The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts and Tennoji High School in Osaka, Japan, have been education partners for almost a decade, most often sharing research opportunities that explore the water in Hot Springs National Park.
During their most recent visit to Osaka in October, ASMSA students joined with their Tennoji counterparts to share a cultural exchange opportunity through the Japanese Peace Project. The project — created by the two schools — provided students from both schools to learn about the experience of the Japanese people after World War II and the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
ASMSA students began their visit with a trip to Hiroshima Peace Memorial, including the adjacent park and the museum. They were able to see structures that survived the bombing, which was the first use of a nuclear weapon by a nation. They also visited with a survivor of the bombing at the museum.
Dr. Neil Oatsvall, a history and Japanese Studies instructor at ASMSA, said visiting the memorial and listening to the survivor allowed ASMSA’s students to gain a broader understanding of World War II and the conflict with Japan.
“The survivor spoke eloquently about his experiences and the suffering of his family,” Oatsvall said. “There was a lot of human misery as you might expect.”
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
What became evident is that both sides are essentially taught they were victims in the war without necessarily taking responsible for their nation’s actions. Oatsvall said American students are often taught only about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor while Japanese students appear to only be taught about the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“We learn that we were the victims. In Japan, they learn they were. In truth, everyone was a victim. More than 70 million people died in World War II,” Oatsvall said.
Amy Brown-Westmoreland, outreach coordinator for ASMSA, said visiting the memorial “was a very transformative experience for staff and students who went.”
“It was children, old people; it was everybody. The destruction was indiscriminate and horrifying. We were all fairly quiet after going to the peace memorial. There were a lot of conversations about how to have this conversation back home and with future generations,” Brown-Westmoreland said.
Haven Whitney, an ASMSA senior, said having the opportunity to personally experience the memorial and the park was shocking but important.
“To that point, we had enjoyed the sights and the sounds, but then there was just this stillness,” Whitney said. “There’s only so much you can get out of textbooks. In the museum, there was an entire room filled with burnt and tattered clothes of children who were outside and killed by the bomb. You were able to connect with actual lives.”
The students returned to Osaka after visiting the memorial to participate in an event at Tennoji High. Students at Tennoji prepared presentations about both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, examining the immediate and long-term effects of the bombings on Japanese society.
Oatsvall gave a lecture about the long history between Japan, the United States and other nations that eventually led to the events of World War II. He included information about the Japanese internment camps that were developed to hold Japanese-Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack.
One of the results of the lessons and following discussion was both the American and Japanese students agreeing that the truth was important to learn, said ASMSA senior Sarah Balenko.
“It made me think about how little we know sometimes,” Balenko said. “We all collectively agreed that we should tell the truth about all events, to tell the honest truth without hiding.”
Whitney said all of the students agreed that they needed to find ways to ensure that such events would not happen again.
“(The Japanese students) spoke about how the peace we have now is more important than the history we share as enemies,” Whitney said.
Oatsvall said that the level of trust the students had amongst each other in order to express their thoughts doesn’t come easily.
“This was 10 years in the making. First, it was a way for them to come visit us and do science experiments. But it has become more than that. We had the type of discussions you can only have with real friends,” he said.
Oatsvall said it was also important that the discussions focused on peace rather than forgiveness.
“What impressed me the most after World War II was that Hiroshima and Japan did not think about hate but rather about what the future could be. They took an eye to the future to think about peace. This emphasis on peace was by people concerned about make sure no more Hiroshimas happened in the future and not to avenge the past,” Oatsvall said.
The schools plan to continue the Peace Project when Tennoji visits ASMSA in 2020, but organizers are unsure what they may do. Arkansas had two Japanese internment camps in Rohwer and Jerome, but the Tennoji students’ schedule is too tight to visit them, Oatsvall said.
Brown-Westmoreland said she is considering organizing a paper crane project. The group observed a display of a thousand paper cranes during their Hiroshima visit, and she thought that may be a good gesture of good will to create a similar display at ASMSA before Tennoji’s visit.