Background of my participation in “when you call my name”

Until now, I have felt a significant sense of resistance toward participating in peace-making activities. While there may be several reasons for this, I believe it was largely due to the influence of the "Hiroshima mentality," which I will explore later. Therefore, when Mayu Kanamori—the founder and facilitator of the project—approached me about participating in a project to memorialise the 193 Japanese civilians buried in the Cowra Japanese Cemetery in NSW, Australia, I felt a certain amount of hesitation.

At the same time, I felt a sense of shame at my own ignorance and was deeply surprised, as I was unaware that Japanese civilians were buried in Cowra. As my conversations with Ms. Kanamori progressed, the ten civilian victims from Hiroshima became the central focus of my interest. How did these people from Hiroshima end up coming to Australia? When and how were they captured, and why did they die? Based on materials already prepared by Ms. Kanamori and other core members of the project, I began my own in-depth research and decided to join the project to create a memorial work.

In thinking about "Hiroshima," it was necessary for me to research my own ancestors. During a visit back to Japan, I visited our family graves, requested copies of my family registry (koseki tohon: 戸籍謄本), and attempted to match the records of as many ancestors as I could trace with the headstones. My paternal grandparents had repatriated from Korea; my grandmother’s older brother died in the war at Luzon, the Philippines, in January 1942; my maternal grandfather served overseas for six years and returned to Japan from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, in 1945; and my maternal grandmother married her first husband, who was born in Hawaii in 1913, and lost him in the atomic bombing in 1945. She eventually lived out her 105-year life as an A-bomb survivor (hibakusha: 被曝者).

She used to tell me how, since her childhood, she was such a lover of literature that she would hide paperbacks in the sleeves of her haori jacket to read bit by bit while working in the rice paddies. In her late 40s, after she had finished raising her children, she began studying Haiku and Tanka poetry. Among her vast body of work, she left behind a hand-written collection of her award-winning poems in a single book. This slender connection across time is what ultimately tied me to this project.

The Hiroshima where my maternal grandmother was born and experienced the bombing; the rebuilt Hiroshima where I grew up until I graduated from university; the Hiroshima where the ten individuals lived before meeting their ends in Cowra, Australia; and the Australia where I live now—I could not help but feel a mysterious weaving of lives within the relationship of these spaces and times. I decided to express these three eras (the early 1900s, 1943–45, and the present) and two countries (Hiroshima/Japan and Australia) through storytelling, Haiku, and a single photograph, centered on shared themes such as war, the atomic bomb, civilians, prisoners of war, peace, memory, and one’s homeland.

This is the story of ten people from Hiroshima who went abroad as migrant workers starting in the early 1900s, spent over a decade building a life in a new land, but died while interned during the war and never made it home. It is also the story of my grandmother, who spent the war years in Hiroshima and experienced the atomic bombing. While reflecting on the birthplaces and homelands of these ten Hiroshima civilians, I decided to use Haiku left by my grandmother to create a work that serves as an expression of gratitude and a memorial to her, as well as a tribute to the people of Hiroshima who lived through the same time and war.

The timing was also significant. This year, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Naturally, the fact that Nihon Hidankyo (日本被団協) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 also had a significant influence. While the war began with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, my research into Japanese history and global political movements leading up to that point revealed that every war has many "preludes" before the actual outbreak. I also began to see historical patterns in war, politics, and the media; simultaneously, it remains a fact that in any war, it is the civilians who are both incited and sacrificed.

Even now, having finished the creation of the work, I continue to think about many things through this project. I will discuss this further later, but I have begun to develop an interest in "War Art"—pieces originally created as propaganda that can serve as anti-war messages in the present day. Furthermore, I have finally begun to realize that how past wars are transmitted to future generations differs greatly by country, and consequently, differs among individuals. I feel I am beginning to see more clearly how I should face ongoing wars, genocides, and conflicts, where I stand within them, and how I should and would like to engage in peace-making activities.

Moving forward, I intend to write about my reflections regarding my involvement with war education which, I believe, contributed to the creation of the "Hiroshima mentality," and also regarding my grandmother, and Jack—one of the ten civilians.

8 November 2025