http://www.timekiller.jp/archives/2005/08/06/020653.html
の英訳文を2chからひっぱってきました。
外人なんか誰も読まないだろうけど、読んで欲しいから貼っておく。
No one foreigner reads, however probably will be, because we want
reading even in the foreigner, it copies.
"8:15 AM on August 6"
I want to write seriously, at least today
Do you know what day is today?
Of course you know, as knowledge
But we go ahead another step
Let you think, it could be your experience
Let you consider, awful disaster that hit Hiroshima,
regarded as death ground not less than 70 years
And more another step,
your turn may come next moment
Please imagine;
You are burned and your body is melt suddenly
Your wife, your husband, your children,
your parents, and your confidants,
you have to leave them behind under the wreckage
You can do nothing, but with fear, with dreadful chagrin...
And, please imagine;
You suffer from an atomic bomb,
though you are not there willingly,
far away from your country, farther away from your family
You don't have any chance of appropriate cure
because of discrimination, only to die
Please imagine;
You may manage to survive the living hell, hard to describe
But you are hurled, "Monster! Fuck you!"
Alas, it's from your neighbors...
Please imagine;
You are fired right soon from the job you found somehow
in your fatal condition,
"you were under the death ash, weren't you?"
Your marriage is broken compellingly,
though s/he gave you happiness, even in this crucial sadness!!
"Your blood is dirty"
Please imagine;
Of the unexpected bliss when you find your companion
in the agony by giving up your family,
with the deadly body of you,
beyond the loneliness of the discrimination
Please imagine;
Of the hopeful birth of your children, they are your dream
in the successive bitterness, unforgettable to you
Ordinal day, little happiness, but irreplaceable
Please imagine;
You are deprived of your dream without pity
Your child is weakening from day to day
due to leukemia and atomic-bomb disease
S/he was cremated but didn't leave any bone behind
His body was injured to that extent
What did I do for him?
Now, only to cry, what I can do is
Please imagine;
Of the delight that your child can grow up
with the anxiety that he also can't
Of the vanity that he is segregated as the second
regardless of his health
Of the loveliness that you get your grandchild
over the 50 years of hardship
Of the indignation that the child develops leukemia
These pains have not finished,
continuing from generation to generation
Please don't turn your face away from this fact
57 years have passed away, the direct victims decrease,
and the memory is receding
But there are about 90,000 victims in Hiroshima even now
It's not an old story of 57 years ago
It's only the number of authorized victims at the present time
The number at that time cannot be compared with this
They died alone in their throes of death
At last, I add following fact. The level of recognition as the victim
is getting higher year by year. Their children and grandchildren are
rejected to receive appropriate healthcare. The government says
that their illness is not related to the atomic bomb.
If this is your story, or your future, or your children's,
can you forget? can you ignore?
Silence covers Hiroshima at this moment.
All programs in Hiroshima broadcast the Peace Park.
But in the city where I live now, only state channel broadcasts it.
A moment of silence.
My classmate died when I was at elementary school. A music teacher
and a vice-principal were often absent due to atomic bomb disease. My
classmate at high school was bald. Her head was like orangutan but it
was too painful to refer. She went to school without wig. She was very
courage but ended her life at the age of 25.
I had a classmate whose nails were black. She was teased by that.
If she would have said she was the third, she would not be teased in
Hiroshima. But she didn't. His grandparents told him not to say. They
had suffered from the discrimination for a long time. She got married
and gave a birth to a child but the child passed away at 6.
My neighbor old lady is scared of fireworks. She bends her body and
covers her face by hands every time someone turns light on. She says
she cannot forget the flash of that day. Her child got an informal decision
from major electrical appliance maker but it was withdrawn right before.
I've watched innumerable examples like that. So many tragedies still remain.
It's a fact that we must not look away from.
8:15 AM on August 6, I've prayed a moment of silence 20 times or more
since my receptive age. It's very usual behavior of people who grew up
in this city. People pray even in the running buses and trains. Pedestrians
stop to pray, Drivers toot on a horn.
I was shocked when I have started to live in another city, I forgot the day!
Even though the forgettable feeling is very common, as long as living in Hiroshima,
even school girls who love chatting and makeup stop them and pray, I forgot.
I was also shocked by people who didn’t know “Barefoot Gen” in Japan.
No wonder, however. I also don’t know a way of looking at atomic bombs
at Nagasaki, second ground zero. I don’t remember the time at Nagasaki.
Even in the same country, the feelings vary, still more in other countries.
We must think of this folly that people hurt each other and this horror
that people who justify it also move a nation. Very few people may be able
to imagine the terror but they must convey the message to someone.
After leaving Hiroshima few years ago, I come to think that, this is a duty
that is imposed on the people who grew up on this Hiroshima.
