Culture, Character, and the Grace to Bear Suffering

Sakura was born in 1931, in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, a major port city and centre for ship building. She enjoyed a pleasant childhood with many friends and family. The early years of her adolescence were overshadowed, though, by the increasingly grim circumstances of her country being at war.

On August 9, 1945, the day seemed ordinary for the 14-year-old Sakura, until in a flash, nothing ordinary remained, after an atomic bomb was dropped on her city by the U.S., and 60, 000 to 80, 000 persons were killed directly, and many more later. Nagasaki was partly targeted for attack because of the prominence of its shipbuilding.

I felt fear the first time she told me about having survived that unspeakably horrific event. I felt shocked that she had suffered indescribable losses and grieved that my country had made that assault on her home city.

Sakura was in her late 80’s and lived in a nursing home where I was working. She always was smiling, and impeccably dressed, and she stayed active socially – having many friends among the other residents and the staff and joining in with many of the group activities.

She was referred to me for psychotherapy. Sakura did not have a depressive disorder, instead, she suffered depressive reactions during anniversaries associated with her losses.

My assumptions were caught off guard when she said she had married an American soldier several years after the end of the war, and that she had lived in America, raised her children and grandchildren, and had enjoyed a mostly happy life. Sakura deeply grieved over the death of her beloved husband a few years earlier.

Her remarks about Nagasaki were always brief and factual. I never heard her verbalize blame or vent feelings of anger, and I never saw her publicly display her most deep and personal emotions. Sakura would discreetly weep as she spoke of the sad events in her life during our private conversations. On the occasions of major anniversaries, she would spend the day dressed and lying still and sad and silent on her bed. On August 6^th, the anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, on August 9^th, the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki, and on the anniversary of the death of her husband; on those days she did not speak and would barely eat or move – yet she would be up and smiling and greeting others the following day.

There were so many things I wanted to know about her experiences, yet I curbed my curiosity and attended to her choices of what to reveal or not. The importance of her dignity outweighed my inquisitiveness.

I thought of Viktor Frankl and his comments about the diverse ways persons responded to the horrible circumstances they shared with him as prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II – the same war but the other side of the world from Sakura in Japan. Some persons turned against their fellow prisoners and sought advantages by aligning with their captors. Some would collapse inwardly and soon die, while some would become the best persons you might meet. Sakura was one of those remarkable individuals who could see good, and remain good, and live fully, despite incommunicable suffering.