Is it cliché for a trip to a foreign country to change you? Yeah. But it happened to me anyway.
I have always wanted to go to Tokyo – specially, Tokyo DisneySea (I know, I know). It is widely considered one of the top theme parks in the world (and boy howdy was it). But you also may have noticed that things aren’t going so great in the United States – have we had any new food recalls today? Say what you will about Donald Trump, good or bad, I think we all have to agree: shit is getting rough. A tweet once said that Trump’s admin felt like when Scar and the Hyenas took over Pride Rock in The Lion King. Kinda getting that vibe this time, aren’t we?
But I don’t want to talk about that guy, I have spent too much of my life doing that already. I am just setting the stage for this trip. As I told my friend Jordan, if we’re headed toward some kind of collapse, I want to have memories of Tokyo to hold onto. Turns out, that was a convincing argument.
So within the same summer, I booked and planned an entire 9-day trip to Tokyo. And like I said, it really changed me. But not in the way I imagined.
Learning about the world and ourselves
As the proud earner of two degrees and an educator, I am a firm believer in college. I always tell my students to pay attention in their humanities classes, because that’s how you learn to be a human; by learning about all the different ways humans have lived their lives around the world. Art is what makes life worth living, which you should ideally discover during those 4-6 years of college. I took an Ethics class in junior college that changed the way I saw morals, I think about that class all the time; especially because the professor was the rudest teacher I ever had. Learned a lot from that, too.
That’s life: seeing things and learning. But so many people go through experiences without learning a damn thing. There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting a different result. Don’t you know somebody like that, though? Somebody who loves to complain but never changes anything? I know a few somebodies like that.
In fact, that’s what made me start writing this: I caught another student using AI. As much as it annoys me, it’s also another example of learning nothing. If you go to college to submit AI work, you ain’t gonna learn shit. Your brain is a muscle, you have to exercise that silly thing or you get dumber. Do you know how to ward off dementia? Do math problems in your head. Not a joke, it’s studied science. If you don’t exercise your brain muscle, it will atrophy. The data on AI use proves it.
Who the hell said we were supposed to have the answer to every single question available to us immediately, anyway? It sounds cool, but if you listen to the people who run these AI companies, their ideas are anything but. They are building a product that is meant to replace YOU. They want to turn knowledge into a utility and then sell it back to you. Also not a joke.
But I don’t want to talk about that, either. Another topic where plenty has been written. This blog is about me.
I learned a few things about myself in Japan. I had a ton of fun. But what really changed me?
Hiroshima.
“To live as long as life lasts”
The words of an elderly woman who survived Hiroshima and made it to 90; luckier than so many others. If you slept through every history class, Hiroshima is the site of the first atomic bomb attack in world history, when the United States dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on the military town of Hiroshima, Japan. 70,000 people died instantly; another 30-50,000 within a year from radiation.
Hiroshima is not close to Tokyo and it is not convenient to get there. But I always assume I will not visit a place again, so I had to make it out there on the trip. I am very glad I did.
The Hiroshima Peace Museum is incredible. I honestly believe every person on Earth should go through it. The stories are awful, the tragedy is unspeakable – but that is precisely the point. Do you know what a nuclear bomb does to people? I do. It is truly unspeakable.
Which is why there are so many artifacts from the bombing. Burnt and tattered clothes; fused items made of glass, metal and concrete; the steps of a bank where someone was vaporized out of existence. You don’t have to understand a word or read a single plaque to see what is obvious: this is an abominable, destructive power that no one should have.
The stories of the victims are unimaginable. I won’t go into details, but I saw and heard things I will never forget. It was an act committed before my mother was even born, by a nation my family didn’t adopt until the 1970s – and yet, when I was walking out, I wanted to say sorry. I felt ashamed to be American at that moment, even though my family had zero to do with it – everyone reading this had nothing to do with it. But that was the power of the guilt, of the atrocity; I felt someone should apologize for it, even now. We should honestly never stop apologizing for it.
Some believe we wouldn’t have defeated Japan in World War II without the atomic bomb. And even after the first nuke (Hiroshima), Japan did not indicate a willingness to surrender. Perhaps there is no path to victory in WWII without the atomic bomb. But the A-bomb wasn’t a one-time thing; Harry Truman double-tapped, a very American thing to do.
Once was more than enough – forever. Nobody should ever use an atomic weapon again; of that, I’m sure. We weren’t meant to possess that kind of power. Sure, it’s a very Berkeley liberal thing to say: but I challenge you to walk through that museum and then come out saying something different. It really did change me. As did the rest of the trip.
But that will have to wait. I always take too long to turnaround my blog pieces, but I’m not letting it happen today. For more on my Japan adventures, tune in next time. And consider that no one has ever come home from war thinking it was still a good idea.