Let's talk about nuclear war.
This is actually our second attempt at this video. The first one we had to completely throw away.
And it wasn't because it was a bad video.
It wasn't even because it wasn't interesting. In fact to Francesco and I, this was probably the video we wanted to make the most.
We had to throw it away because we started to question if it was true. In researching this video
we kept coming across these gaps in the history.
And that was really frustrating because he and I, we want to tell the story correctly. It's a super sensitive and important story.
But at the same time, the further we researched, the more we started to realize
it didn't really matter if it was true or not.
Because this isn't the story of a history. It's the story of a symbol.
This is the story of a tricycle belonging to three-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani, now dead for over 70 years.
Shin was born to a typical wartime family. His father was a conscripted laborer and his mother was a housekeeper.
He had two older sisters and an uncle in the navy.
Pretty much as normal as it gets.
But Shin also had a tricycle,
and that kind of made him
exceptional because in wartime Japan, pretty much everything metal had been melted down for the war effort. So to have a
tricycle would have made Shin a pretty popular boy. On the morning of August 11th,
he's playing in the yard with his neighborhood friend, Kimiko.
They're just sort of riding around on the tricycle, being kids. Some passerby even comments, how cute and happy they seem.
And then the blast occurs. It collapses their house killing both of Shin's sisters and Kimiko
instantly and burying him in the rubble. As his parents dig him out,
they find him still grasping the handlebars of the tricycle.
A few hours later, he dies in his father's arms.
Together with Kimiko and his two sisters, Shin is buried in the backyard that day, next to the rubble that was their home.
Over 40 years later,
his father would dig up his children to move them to a
proper grave after building up the courage to do so, and he would find that long-forgotten tricycle.
The next day he would bring it to the Hiroshima Peace Museum where it remains on display to this day.
And here are a few reasons
why I don't believe this story as it's told. The first is that almost all of the information
I could find online comes from a children's book. And it's just too perfect.
It's almost as if every scene is lifted directly from a Japanese
melodrama. The baby boy found still clutching his favorite toy.
The father who digs him up only to see him die in his arms. The best friends buried together
underground and then found 40 years later still holding hands. Even the finding of the tricycle only comes when his family has an
honourable customary burial.
To me though, it's almost like an amalgam of all of the stories, all of these anecdotes at the Hiroshima
Peace Museum. As if they took a piece of every little bit and combined it into one. And that's what's crazy.
This absolutely could have happened. It's a story that's been repeated over and over again in these cities that were bombed.
Thousands of children were killed.
And the further I researched, the more I realized I don't really care if Shin's story is true or not.
It doesn't affect the outcome to me.
The final words of that children's book are "Shin's story helps keep the dream of peace alive for children around the world."
And that's just it. It's not meant to be a history. It's meant to be a symbol.
And I can understand why. As is probably clear from my accent, I was raised in North America.
I spend equal time in the United States and Canadian school systems. I probably learned about the atomic bombings
I'm going to say half a dozen times or so.
But it never really occurred to me what I was learning. I was being taught that the atomic bombings were positive.
Full stop. They stopped the invasion of mainland Japan and therefore saved countless lives.
The ends justified the means. And while that's true, the bomb that hit Nagasaki didn't explode over military.
It didn't even explode over the factories that it was aiming for. It exploded over a neighborhood. A tennis court.
Of the over 80,000 people it killed, barely a hundred were soldiers.
It killed almost entirely civilians. People with no stake in the war except being born in the country that started it. Be they
pacifists or war mongers.
POW's, workers, children. It didn't matter. The bomb killed them all.
But in turn, it also stopped the war. There's no denying that. Hirohito
specifically says that the reason he surrendered was because he was concerned that the American bombs were going to wipe out his
people. And he probably wasn't that far off.
And that's where it gets tricky. Because if you kill one innocent person to save three,
how do you frame that? What if it's a hundred? Are you proud? Are you a hero?
And how does that frame change, when it's your family member who was the one?
For many, the take away from this tragedy
is that you can bomb your way to a better world. Look at Japan today people say. In fact if you go on Twitter
right now, you can find thousands of people who are making jokes about the bombings of Japan.
You can even find people who believe
earnestly and express it that we can solve complex problems with a nuke.
And this is the cloud that the Hiroshima Peace Museum lives under every day.
They struggle to remind us of the one we traded for the three.
To paraphrase mass murderer Joseph Stalin, a single death's a tragedy, but a million is a statistic.
So as we lose interest in the past,
they need to find their one. Their symbolic
tragedy. The tricycle is perfect, and regardless of where it comes from, [work] better for the story.
Children by the thousands died when we nuked Japan. So choose one.
That's what the tricycle really means. Be it ISIS or North Korea
or Imperial Japan. Beneath these governments that we so rightly despise
are civilians. I'm a civilian and I bet you are too.
Will you be the one that we sacrifice for the three?
This is Rare Earth.
Rest in peace, Shin.
Whoever you were.