In June 2001, award-winning Japanese American author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto went to Hiroshima on a six-month fellowship to interview the hibakusha, or remaining survivors of the atomic bomb. Three months later, the September 11 attacks on the U.S. changed everything, from the recollections of the survivors to Rizzuto’s own relationship with her family back in America, including her husband and two young sons in New York.

The result was Hiroshima in the Morning, a memoir released last fall in which the author weaves these threads into a deeply personal story of awakening about how we choose our identities, how we view history, and how we use memory as a story we tell ourselves to explain who we are. I caught up with Rizzuto to discuss her emotional journey and impressions of Japan.

What was the most interesting thing about talking with the atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima?

I went to Hiroshima initially because I knew so little—almost nothing—about the atomic bomb and its effects. I arrived more than 55 years after the bombing, so I expected memories to be a little hazy.  When I first arrived, I met people who were very committed to telling their stories in the interest of peace.  They wanted to testify about the power of the atomic bomb and the devastation of war in general in hopes that there would be no more war.  That would make their sacrifices worth it.

I was there to write a novel, though, not a factual piece, so what I was looking for was textures and details about what it was like to live in those times, and how one survived war. So what I was getting was not exactly what I was looking for. Their stories were very complete and rehearsed. What happened then, though, was after three months of listening to these testimonies, the September 11th attacks happened within sight of my Brooklyn home. The world changed. And so did their stories.

In hindsight, how different did the interview project turn out because of 9/11?

I don’t think anyone can underestimate the effects of those attacks. They reverberated immediately, all the way to Japan, and we all suddenly felt the world was not safe. We were not safe. And if we weren’t safe, there was no peace, and if there was no peace, the hibakusha realized, then their sacrifice was for nothing. 

Almost immediately, this destabilization affected their stories. They began to feel more, and to remember more. Moments and people they had blocked out came back to them. They remembered heat, and color and sound. And they remembered what it felt like to go back to their homes and find their mothers’ bones.

Which of the testimonials affected you the most? Why?

The most unbearable stories were often about children. Children who died; children who tried to save their brothers or parents; children who cremated their parents, at age six, because that was what their parents would have wanted. In the months after 9/11, though, something happened which was very moving and powerful. A number of people came to me to tell their stories. Before then, I had been finding my own interviewees with the help of my translators, but after September 11th, I found out that many people actually knew I was there, listening, and they sought me out because they needed a witness. They needed a safe place to relive, and purge, their memories.  And then, it wasn’t just the sad moments. It was also the happy memories of life before, and their family members before. They needed to share those, too, and they gave them to me so their loved ones would not fade away.

Earlier this year, Japan issued formal apologies to Korea for its colonial rule of the peninsula, which ended over 60 years ago. Through your experiences in writing this book, do you feel that Japan’s leaders should be more sensitive to other peoples who suffered under them in the war? Should they apologize to other nations?

My feeling, in the words of an older Japanese survivor I spoke with, is “there is no good war.” I know we humans go to war for many reasons, some truthfully stated and some not. Some more seemingly “necessary” than others. But I think we should all be sensitive to suffering, and be sensitive to our shared humanity. Apologies after the fact can be helpful to help people heal, but the more important thing is to find that connection to shared humanity earlier in order to prevent war from happening in the first place.

Through your experiences in this book, what does it mean to be a mother? How was your life changed in the way you maintain relationships within your own family?

When I was in Japan, I was able to step out of my world and all expectations of me—including invisible expectations that I had put on myself. And I realized that I held some very firm ideas about motherhood that I didn’t believe in. I hadn’t wanted to become a mother when I was younger precisely because I didn’t want to be that kind of 24/7 “only a mother” mother. But I was a mother, of two young boys, when I was in Japan, and I loved them and needed to find a way to be with them and love them outside of a traditional fulltime New York motherhood.

I have done that—it wasn’t easy, and it took collaboration and willingness from my former husband to work with me. Now my children live primarily with their father, and I live within walking distance and see them several times a week, times when I get to be with them fully—doing homework, cooking, enjoying each other. It is very different than simply existing in the same space while each person gets their chores and e-mails and work done. It is based in love and attention. Those are at the heart of our time together. I would say, even beyond my children, in the rest of my family, my relationships are based on love and attention, and constantly renewing our awareness of what we want to be to each other and what we want to give, rather than our obligation to give and our assumptions of what we should get.  Sorry—I went pretty deeply into my philosophy on this because it’s a big part of my life right now.

