That sounds like “di” to me. How about L-I? If it’s “L”, how would you pronounce it? Kagi…. With an “L” you mean? If it’s “L”. Ya. How you gonna say it? Kagili. It’s more close. Kagi…Li! almost. Yeah! It’s more close.

The above dialogue gives you an idea of how far out of my depth I am with Japanese pronunciation - and some people wonder why Orientals struggle with "R"s and "L"s! The other day my grandson, Atsuya, apologized to me - "Grampa, I'm sody".

**Biography of Sankichi Toge

The poet, Sankichi Toge, reveals that he was three kilometers from Ground Zero, and preparing to visit downtown Hiroshima, when the bomb detonated. If he had left a few minutes earlier, Sankichi would not have survived. Instead, he sustained cuts from shards of glass and radiation sickness, which may have contributed to his early demise. At the age of 29, after the war, he participated in youth and cultural movements and gradually became a leader in the peace movement. He published a number of books opposing atomic bombing and advocating peace. The start of the Korean War intensified pressure from the occupation army against the anti-atomic-bomb movement. Toge protested President Truman's statement that he would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the war. While hospitalized with tuberculosis, he published the book, “A-bomb Poetry”. When it was sent to the 1951 World Youth Peace Festival in Berlin, as one of Japan's representative works, “A-bomb Poetry” gained international acclaim. On March 10, 1953, Toge died at the National Hiroshima Sanatorium.

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