Harp Song for Hiroshima

By Sheila Fugard

Harp Song for Hiroshima is a work of prose and poetry. The poems introduce the reader to the voices of the people who died on that devastating dayAugust 6, 1945when an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and brought to an end to World War II. The suffering of those lives is eloquently remembered in the book, giving rise to a new understanding and compassion.

Together with the poems, there are prose passages of travel through contemporary Japan. The fallout of the atom bomb on Hiroshima is still with us. The message of the book is that nuclear weapons must never be used again if our civilization is to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524535520

Sheila Fugard

Sheila Fugard is a South African novelist and poet. She is the winner of the prestigious Olive Schreiner Literary Award for her novel The Castaways. She has published four collections of poetry as well as Lady of Realization: A Spiritual Memoir. She now lives in Southern California.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Sheila Fugard.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016913656

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-3554-4

                Softcover       978-1-5245-3553-7

                eBook            978-1-5245-3552-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Certain stock imagery © Shutterstock.

Rev. date: 09/08/2016

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CONTENTS

Pilgrimage To Hiroshima

Harp Song For Hiroshima

Einstein

The Poets Yokota And Toghe

The Fish

The Journey Of Fire

First Fruits

The Samurai School Boys

The Hibakusha

Judgement Day

Hiroshima Hospital

The Sailor

The Haunted

Souvenirs

A Shadow Falls

Great Mushroom Cloud

Travels In Japan

The Yasukuni Shrine

The Seijoshin-In Temple

Nakanoshima Island

The Ise Shrine

The Zen Garden Of Ryoanjii

PILGRIMAGE TO HIROSHIMA

Hiroshima is surely the cataclysmic event of our time. Yet, for me, as a young woman in my thirties, living in apartheid South Africa in the nineteen seventies, it became a symbol of a personal and traumatic event in my life. With the rise of the apartheid government, new and harsh laws were enforced that threatened any contact by whites with the suppressed black community, the majority of citizens in South Africa.

My husband, a playwright, worked with black actors, and they staged provocative plays. These actors were able to give voice to their anguish at the injustice that prevailed in our country. His work was considered seditious by the apartheid authorities, and our freedom too was threatened. The stresses and anxieties of all this caused me to falter in my life, and slip into a breakdown.

It all began on the day when I walked into the garden and gazed out across the Indian Ocean. I saw, with a mounting sense of horror, that huge clouds had massed in the sky, and there were fierce plumes of fire. In that moment of stress, I was certain that an atomic bomb had