奧巴馬廣島行 喚醒歷史深處的幽靈

WASHINGTON — For decades, visitors to the ghostly dome in Hiroshima that stands like a sole survivor from the dropping of the atomic bomb there more than 70 years ago entered a world that mixed unspeakable tragedy with historical amnesia.

華盛頓——幾十年來，廣島和平資料紀念館如同70多年前原子彈爆炸後的唯一倖存者一樣矗立着，來到這座的冷森森的穹頂下，參觀者彷彿走進了一個混合着無法言說的悲劇和歷史失憶的世界。

The site, which President Obama will visit this month, reflected an almost universal Japanese view that the city was a victim of unnecessary brutality — parents and children incinerated, thousands killed and a generation poisoned by radiation.

奧巴馬總統本月即將訪問的這座紀念館代表着一種幾乎是所有日本人的共識，認爲廣島是一場沒有必要的暴行的受害者——父母和孩子燒成灰燼、千萬人斷送生命、一代人遭受輻射毒害。

Yet museum exhibits nearby were largely silent on what led to that horror, a Japanese war machine that tore through Asia for a decade before the morning that changed the history of the 20th century.

然而，是什麼最終導致了這個恐怖事件，附近的博物館陳列卻基本上保持沉默。當時，日本戰爭機器肆虐亞洲已經10年，直至那個改變了20世紀曆史的早晨。

For Americans of the World War II generation, and many of their children, Hiroshima is at the center of a very different narrative. They believe President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb saved tens of thousands of American lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Honshu, Japan’s main island. Ask the few surviving veterans of that generation — those who fought their way from Iwo Jima to Okinawa and knew what was coming next — and there is no looking back at Truman’s decision, no moral equivalence between a Japanese campaign that killed more than 20 million in Asia and the horror of the bomb that ended it all.

對於二戰時期的美國人和很多他們的子女來說，廣島卻是另外一個截然不同的故事中的主角。他們認爲，哈里·S·杜魯門總統投下原子彈的決定挽救了數萬美國戰士的生命。如果進攻日本主島本州島，那些美國人很可能就要命喪沙場。要是去問那個時代倖存下來的老兵——他們從硫磺島一路浴血奮戰到沖繩縣，而且知道接下來等待他們的會是什麼——他們毫不認爲有必要反思杜魯門總統的決定，在造成2000萬亞洲人喪生的日本戰爭行爲和終結了這場災難的原子彈的恐怖後果之間，也沒有什麼道德上的可比性。

With his decision to speak beneath that famous dome, Mr. Obama is taking a step 11 of his predecessors avoided. Merely by showing up in Hiroshima, he will have no choice but to navigate a minefield of conflicting memory, in Japan and in the United States.

奧巴馬總統決定在這座著名的穹頂下發表講話，邁出了他之前11位美國總統都回避了的一步。僅僅是踏上廣島，就意味着他別無選擇，只能在日本和美國兩國民衆強烈衝突的歷史記憶的雷區中謹慎地穿過。

The two drastically different interpretations of what happened have always pulled, sometimes in unspoken ways, at the strong alliance between the United States and Japan that emerged from the ashes. Yet today, with some notable dissents in both countries, those interpretations remain as frozen in history as the shadow etched on the stone steps of a bank building near ground zero — created by the body of a poor soul who was sitting there at detonation.

戰爭的劫灰之後，兩個國家締結了堅實的同盟；而關於歷史的兩種截然相反的解讀，卻總是帶來干擾，有時盡在不言中。而今天，儘管兩國都存在一些引人矚目的不同意見，這些解讀卻仍然冰封於歷史之中，就像刻在覈爆點旁堤岸石階上的那道陰影一般——留下那道陰影的，是爆炸發生時一個坐在石階上的可憐人。

Mr. Obama will make no apology in Hiroshima, the White House insisted on Tuesday. He will not second-guess Truman for the decision to drop the bomb in Hiroshima, or for the far more questionable call to drop a second three days later, on Nagasaki, because the emperor had not yet surrendered.

