Memorial Day isn't just a time to break out your BBQ and get great deals, it's also a time to remember the wars we've fought and sacrifices made...without interrogating the reasons why. Vin and Ola take a look at how we memorialize war (and sometimes peace) and who chooses which stories get told.
Guevara visits Hiroshima, can’t conceal anger at atrocity
Che Guevara Farewell letter and tape from Hiroshima
Similarities Between Benin and Japanese Cultures.
Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb a book by Togzhan Kassenova
Ola: [00:00:00] This is minds blown.
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Ola: Hello and welcome back to Minds Blown. We're your hosts, Olamide Samuel and,
Vincent: Vincent Intondi.
Ola: and on this podcast, we explore stories that challenge perceptions and shed light on the complexities of our world. And today as Memorial Day approaches, we are delving into the intricate relationship between memorials, war culture, and public [00:01:00] history. We're going to hand over to Vincent to start us off with this exploration of the history of Memorial Day.
Vincent: Thanks before I do that I sound a little bit under the weather. So last time we were we were recording you were just getting back from You know A trip to Africa. So
it looks like you may have gotten a little ill from there. You look like you've audience can't see you, but you won a couple of rounds with Muhammad Ali here.
So how are you feeling? Well,
Ola: I felt like Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali threw a jab at a right hook right in my face.
Vincent: I'm sure the audience I'm sure our listeners are happy that you're prevailing and you're you're sticking it out. So it's good to see you again, my friend, and hope you feel better soon. And yes, we're. Going to look at Memorial Day in, in public history and monuments. But as we usually do, let's start off with a story of Cold War history that is usually not talked about or forgotten.
We're going to start in 1959 which was right when the [00:02:00] Cuban revolution happened
News Reel Cuban Revolution: The road to Havana paved with glory for rebel chieftain Fidel Castro, 32 year old man of the hour in Cuba. His army of irregulars have taken over an island of six and a half million. And now, news of the day brings to your screen the voice of Senor Castro. Non practicing lawyer, revolutionist by profession, who has often said, I am fighting for a democratic Cuba and an end to dictatorship.
And soon, with diplomatic recognition received from the U. S. and other countries, Cuba can begin the big task of returning to normal.
Vincent: . And right after the revolution happened and Castro took power Che Guevara and , about five other goodwill ambassadors, if you will, went on a tour Over 10 countries, this included the United Arab Republic at the time, India, [00:03:00] Japan, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia.
And what they were trying to do was promote goodwill, but also they were hoping to get some deals to boost exports of their sugar, Cupid sugar, which was their main export and source of income. And this was planned to, especially in Japan, and they were hoping that any of the, the Agreements they got with Japan and these countries would help purchase more equipment for agriculture fishing boats and things of that nature.
So the group arrives in Japan on July 15th and after meeting with some government officials, they start to head West and after touring some automobile and aircraft factories Che Guevara made it clear that he wanted to visit Hiroshima and this was not part of the itinerary. In fact, the government really didn't want.
them to go and, you know, make a fuss over this at all. And he was [00:04:00] told, though, that on July 24th that there was a flight from Osaka to Hiroshima and it would take less than an hour. And he said he really wanted to go to lay flowers at the Peace Park and at the memorial. Even if it meant canceling everything else on his agenda.
And so they agreed to it and they were really scrambling as far as trying to organize this whole thing. And so he goes there and he travels through the night to Hiroshima and the wee hours of the morning when nobody's really around, he goes to visit the peace park in Hiroshima. And when he goes there, He makes it clear that part of this is to look at what U.
S. imperialism has done to this country, and can do to other countries. And at the time he was 31 years old, and after he lays the flowers down at the Peace Park, he [00:05:00] stood silent, and he stood erect, and he was gazing so intently, there's photographs of him and how deep of thought he was in at this moment.
And then he turned to the guide the Japanese guy that he was with, and in English, she said to him, America did a terrible thing. Aren't you Japanese angry about the atrocity that was perpetrated upon you? And the guide was really stunned and taken aback by That he said this, and that the intensity, he said of Che of being silent until then, and then they went to the atomic bomb survivors hospital, and he saw the human shadow on the steps of one of the banks there.
That's famous in Hiroshima and when he returned to Cuba, his son, who's now 55, 56 years old, recently said [00:06:00] that He never failed to mention Hiroshima whenever he spoke about Japan.
In fact, his son recently was in Hiroshima And is part of a project on his father's legacy. , there was a photo exhibit in Tokyo about this. And and his son made clear just how much this issue of nuclear disarmament meant to his father. So, you know, another piece of history in the cold war with nuclear weapons that, , rarely anybody talks about.
And so many people don't even know, , happened.
Ola: It's a really interesting story. Almost sort of an origin story, if you will, of the practice and culture of world leaders going to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
G7 Newscast: Taking you live now to Hiroshima in Japan. World leaders are visiting the Peace Memorial Park. This is after arriving for the G7 Leaders Summit. laying wreaths, of course. This is to mark the occasion, [00:07:00] keep that shot up there, of the bombing of Hiroshima back in World War II, August 6th, 1945.
