Imagine All the People
Jessica Goldman (North Shore Hebrew Academy)
It doesn’t look like a tree, I thought as I stared through the thick museum glass at the black ashy
figure. Once upon a time, this tree stood tall and dignified; it withstood wind and storms. But this tree
became a symbol of unspeakable violence. The war destroyed the innocent tree, along with the rest of the
city of Nagasaki.

I walked down the hallway of the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, Japan to find a room full of
televisions. I sat down and watched a woman share her first-hand testimony of August 9 th , 1945.

“We couldn’t just leave all the bodies there,” the woman spoke. “It was a pile of corpses down the
street, so my mother and I piled them up to cremate them. Just as we were about to light the match,” terror
brimmed in her pupils, “one man in the pile started yelling as hard as he could: don’t burn me! I’m still
alive.” 1
I trembled in my 16 year-old spoiled American body.

I learned about the atomic bomb in ninth grade. I learned that the United States invented it. I learned
that Truman dropped it. I even learned about the political motives; however, I never learned about the
personal stories of ruined lives or extent of human suffering. “A few days after the bombing,” the survivor
continued, “my mother found something on the floor in the kitchen.” Streams of tears ran down her cheeks
as well as my own, “It was my brother’s skull, just sitting there in the kitchen.” 2 While listening to her
harrowing story, it paralleled in my mind to the other mass killing that I’ve been taught about throughout
my life— the Holocaust. Raised in a Jewish home, my grandparents have constantly told me about the pain
of growing up in Eastern Europe in the 1940s.

A couple of weeks after my trip to Japan, I met a man named Makoto Otsuka. Just the sight of him
was unusual: a Japanese man wearing a yarmulke and speaking fluent Hebrew. He told me about his trip to
Amsterdam many years ago where he coincidentally met Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, who opened his
eyes to the tragic genocide. Before that moment Otsuka knew virtually nothing of the Holocaust or the six
million Jewish people who had perished. From that day on, Otsuka dedicated his existence to the
commemoration of the Holocaust. He opened the first and only Holocaust Education Center in Japan.

While speaking with him, I realized the sensitivity he had for the Holocaust as a result of his own difficult
life growing up in Japan during World War II. Each of these catastrophes was a result of unconscionable
hatred. Mr. Otsuka passionately challenges this attitude with his philosophy of tolerance, “Just as you can
hate for no reason, you can love for no reason.” 3
While it is my responsibility to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust and uphold the legacy of my
people, it is equally important for me to educate myself and connect to the histories and suffering of those
people around the world with whom I do not share an ancestral connection. As a global citizen, there is no
bond stronger than the human connection.

I remember walking outside of the museum in Nagasaki. I was incredibly moved by a display of
thousands of paper cranes, a symbol of longevity and peace in Japanese culture inspired by a twelve year-
old girl named Sadako Sasaki. Sadako developed leukemia as a result of the radiation from the atomic
bombing. While sick, her goal was to create 1000 paper cranes because there is a Japanese saying that one
who folds 1000 cranes is granted a wish. Sadako only lived to fold 644 paper cranes. 4 However, Sadako’s
legacy lives on through displays of paper cranes throughout Japan. There is even a peace park with a statue
of Sadako in Seattle, Washington. Paper cranes threaded on long strings are draped over the memorial. 5
Outside the museum, ground zero was surrounded with beautiful, vibrant trees. They stood tall in the
face of combat. The trees grew back after the devastation, I thought, but the lives that were taken by the
hands of war will be tragically lost forever. I continued walking only to discover a plaque etched with the
lyrics of a John Lennon song, “Imagine all the people, living life in peace.”
I can imagine it.

John Lennon imagined it.

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