週二，美國政府堅定表示，奧巴馬總統不會在廣島道歉。他不會去事後質疑杜魯門總統在廣島投放原子彈的決定，也不會質疑三天後因爲天皇拒不投降而在長崎投下第二顆原子彈的更具爭議的決定。

“This visit will offer an opportunity to honor the memory of all innocents who were lost during the war,” Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, wrote on Tuesday. For a president who came to office talking of a world without nuclear weapons — a vision he has had more trouble realizing than he could have imagined — it is also a chance to say, in the last months of his presidency, that the risk of new Hiroshimas is hardly gone.

美國副國家安全顧問本傑明·J·羅茲(Benjamin J. Rhodes)週二寫道，“這次訪問會是一個契機，緬懷所有在戰爭中喪生的無辜的人。”奧巴馬在上任之初曾說要建立無核世界——一個他後來發現比想象中更難實現的願景。對他來說，此行也讓他有機會在任期的最後幾個月告訴世界：廣島悲劇重演的風險並未遠去。

It may also be the right moment to leap into that historical breach. Hiroshima has unleashed great literature — starting with John Hersey’s unparalleled account in The New Yorker, published in 1946 while the city still lay in ruins — and some of the most profound moral debates of the 20th century. Today, survivors of that morning when the Enola Gay swept high over the city and delivered its payload are even harder to find than American veterans, now in their 90s, whose believe their lives were spared by the same act.

這也可能是跳入那個歷史大斷裂的好時機。廣島事件催生了一批偉大的作品——最早在1946年，廣島還是一片廢墟之時，約翰·赫西(John Hersey)就在《紐約客》上發表了一篇無與倫比的報道——也激發了20世紀最深刻的道德辯論。今天，“埃諾拉·蓋伊”號轟炸機飛越城市的高空並投下炸彈的那個早上倖存下來的人，比仍然健在的美國老兵更加鳳毛麟角。老兵們都已年過九旬，他們相信，同樣是那顆原子彈，他們的生命因而得救。

Newer exhibits in Hiroshima have reminded visitors that the city was no random target, but a buzzing manufacturing hub of the Japanese war machine. “Some of us believe that when we think about the bomb, we should think about the war, too,” Hiroshima’s mayor told me in 1994 as we walked through the new exhibit, which Japanese rightists had opposed opening.

新近的展覽提醒着遊客們，廣島當年被鎖定爲攻擊目標，絕非偶然，而是因爲它曾是日本戰爭機器的繁忙的製造中心。“有人認爲，每當我們想起那次轟炸的時候，也理應想到那場戰爭，”廣島市市長在1994年參觀新展覽的時候對我說道。那時，日本右翼人士還竭力反對新展覽開幕。

Yet even today, 22 years later, the sanitized accounts of the war taught to a new generation of Japanese schoolchildren largely avoid delving into the decision-making that led to the Pacific War, the Rape of Nanjing or questions of whether the “comfort women” were organized by the Japanese military. The vividness of Hiroshima has been melded with anodyne accounts of what preceded it, reinforcing the sense among Americans that, unlike Germany, Japan has never fully grappled with its past.

但即便是在22年後的今天，日本對戰爭的洗白式解讀還在教育着他們新一代的學生，避免對引發太平洋戰爭和南京大屠殺的決策追根究底，也不過多探討“慰安婦”是否是由日本軍方所組織的這一問題。廣島的鮮明形象，已經和日本對轟炸之前的歷史的委婉敘述緊緊地聯繫在一起，讓美國人更加強烈地感到，日本從未像德國那樣直面他們的過去。

Many Japanese say the same of the United States. They remember that when the Smithsonian organized the first exhibition of the Enola Gay in 1995, for the 50th anniversary, veterans objected so loudly to the effort to conduct a dispassionate examination of the decision to drop the bomb — and its aftermath — that Congress held hearings and the museum’s director was forced to resign. The exhibition was watered down, and even today — when the famed B-29 can be seen at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside Dulles International Airport — any discussion of the short- and long-term horrors of dropping the bomb are cursory, and the history behind it controversial.

