如何紀念廣島 一個日裔美國人的思考

Growing up in California during the 1970s, in a Japanese household a generation after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima , it was often hard to work out how I felt about the event that ended the second world war. Aside from my brother I was the only Japanese kid at my school, and fitting in was kind of important. At home my mother would sometimes talk about her grandmother who was killed in Hiroshima; she suffered in the summer heat for a month before expiring.

我在上世紀70年代在加州一個日本家庭長大，屬於廣島原子彈爆炸後出生的一代人。我總是很難理清自己對這一給二戰畫上句號的事件懷着怎樣的感受。除了哥哥，我是學校裏唯一的日本孩子，和大家打成一片可是一件重要的事情。在家裏，母親有時會談起在廣島遇難的祖母；離世前，她被酷暑折磨了整整一個月。

Even when I was aged nine or 10, Hiroshima was taught at school and debated both in the classroom and on the playground. Never once was I subject to ill feeling — as my parents were when they moved to the US as students in the war’s aftermath — but a question always floated in the air: what do you think America should have done? And more deeply, a question only once put to me out loud, by the father of my best friend when I was seven: are you American or are you Japanese?

在我9歲還是10歲的時候，學校還在教授廣島事件，教室裏、操場上都有圍繞這一話題的爭論。我從未對美國懷有敵意，正如戰後我的父母作爲學生來到美國時那樣，但總有一個揮之不去的問題：你覺得美國本該怎麼做？還有7歲時我好朋友的父親問的一個更深入的問題：你是美國人還是日本人？這是唯一一次有人向我問出這個問題。

At school I learnt that the atomic bombings probably shortened the war and prevented greater suffering on both sides. At home I learnt that my family had been touched intimately by one of history’s worst calamities. The way I have reached not an answer but a resolution to these contradictions is by listening to the actions of my forebears more than to their words.

在學校裏我學到，原子彈轟炸可能縮短了戰爭持續的時間，而且阻止了戰爭雙方出現更嚴重的傷亡。在家裏，我感受到的是，家人的命運已深受這場史上最慘烈的災難之一的影響。我找到的解決這些矛盾（而非尋求一個答案）的方法是去觀察長輩的行爲，而不是聽他們怎麼說。

Four years after war’s end, my father left Japan aged 16 for boarding school in St Louis, Missouri. He wanted to study science in the country that was best at it. JJ Sakurai went on to become one of his generation’s leading physicists, and died while working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research testing atomic theories — for purposes of human advancement — 40 years after atomic research yielded a weapon that brought destruction to his country.

戰爭結束四年後，父親（時年16歲）便離開日本，踏上了去密蘇里州聖路易斯的求學之路，在寄宿學校就讀。他希望在這個科學技術最發達的國家學習科學知識。後來，父親櫻井純(JJ Sakurai)成了他那一代人中頂尖的物理學家，並在爲人類進步而試驗原子理論的歐洲核子研究中心(CERN)工作期間去世，這距離人類依據原子研究成果研製出給他的祖國帶來毀滅性災難的核武器已過去40年。

My mother, Noriko, who lost her grandmother to Hiroshima, enrolled at International Christian University, an idealistic university on the outskirts of Tokyo founded in 1949 as a “university of tomorrow”, and left for America on an exchange programme at Keuka College in New York. It did not occur to her that she was bound for upstate New York not the Big Apple. She braved the shock and loneliness of having cows as neighbours instead of the Broadway stars who filled her dreams. She went on to meet my father at a party in Princeton — and did not return to live in Japan until well into her fifties.

母親法子(Noriko)在廣島爆炸中失去了祖母。她入讀東京市郊、創立於1949年的國際基督教大學(International Christian University)，一所被稱爲“未來大學”的充滿理想主義的大學。後來，母親也離開日本，赴美參加紐約州庫克大學(Keuka College)的一個交流項目。讓她沒想到的是，她去的是紐約上州(Upstate New York)，而不是有“大蘋果”之稱的紐約市。她經受住了與牛羣做鄰居帶來的震驚與孤獨，雖然她原本夢想與百老匯明星爲鄰。後來，母親在普利斯頓的一次聚會上認識了父親，直至50多歲纔回到日本居住。

My maternal grandfather, after the war, rarely spoke about his pain; during the war he went around saying, in private, that Japan was going to lose. I cannot imagine how he must have felt when the bomb proved him right. In 1947, still grieving for his mother, he did something I admire. He coached his alma mater, Meiji university, to victory in the Hakone Ekiden university relay race, run in stages from Tokyo to the foot of Mount Fuji and back. It was the first time the race was run after a three-year wartime hiatus. He taught a new generation the importance of character as his nation strove to build a better future from its ashes.

戰爭結束後，我的外祖父幾乎從不提及自己的傷痛；戰爭期間，他不斷地在私下裏說，日本將戰敗。我無法想象，當原子彈爆炸證明他的判斷時，他是怎樣的感受。1947年，仍陷喪母之痛的他做了一件令我十分欽佩的事。他指導母校明治大學(Meiji university)在箱根驛傳(Hakone Ekiden)大學接力賽（從東京到富士山腳下往返）中獲勝。那是該項賽事自戰時中斷三年後首次復辦。那時的日本正在一片焦土中努力建設更美好的未來，他讓新一代日本人懂得了堅毅性格的重要性。

The visit of US President Barack Obama to Hiroshima on Friday should not be a time to dredge up old recriminations, or to weigh the respective wages of guilt, but to look to the future — one in which two still civilised societies can build a world without nuclear weapons. One in which the qualities of sanity, tolerance and forgiveness guide our actions. Perhaps we can make America — a certain idea of America, perhaps as a place where a Muslim child fleeing war in Syria might grow up to become president — great again.

美國總統巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)週五對廣島的訪問不應被當作一個翻舊賬或是評判各自罪責的時機，而應用來展望未來：一個日美兩個依舊擁有燦爛文明的社會可以共建無核武世界的未來，一個由理智、寬容和寬恕指引我們行動的未來。也許我們能讓美國，一個懷有確定信念的美國，一個逃離敘利亞內戰的穆斯林兒童有可能成長爲總統的地方，再次變得偉大。

As Mr Obama comes to the end of a presidency that has proved at times disappointing, let us encounter tomorrow a moment once again, emphatically, of hope.

隨着奧巴馬有時令人失望的總統任期行將結束，讓我們再次堅定地用希望迎接明天。