Ola: I mean, last year we saw the G7 leaders actually make a trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. And that even caused some controversy because one of these leaders, Joe Biden, the president of the United States, visited the Peace Memorial Park And of course, for those that know how the U. S. 's nuclear arsenal works, the precedent exercises, you know, significant control over the nuclear arsenals, and part of that control is to carry around something called a nuclear football, and a nuclear football is essentially The launch codes, the button that one has to press to launch a nuclear strike.
CNN Nuclear Football: Just a few feet from the President, no matter where the Commander in Chief happens to be, a military aide carries a briefcase. It's nicknamed the football, [00:08:00] and the power this satchel can unleash is legendary. Immense, unprecedented power. The United States currently, right now, deploys approximately 900 nuclear warheads that are on the order of 10 to 20 times more powerful than the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Five military aides, one from each branch of the armed forces, work in a rotation carrying the football.
THe result of the decision the president would make is so grotesquely horrible, so grotesquely horrible, it would change the face of the earth, it would change humanity, it would change mankind. And I guess when you're on duty you try not to think about the import of that, but you're fully prepared to do so if you have
to.
Ola: And the controversy of Joe Biden visiting the Hiroshima peace memorial park is that the nuclear football had to be with him and was with him. And so there was this deep and significant irony of the fact that leaders around the world, [00:09:00] many of whom. Controlled nuclear arsenals and one of whom actually had the trigger for a nuclear arsenal Were purporting to pay respects to the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
. While you were telling that story, there was something that struck my mind and I wanted to expand on this a bit further. You mentioned very briefly something about human shadows. What are these human shadows?
Vincent: The heat rays were so devastating that there were actually there's shadows of human beings that vaporized in there. The shadow of that person is like a it's a permanent fixture on concrete on buildings and some of those you can actually still see. In the city in certain places, if you know where they are, but there's also pieces of these buildings that have been taken into the museums as well.
, that type of devastation was with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We know that the bombs that we have now are, you know, so much more powerful,
[00:10:00] Than what we had in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you've been to, , Hiroshima, , that Peace Park.
. I don't know how you go to some place like that and not be affected. , I've gone for years and there's never a time where I've been there. No matter how many times I've gone where I, , it just runs over me like a freight train.
And it's part of a big reason why I got into this is from the 1st trip I went. And so it really made me when I looked back. I remember being a student and looking at the museums there and the parks and, and thinking about , how we in the United States or other parts of the world, how we view peace, how we view war
, what we're going to be talking about today is really important because we give meaning to how we represent something, you know, how a memorial or museum is structured the words that we use, whether it's in a podcast, whether it's in singing, whether it's [00:11:00] in writing, the images we produce.
The emotions we associate with this, so the way that we classify and conceptualize the values we ascribe to it, the representation works as much through what is included in an exhibit. As. Much is what's not included and so I think that's important when we, , look at how we view war and peace and these kind of things.
And so I think it's important to look at this stuff. , Memorial Day in the United States. It's observed the last Monday of May. It's supposed to honor the men and women who died while serving in the U. S. military, and it was originally known as Decoration Day. It originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.
, Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings. It kind of marks the beginning of the summer. There's usually some [00:12:00] sort of big thing, you know, maybe at the Capitol, and it's a very nationalistic, it's a very patriotic kind of thing. But again, what are we celebrating?
And, and the idea that if we are Critical in any way of the military, the decision to drop the bomb, it's somehow looked at is that we are insulting. We are desecrating the troops in what they've, you know, those that sacrifice . And I don't think it needs to be 1 or the other. And.
I remember going to school graduate school, and there were a lot of folks that went in that direction of public history. And whether you're being working in national parks, or whether you're working in a museum, you're curating These are working in archives.
These are important jobs. And I think there's a real place for public history, in all of our lives, because, you know, we don't realize you, we can say, Oh, I don't pay attention to that commercial. I don't pay attention to that exhibit, but we [00:13:00] do, it gets in us.
And so I really give credit to those folks that, that went on that track of public history.
Ola: And like you mentioned, you know, there's, there's a curation function that these public historians have and you also raised the question of what are we actually celebrating? And I think it's important to have the freedom to be objective. Possibly critical about the remembrance of acts of conflict and how we remember them and the the completeness of that remembrance, I think is important. For example, , you mentioned the U. S. 's Culture Memorial Day or Remembrance Day and how there's visits to memorials, there's, you know, barbecues, parades, there's gatherings, and it's pretty much a public holiday. But how much of this [00:14:00] ceremony actually reflects our culture? On what we're remembering actually reflects on the various wars, the causes of the wars and the victims of these wars, whether they be American lives or the other lives, you know, how deep is this
reflection?
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Vincent: Yeah, and it's, it's also, you know, when you start to think about this, it kind of all ties into previous podcasts we've [00:15:00] done, right? So it ties into, we've talked about sports in the inaugural episode of the flyovers in the giant flags and
all that's going to happen. And so it's baseball season, Americana, it's all that kind of stuff.