很多日本人說，美國也是一樣。他們猶記，1995年，史密森尼博物館(Smithsonian)舉辦“埃諾拉·蓋伊”號轟炸機的首次展覽，紀念二戰勝利50週年。那時，美國老兵強烈反對冷靜檢討投擲原子彈的決定及其後果，以至於國會舉行了聽證會，博物館的主管被迫辭職。展覽內容被嚴重刪減。直到今天，赫赫有名的B-29被安放在杜勒斯國際機場(Dulles International Airport)外的史蒂文·烏得沃爾哈齊中心(Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center)，任何關於原子彈投擲所帶來的短期和長期的恐懼的討論都還是草草而過，其背後的歷史也仍然充滿爭議。

“The top American military leaders who fought World War II, much to the surprise of many who are not aware of the record, were quite clear that the atomic bomb was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender, and — for many — that the destruction of large numbers of civilians was immoral,” Gar Alperovitz, a leader of the movement to revise the United States’ own historical accounting, wrote last year in The Nation.

“參加過二戰的美國高級軍方領導都十分清楚，當時日本已經瀕臨投降，因此投擲原子彈是沒有必要的。此外，他們當中很多人都認爲，傷及如此多的無辜平民有違道德。那些對這一記錄毫不知情的人對此一定會非常吃驚”，加爾·阿爾佩羅維茨（Gar Alperovitz）去年在《民族報》（The Nation）中如是寫道。加爾正在領導一場運動，試圖修正美國自身的歷史解讀。

Between now and May 27 — when Mr. Obama is to visit the site — the big question will be how views have evolved in both countries since 1995.

從現在到5月27日奧巴馬總統正式訪問廣島期間，一個重要的問題將是，美日兩國自1995年以來對待這一歷史事件的態度有何轉變。

“In Japan, I don’t think there has been much real evolution, at least among the right wing and the amnesiacs who deny Japan’s destructive war in Asia and insist they were the victims,” said Richard Samuels, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written some of the most insightful works on Japan’s military, and the pre- and postwar cultures that surrounded it. “For them, Obama’s visit will be a chance to reiterate that they were right.”

“我認爲日本對歷史的態度並沒有真正的改觀，至少，右翼分子和那些堅決否認日本曾在亞洲發起破壞性戰爭並堅稱日本自身才是受害者的人的態度沒有改變”，麻省理工大學的理查德·塞繆爾斯教授（Richard Samuels）說道。他著有一些關於日本軍方的書，觀點鞭辟入裏，並圍繞日本軍隊探討了日本戰前與戰後的文化。“對這些人來說，奧巴馬總統此次的訪問不過是他們重申觀點的一個契機罷了。”

Mr. Samuels said it would be harder to predict the reaction in the United States. In the midst of a presidential campaign, he said, “this will be a rich target for those who say this is the next stop on the Obama apology tour.”

塞繆爾斯先生認爲，要預測美國民衆的反應會更加困難。值此總統大選之際，“這無疑是給那些認爲廣島是奧巴馬道歉之旅下一站的人提供了充足證據。”

But, if anything, the questions surrounding those last months of the Pacific War in 1945 have only grown stronger. The firebombing of Tokyo in March of that year resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths by some accounts. And many who questioned the decision to drop the atomic bomb have asked why it was not first exploded in an uninhabited place to demonstrate the dimensions of this new weapon’s power.

但是，要說有什麼不同的話，那就是對1945年太平洋戰爭最後幾個月歷史的質疑越來越強烈。根據一些統計，當年3月的東京大轟炸奪去了近10萬條生命。另外，很多對投擲原子彈的決定持質疑態度的人都曾問過這樣的問題：要測試新武器的威力，爲什麼不挑選無人居住的區域？

But the biggest change, Mr. Samuels said, may come from the absence of witnesses. Twenty years ago, “the Greatest Generation, people with a living memory of World War II, were still around.”

但塞繆爾斯先生認爲，最大的改變也許是由於沒有證人。20年前，“最偉大的一代，同時也是對二戰有着最生動記憶的一批人，都還活着。”

Today they are down to a precious few, and soon the only ones who will be debating the legacy of Hiroshima will not have felt the urgency to drop the bomb, or lived the horror of the result.

而如今，這批人已所剩無幾了。再過不久，爲廣島遺留問題而爭辯的少數羣體也將是從未感受過炸彈投擲之時的緊迫感、或從未生活在爆炸之後的恐懼中的一些人了。