On the morning of August 6, 1945, fifteen minutes past eight, Japanese time, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a Red Cross Hospital doctor, approached a stairway to the third floor of the hospital where he practiced in Hiroshima, Japan. He had just taken a specimen of blood from a patient on the first floor and planned to take the specimen to the laboratory on the third floor. He may well have been distracted by a disturbing nightmare he had the night before when, in the dream, he had been beaten by the police and another doctor for practicing without a permit, a license of having completed physician certification.
Then, as John Hersey recounted the story:
He was one step beyond an open window when the light of the bomb was
reflected, like a gigantic photographic flash, in the corridor. He ducked down
on one knee and said to himself, as only a Japanese would, "Sasaki, gambara!
be brave!" Just then (the building was 1,650 yards from the center), the
blast ripped through the hospital. The glasses he was wearing flew off his face;
the bottle of blood crashed against one wall; his Japanese slippers zipped out
from under his feet -- but otherwise, thanks to where he stood, he was
untouched.
"Dr. Sasaki found himself the only doctor in the hospital who was unhurt." This account of Dr. Sasaki's survival is told in Hersey's gripping story of Hiroshima's horrifying devastation as remembered by six of the survivors Hersey was able to interview. He wrote his article, "Hiroshima," which was published in full by The New Yorker on August 31, 1945.
That article by Hersey came to my mind as I pondered the topic of this blog, "Dreams at the End of the World." For the people of Hiroshima, their world ended with that atomic blast seventy-five years ago. What was it like for the people of Hiroshima in those weeks, days, hours, minutes before the utter devastation of their city, their familiar sites, their friends and families? What did they dream at the approaching end of their world?
Of the six survivors Hersey interviewed, we have only one dream reported. It is the nightmare of Dr. Sasaki, which I will repeat here as he might have told it in the voice of the first person:
I am approached by the police and a doctor. They beat me for practicing
medicine without a permit.
We can assume this is only a fragment of the dream, a fragment he was able to retrieve from the insane-like chaos of his traumatized mind. Still, even as a fragment, it is valuable for our reflection, taking care not to project our ideas on the dream's images.
We begin with questions. In the dream, where was he? Was he in the hospital, a medical clinic, or at home where he lived with his mother? What kind of person was he? We know his father had practiced as a physician in the near-by town of Mukaihara where his grandfather had become a wealthy landowner and from where his older brother was killed in the war. We know also that immediately following the blast, Dr. Sasaki worked for three days attending to the ten thousand wounded people, many dying, who made their way to the hospital. Interestingly, it took him ten years before he finalized his degree which he pursued each Thursday while working endless hours each day for the people who crowded his practice with scars of the atomic bomb. It may be significant also that he had been confronted by a senior physician for illegal practice of treating patients in his hometown following his early days at the hospital because he had not completed his medical license.
We also know that Terufumi Sasaki grew up in a culture dominated by Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) who led Japan in the emerging confrontation with the United States and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Tojo's nickname was "Razor Tojo," because his colleagues described him as cold-blooded. He bullied, massacred, and systematically starved civilians as well as prisoners of war. With deliberate political aggression he rose to the rank of Minister of War and ultimately Prime Minister, advocating that Japan become a totalitarian state, furthering his nationalist and militarist ambition by consolidating power with Hitler and Mussolini in the Tripartite Pact. In 1931, Tojo wrote a chapter in the book Essays in Time of National Emergency, in which he called for Japan to become a totalitarian state in preparation for the "next war," a possible anticipation of confrontation with Britain, France, and the United States which he believed had conducted an "ideological war" with Japan since 1919.
This was the militarist atmosphere of Dr. Sasaki's native country during the formative years of his childhood and youth. This was the "world" that shaped his psychological, social, family, educational, and spiritual development. It was also the world that ended on the morning of August 6, 1945, at eight-fifteen -- but not before he dreamed the previous night.
The doctor's dream interests me because of its story, but also because of its timing which so disturbed him that he couldn't go back to sleep. He got up earlier than usual, and took a train to the hospital to begin his daily routine. The changed routine, he later supposed, probably saved his life because it led to his placement in the structure of the hospital where he was least vulnerable when the blast ripped open the building, killing or seriously wounding all the other doctors.
I take note of that factor in itself as strangely interesting, but no less so than the story of the dream itself. By "story," I am referring to the nature of dreams, their narrative form. Unless they are interrupted by some disturbance in the environment, or within the dreamer's body, dreams will present: (1) a beginning, (2) a development of a story line, (3) a climax, however dramatic or simple, and (4) a conclusion or resolution, a sense of completion.