You just wrapped up a book tour. What have been some of the highlights for you?

It’s been great to be heard and to listen. So many people come to readings and end up sharing their own stories. I have been at events where I have read for ten minutes, and then we have talked in a group for over an hour. Being part of that conversation is awesome.

What kind of feedback and stories have you received from readers so far?

Readers are very kind. They often report that they found themselves crying on the subway and they missed their stop! The material in the book is honest and raw, and if you are willing to enter into it, I think many readers find echoes of their own stories and families. I have also gotten a lot of comments about the way 9/11 and Hiroshima echo each other.

But something else also happens. At almost every opportunity, even when I am in cabs going to the airport, people want to share their own stories. Sometimes they are 9/11 stories, since I live in Brooklyn; sometime they are about family or their own histories. But people feel liberated in some way to speak and they know they can do so safely and they will be heard. It’s a great privilege to be a witness, and I am always so grateful when it happens.

In the book you mention your great aunt Molly, who felt that she wasn’t truly American living in the U.S. during the interment camp roundup of citizens of Japanese descent, and that she didn’t feel Japanese either when visiting for the first time in the 1960s. How does this struggle for identity continue with today’s Japanese Americans?

This question came up on my tour actually—it was a question on the minds of many Japanese Americans on the West Coast. I think the answer is that, for those of us who are third, fourth and fifth generation, those of us whose families put their roots in the U.S. down before the war, we are entirely different creatures—not “Japanese” at all. We have traditions and a culture that have evolved from our immigrant ancestors, but that are entirely different than their Japanese roots. 

Tell us about your journey to get this book published. What brought you to The Feminist Press?

It’s not an easy, beach book of course. The themes and content are challenging—war, motherhood, Alzheimer’s, 9/11—and the structure is a collage of experiences from past and present. So that makes it a challenge for many mainstream publishers to sell in Walmart. I made it even more difficult for myself in the first drafts, because I wanted to write about my mother, but my father didn’t really want people talking about her, so I created a fictional story and made the book a hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, which is very hard to sell. I ended up removing the fiction and writing my mother into the book as I remember her. At that point, I met Amy Scholder, the editorial director for the Feminist Press, and she fell in love with the book as it was then. Ultimately, that is what happens to all of us: an editor falls in love and there it is: your publishing home opening its arms.

The popular manga series Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa of Hiroshima depicts the city as an almost unbearable place even years after bomb fell. Why do you think many of the people there decided to stay? Is there any parallel you can draw between their attitudes and those of post-9/11 New Yorkers?

It was unbearable—it was absolutely flat. But when you think of how devastated all of Japan was, it isn’t surprising. Where else would they go? I can’t remember the exact figures, but something like one third of all of the buildings and infrastructure in Japan was destroyed during the war. What was bearable and functional was already owned and claimed by others, and families were on top of each other beyond their breaking points.

I was living in Japan during 9/11 and related to the observation about the Japanese perception of you as “different because of tragedy,” even though the tragedy did not affect you personally at the time. In your experience, did Japanese people become more sensitive and informed about this as time went on, or do you think that the perception today is similar?

I was only there for a few months, so I can’t really speak to that, but I can say that most of the people I knew had some connection to war, and many were either hibakusha or volunteers who worked closely with them. So they had an intimate understanding of war. I think when you have seen how fragile people are, and how easily the world around you can become a nightmare you never dreamed of, you have a different kind of empathy and wisdom. They know that, even when you do not appear to be marked and injured, damage can be invisible and it can linger. And that is what I was seeing there.

How do your ex-husband and children feel now that your book is complete? Did they read any of the passages of their experiences with you in Japan and comment on it now?

It’s a difficult balance to write truthfully about oneself, especially when it requires that you reveal the lives of others, and so I needed to keep the book to myself until I was completely finished with it. My sons read bits about themselves and were happy to remember those experiences—including all the vomiting, which they find hilarious. My ex-husband said that he was surprised at how well it corresponded with his own memories, now almost a decade old. So I am very grateful for that support, because of course the point of the book is that everyone has a different story.

Do you have any plans to participate in any 10th anniversary 9/11 events next year?

Nothing specific yet, but I am looking forward to getting involved.

Any other messages for our readers?

Just to remember—yourself, your history, your loved ones. And to be a witness when you can.

Hiroshima in the Morning is in stores now. For more info, go to www.feministpress.org/books/hiroshima-morning. Visit the author's homepage at www.r3reiko.com.

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