The Hard but Important Work of Remembrance | August 9, 2026 | Rev. Liz Olson
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- 45 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Dear friends… Today, Sunday August 9, marks the 81st anniversary of the dropping of the second atomic bomb over the people of Nagasaki, Japan. August 6, 1945 was the day that the first atomic bomb was dropped by the United States – this one on the citizens of Hiroshima. Today we take a moment to remember that this happened.
But wait - maybe we clench ourselves a little in preparation to hear the stories again, perhaps we even want to turn away. Especially with so much other dire news and multiple crises going on every day it is hard to open up and take in more. Because whether or not we look too closely at the global threats and losses that are happening, they sit inside us all the time, bubbling away on the back burner. So, I’d actually like to not only reflect here on what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’d like to also do some “meta-reflecting” on the importance of the act of remembering.
In the act of remembrance, of speaking the stories and allowing emotions to move through us, we not only bring dignity where there was once unspeakable destruction, shame and sorrow, we are made stronger and clearer in our spirit so that we can make better choices and take actions to create a better future. It is so very hard to look squarely at existential pain, at the horrors of what man does to each other and Life, of the threats that are looming, of the deep losses we endure. Yet to do so brings us relief and more courage. Your courage to do so is important for several reasons. First, it says “I care.” It honors those who have suffered and died. Your remembering is also an act of resistance that says “I will not forget” and “I will not condone this folly.”
We’ll do our act of remembrance today by learning about Hideko Tamura Snider - one of the survivors, or hibakusha, of the atomic bombing. Hideko lives in the Rogue Valley in Oregon where I also lived for many years and I came to know of her through various presentations and community gatherings. I remember how her presence is striking in its contrast of gentleness and a tenacious clarity. I listened to a recorded talk of hers in order to remember her story - which you can watch here.
Hideko tells her story with such a soft, kind voice, as if to hold gently the searing atrocities that she experienced. She was an only child at her home in Hiroshima while her father was stationed in the service elsewhere that “one sunny day” when the world changed at 8:15am. In looking for her mother (who died) and trying to manage the pain of her own injuries, she witnessed melting bodies and people calling out in desperation. She describes what we recognize now as traumatic shock, how her body became like a “tank” of armor to “bring everything inside and then shut down” so that she could steel herself as she saw the others struggling and calling out for help. She spoke of her feeling of guilt that she couldn’t feel sorry for them or help them, but kept going. She educates audiences that this is a normal protective response and its okay to have “if it ever happens to you.”
She explains how she coped with the PTSD as life went on. “You have to put your feet in the mud, in the dread, you face your stress and your trauma. …You meet that challenge and come up with some imagination after hours and hours of sweat and tears and self-pity and everything else. That’s the way.” She speaks to the value of this unflinching self-examination and says, “Don’t ever underestimate yourself. Within yourself there is a gold mine for you to go into and excavate and work with and train to meet what life is handing you.”
It is estimated that approximately 120,000 people were killed immediately when the US Airforce bombers dropped their loads. Within the year the total deaths rose to 280,000. Over the years there has continued to be ongoing loss of life, from stillbirths, from leukemia and other cancers resulting from the radiation exposure. Even now the lives of the survivors – the hibakusha – continue to be impacted, such as with the development of acute myelodysplasia that started showing up 40 years later.
But, of course, the impacts go beyond the physical ones and have caused psychological and spiritual injury for hundreds of thousands of people. What happens to the spirit of someone who has endured such trauma? How do they find meaning after surviving the horror of the first and only use of nuclear weapons? Many do not, of course, and Hideko shares frankly about her own consideration of suicide.
Instead, Hideko has made meaning of her life by writing poetry and books to share her experience - One Sunny Day and When a Peace Tree Blooms. She founded One Sunny Day Initiatives and has been a speaker throughout her life in order to educate people about the impacts of the bombing, about trauma and PTSD. She has been a staunch anti-nuke activist who can speak with grave authority about the consequences of nuclear weapons. It is inspiring to see her gentle spirit and hear her still find authenticity in speaking of our capacity for peace, hope and reconciliation among people of the world.