As for Dr. Sasaki's dream, we possibly have only a fragment, and we are fortunate to have that. The fact he recalled even a fragment is remarkable in itself, given the indescribable catastrophic destruction he experienced. So much detail is lost, but what remains tells us much. Here again is the doctor's nightmare.
I am approached by the police and a doctor. They beat me for practicing
medicine without a permit.
Clearly the dream is symbolic. I mean by this that such an episode had never occurred in his life. Nor was that kind of physical violence by police and doctors a likely possibility. And so we can say that the "police" and the "doctor" are parts of his interior life, his psyche, or in the language we might use referring to one's inner life, the "soul."
But here yet another distinction needs to be made. Not only are "police" and "doctor" symbols of his psyche, they are negative, shadowy images of police and doctor. These particular dream characters are engaging in immoral, criminal behavior. Why does Dr. Sasaki dream of such abhorrent characters operating outside the boundaries of civil and professional codes of conduct? Where might we look in his personal, social, cultural background? How was he as younger son treated by his family and particularly his father and older brother? We do not know; Hersey gives no insight about the early psychological development of Saskaki in his family.
But we do know this. We know that the cultural ideal of Japan's political and military leadership was bullying aggression. As I mentioned earlier, Tojo, the military commander and prime minister, was known as "Razor Tojo." Massacre, torture, and humiliation marked his regime and his death sentence by hanging for war crimes following his conviction by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on November 12, 1948.
Such extremes, nationalism and militarism, invaded the souls of the Japanese people. The result was a zeitgeist, a cultural complex in which the human capacity for empathy was overshadowed by a drive for power and domination. That is how we could describe the actions of the "police" and "doctor" in Sasaki's dream. They exercise power over him when they cruelly beat him, and he does not defend himself because he has no power -- no "permit."
Here, then, is an interpretation of the dream fragment. Dr. Sasaki is beaten by his inner negative power complex. The complex originated in the militarist spirit of his early years when his psychological development was impaired by the trauma of not feeling safe, and his interior images of masculinity were distorted by Japan's collective power complex fueled by narcissism, spiritual superiority, and a false sense of destiny.
Finally, before leaving Sasaki's nightmare, it is worthwhile to note the synchronicity between his inner world and the world of japan's nationalist and militarist ventures. They ended together. I do not mean to imply that there is a causal explanation, but rather that there is an interesting simultaneity in the ending of their worlds and the beginning of new worlds. Japan would go on to become an industrial power disavowing war and its military heritage; Dr. Sasaki would go on to complete his medical training and learn the fulfilling art of compassion in the practice of medicine.
Then, as John Hersey recounted the story:
He was one step beyond an open window when the light of the bomb was
reflected, like a gigantic photographic flash, in the corridor. He ducked down
on one knee and said to himself, as only a Japanese would, "Sasaki, gambara!
be brave!" Just then (the building was 1,650 yards from the center), the
blast ripped through the hospital. The glasses he was wearing flew off his face;
the bottle of blood crashed against one wall; his Japanese slippers zipped out
from under his feet -- but otherwise, thanks to where he stood, he was
untouched.
"Dr. Sasaki found himself the only doctor in the hospital who was unhurt." This account of Dr. Sasaki's survival is told in Hersey's gripping story of Hiroshima's horrifying devastation as remembered by six of the survivors Hersey was able to interview. He wrote his article, "Hiroshima," which was published in full by The New Yorker on August 31, 1945.
That article by Hersey came to my mind as I pondered the topic of this blog, "Dreams at the End of the World." For the people of Hiroshima, their world ended with that atomic blast seventy-five years ago. What was it like for the people of Hiroshima in those weeks, days, hours, minutes before the utter devastation of their city, their familiar sites, their friends and families? What did they dream at the approaching end of their world?
Of the six survivors Hersey interviewed, we have only one dream reported. It is the nightmare of Dr. Sasaki, which I will repeat here as he might have told it in the voice of the first person:
I am approached by the police and a doctor. They beat me for practicing
medicine without a permit.
We can assume this is only a fragment of the dream, a fragment he was able to retrieve from the insane-like chaos of his traumatized mind. Still, even as a fragment, it is valuable for our reflection, taking care not to project our ideas on the dream's images.
We begin with questions. In the dream, where was he? Was he in the hospital, a medical clinic, or at home where he lived with his mother? What kind of person was he? We know his father had practiced as a physician in the near-by town of Mukaihara where his grandfather had become a wealthy landowner and from where his older brother was killed in the war. We know also that immediately following the blast, Dr. Sasaki worked for three days attending to the ten thousand wounded people, many dying, who made their way to the hospital. Interestingly, it took him ten years before he finalized his degree which he pursued each Thursday while working endless hours each day for the people who crowded his practice with scars of the atomic bomb. It may be significant also that he had been confronted by a senior physician for illegal practice of treating patients in his hometown following his early days at the hospital because he had not completed his medical license.
