Lukman's Blog

Live Under the Same Sky with Nuclear Bombs

Posted on: 2007-08-15

Today, a group of Japanese in Okayama commemorates the end of World War II by strucking the so called peace-bell in several buddhist temples, despite the fact that the end of WWII also remarks the nippon army defeat in 1945. Through this commemoration, they are praying for a peaceful world - a world without war.

In addition to hitting the bell, I was also given a chance to give my opinion about peace in front of the audiences, of course in Japanese. While most of Japanese people associates the meaning of peace with a condition without war, I think the meaning of peace is far wider than that. Even there's no war, if people live in fear all the time, then we can't say those people are living in peace. For example, in my home island, although there is no war, people can't live in peace because there is no certainty in law, labor right, medical service, food supply, etc. Indeed, those conditions are not found in Japan, thus might became the reason why Japanese tends to associates the meaning of peace with one condition: that is a condition without war. At that time, I just want to remind the audiences that the world peace is not simply a matter of war only.

Several days back, I saw a new drama, yet the story is very touching, aired on Japanese TV. The story is about a family who live in Hiroshima during the world war II. The father is a common person who disagree with government policy to declare war, which make his daughter and two sons often bullied by teachers in primary school. A scene showed the son was slapped suddenly by his teacher, just because he said that he was proud with his father way of think. I can understand this because such situation also happened in my country post WWII, where the students are forced to believe that our president is a national hero. Back to the story, although the family was poor, they lived a happy life, until the atomic bomb was dropped and left no happiness remained. The producer is on the right path because not many people are crazy enough to believe that a weapon which originally designed to massacre human and destroy environment can bring happiness.

Although I'm a part of people who disagree with the existence of nuclear weapon in this small polluted-planet, I also wondering: suppose there was no nuclear weapon then would Japanese stop their invasion? Despite that, one thing is very clear to me: whenever a nuclear bomb is dropped, it is always the innocent people who will suffer, not the war-criminal. One may say that the winner in the war will not be called war-criminal, nor the loser will be called hero. But for me, whoever inflicted harm to common people in their war, then they deserve the title of war-criminal.