Hideko stands as a living act of remembrance, encouraging us to face the grief and emotions that we carry deep inside about what happened, about the need to face our fear of the destruction of nuclear weapons and then take action. What happens if we don’t face those feelings?
Rosemary Randall is a British climate psychologist who wrote an influential paper in 2009 about the grief that people were daring to come public with in regards to another large-scale threat – the looming climate crisis. Grief can be rather taboo to bring up in public, in social settings, within families, amongst friends, and even to ourselves. And so, Randall founded Carbon Conversations to help people process their feelings and concerns and then also work together to take actions. She taught that when our grief gets tucked away and never dealt with, there can be negative consequences in our own personal life and for society.
She bases her thinking on William Worden’s work with his model on grief and bereavement that laid out the “Four Tasks of Mourning.” The tasks are:
• to accept the reality of the loss
• to process the pain of grief
• to adjust to a world without the deceased
• to find an enduring connection with the deceased in the midst of embarking on a new life
But Worden also wrote about the negative outcomes for unaddressed grief, and in her paper, Rosemary Randall showed that these negative outcomes were arising societally in humanity as we hide from facing our shared existential threat of climate change. Unaddressed grief can cause:
• denial of the facts
• denial of the meaning of the loss
• shutting off of all emotion
• idealizing what is lost
• numbing through substance use or manic activity
• just not adapting, becoming helpless, bitter, angry, depressed, withdrawing
And so, an act of remembrance helps us also to not perpetuate denial of what is going on, to not idealize some past that we want to “make great again,” and to help us face our pain rather than flee our pain through substance abuse. We face the emotions that sit on the back burner so that we do not become bitter or depressed or withdrawn, but instead lead lives that are complex and meaningful and engaged.
My regret with this written reflection sent through email and posted online is that you receive and read it in a solitary container. It is not a group ritual, not a church service, there is no support from being in community like we have for our annual Transgender Day service when we bear witness to the reading of each name of a trans person who had been killed that year. It is best to bear such important emotional weight with one another. For those who would like to do this kind of communal deep work, please stay tuned for the next round of Engaged Spirituality starting in September when the group will study the book Hiroshima by John Hersey.
Both Hideko Tamura Snider, who is always sharing her experience with groups and gatherings, and Rosemary Randall with her Carbon Conversation groups, found that deep emotional sharing works best with the support of others. This connectedness is the way we must function as we go forward. We cannot do it alone. We cannot sustain isolation or promulgate isolationism. We cannot act as a lone wolf or romanticize the “independent man.”
Atomic fission, nuclear fission, is the complete opposite action of coming together. Fission occurs when a neutron is violently slammed into a larger atom, splitting it into smaller atoms. Fission is an unnatural act of isolating, separating, blasting apart what used to be conjoined and mutually dependent. The exquisitely beautiful atom is Nature’s physical thumbprint and foundation of life, of God’s creation. Atom bombs, or fission, are the antithesis of life and, somehow, we have called it “genius.”
Life happens and succeeds, rather, through a system that connects and interweaves and interacts and is interdependent… a system of many different and diverse elements coming together and contributing to the life and the functioning of each other. This is the way all life systems naturally operate. And this is the way WE need to operate. The health of our spirit and the health of our societies is about the health of our connectedness.
I took beginning Japanese three times over a period of a couple decades, trying to get it to stick but really only a little bit has stayed with me. One phrase that kept coming to mind as I prepared these comments was “issho ni.” Issho ni – means “together.” My prayer is for us to continue to come together to remember the hard parts of life, to share our grief, or whatever may be arising – painful or joyful – and, to proceed “issho ni” as we act to create an interdependent, diverse, complex, and beautiful world.
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