We also know that Terufumi Sasaki grew up in a culture dominated by Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) who led Japan in the emerging confrontation with the United States and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Tojo's nickname was "Razor Tojo," because his colleagues described him as cold-blooded. He bullied, massacred, and systematically starved civilians as well as prisoners of war. With deliberate political aggression he rose to the rank of Minister of War and ultimately Prime Minister, advocating that Japan become a totalitarian state, furthering his nationalist and militarist ambition by consolidating power with Hitler and Mussolini in the Tripartite Pact. In 1931, Tojo wrote a chapter in the book Essays in Time of National Emergency, in which he called for Japan to become a totalitarian state in preparation for the "next war," a possible anticipation of confrontation with Britain, France, and the United States which he believed had conducted an "ideological war" with Japan since 1919.
This was the militarist atmosphere of Dr. Sasaki's native country during the formative years of his childhood and youth. This was the "world" that shaped his psychological, social, family, educational, and spiritual development. It was also the world that ended on the morning of August 6, 1945, at eight-fifteen -- but not before he dreamed the previous night.
The doctor's dream interests me because of its story, but also because of its timing which so disturbed him that he couldn't go back to sleep. He got up earlier than usual, and took a train to the hospital to begin his daily routine. The changed routine, he later supposed, probably saved his life because it led to his placement in the structure of the hospital where he was least vulnerable when the blast ripped open the building, killing or seriously wounding all the other doctors.
I take note of that factor in itself as strangely interesting, but no less so than the story of the dream itself. By "story," I am referring to the nature of dreams, their narrative form. Unless they are interrupted by some disturbance in the environment, or within the dreamer's body, dreams will present: (1) a beginning, (2) a development of a story line, (3) a climax, however dramatic or simple, and (4) a conclusion or resolution, a sense of completion.
As for Dr. Sasaki's dream, we possibly have only a fragment, and we are fortunate to have that. The fact he recalled even a fragment is remarkable in itself, given the indescribable catastrophic destruction he experienced. So much detail is lost, but what remains tells us much. Here again is the doctor's nightmare.
I am approached by the police and a doctor. They beat me for practicing
medicine without a permit.
Clearly the dream is symbolic. I mean by this that such an episode had never occurred in his life. Nor was that kind of physical violence by police and doctors a likely possibility. And so we can say that the "police" and the "doctor" are parts of his interior life, his psyche, or in the language we might use referring to one's inner life, the "soul."
But here yet another distinction needs to be made. Not only are "police" and "doctor" symbols of his psyche, they are negative, shadowy images of police and doctor. These particular dream characters are engaging in immoral, criminal behavior. Why does Dr. Sasaki dream of such abhorrent characters operating outside the boundaries of civil and professional codes of conduct? Where might we look in his personal, social, cultural background? How was he as younger son treated by his family and particularly his father and older brother? We do not know; Hersey gives no insight about the early psychological development of Saskaki in his family.
But we do know this. We know that the cultural ideal of Japan's political and military leadership was bullying aggression. As I mentioned earlier, Tojo, the military commander and prime minister, was known as "Razor Tojo." Massacre, torture, and humiliation marked his regime and his death sentence by hanging for war crimes following his conviction by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on November 12, 1948.
Such extremes, nationalism and militarism, invaded the souls of the Japanese people. The result was a zeitgeist, a cultural complex in which the human capacity for empathy was overshadowed by a drive for power and domination. That is how we could describe the actions of the "police" and "doctor" in Sasaki's dream. They exercise power over him when they cruelly beat him, and he does not defend himself because he has no power -- no "permit."
Here, then, is an interpretation of the dream fragment. Dr. Sasaki is beaten by his inner negative power complex. The complex originated in the militarist spirit of his early years when his psychological development was impaired by the trauma of not feeling safe, and his interior images of masculinity were distorted by Japan's collective power complex fueled by narcissism, spiritual superiority, and a false sense of destiny.
Finally, before leaving Sasaki's nightmare, it is worthwhile to note the synchronicity between his inner world and the world of japan's nationalist and militarist ventures. They ended together. I do not mean to imply that there is a causal explanation, but rather that there is an interesting simultaneity in the ending of their worlds and the beginning of new worlds. Japan would go on to become an industrial power disavowing war and its military heritage; Dr. Sasaki would go on to complete his medical training and learn the fulfilling art of compassion in the practice of medicine.
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