And it's tied in together and you see it again in, in entertainment, like, again, we talked about that with the Oscars. , , there's a lot of times when people say, well, I don't really know what's going on over there or because I don't either want to pay attention. I just want to, , divorce myself from all of it.
But also the idea that it doesn't affect me, right? People often said with why weren't people in the streets as much for, say, Afghanistan, or the war. Iraq, which there were millions, but compared to Vietnam, but part of that was because one, there was no draft and that, that makes things different.
Right. So there was a stake in this in a way where you saw people go, I don't, I'm not, my kid's not in Afghanistan. It's a million miles away. I don't understand it. It's always going to be a mess. And so therefore I'm not really into [00:16:00] it. But war affects us. No matter where it is,
Ola: Yeah.
Vincent: if you think about your 401k plan,
who's invested, what companies are investing and say right now with Israel and Palestine, or you think about what's reported on the news or what shows are being produced as a result of war going on in the world, movies that are being produced you know, You know, the, the conversations you have with family members can go a bad way, or unite based on what's happening with war in the world.
Your own mental health and how much you're scrolling and seeing it. I mean, we see that all the time right now. Right. I mean,
how much can I take in the first two hours this morning? I'm doing nothing but reading about Gaza and you're just, how do you rebound from that and say, okay, now I got to carry on with the rest of my day.
So the idea that war doesn't affect anything. Every person really in the world, because it's the economy, it's what can be exported and imported it. It's all encompassing. So yeah, how we. Teach it memorialize it think about it [00:17:00] is really important.
Ola: Absolutely. And there was something you mentioned, this is a slight segue but it also impacts on our understanding and sympathy of the other. You talked about movies and previously we had an episode on the Oscars and, you know, the impacts of, of film and TV. And something just came to mind with regards to movies and war and how the American mind and, by extension, Hollywood consumers minds are conditioned by the narratives that movies tell. And I've noticed a periodization with Hollywood action movies where. You know, in the late 2010s, a lot of the action movies were about soldiers in Afghanistan or in Iraq, and in the early 2000s, there was even a movie about North Korea there was a movie about [00:18:00] Libya.
So when we think about the comedy, The Dictator, that was about. Essentially Libya, right? And we go back and back and we think about movies in the 80s and how the Russians were always the bad guys. And earlier on the Japanese were the bad guys. And there's this conditioning and way of portraying different portions of the world as their own unique type of villain. I almost feel like this portrayal either preempts or helps to condition the Hollywood consumer psyche to be less empathetic to the other. If that makes sense. I just wanted us to segue very quickly to just talk about how these movies impact our appreciation of war. And then subsequently how we remember conflict.
Vincent: You know, we like you said we had mentioned this and discussed it [00:19:00] briefly But you know, you go back to the 1950s and it was John Wayne and it was this, you know, the Cowboy it's that toxic masculinity, what it means to be a man, right? It's go fight in the war and have guns will travel.
And it's, we're, you know, we're on the right side of this. And it's those, that very essence of the 1950s cold war mentality, John Wayne mentality that, you know, the kids that were, went into Vietnam grew up on. And so here were these kids going into Vietnam, those that, you know, volunteered and thought this was the right thing to do because, you know, Their dads and their granddads had fought in war.
Born on the Fourth of July: I wanted to be a good American. I wanted to serve my country. I couldn't wait to fight my first war. . Thirteen thousand miles. It's a long way to go to fight a war. Don't you know what it means to me to be a Marine, Dad? Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted this.
I wanted to serve my country. I want to go to Vietnam. [00:20:00] I'll die there if I have to.
Vincent: And this is again what it meant to be a man.
I think the best portrayal of this is is born on the 4th of July. The film about Ron Kovic that Tom Cruise stars in it. It portrays this perfectly.
Ola: Yes,
Vincent: then like you mentioned in the eighties, you get Rambo, you get Chuck Norris and you, you know, where they're killing all the Vietnamese, the other again.
And then, like you said, you get to Chris Kyle and American sniper and you get to zero dark 30 and lone survivor and all of these things. And that, but then you also get like the, the 24 show and you get Homeland and all of those shows that also just contribute to this idea of what it means to be a hero, to be a man, to be patriotic.
, in all of this, without them coming out and saying it, it is the idea then if this is what's right, this is what's strong, this is what's a man, this is what you're supposed to do. Then the opposite is weak. Right. Peace is [00:21:00] looked at as being weak. You're the naive one. It's weak.
Vincent: , you know, to be an intellectual is weak, to read a book is weak, you know, Oh God, no, no. It's just being a man. And so that gets, and of course it goes into video game culture. Call of Duty and Soldier of Fortune. And that is not to say that playing video games or watching a movie then makes you, you know, this one type of person or another.
I don't believe that. I played video games when I was younger, but it's again, that idea of, of how we define peace versus how we, what is looked at as a sign of strength. And that plays out in our public history every day.
Ola: And how we glorify war. I think that was the, the additional,
Vincent: Yeah,
Ola: three words
Vincent: yeah, absolutely.
Ola: you know, the topic of Vietnam has come up repeatedly. I think because of the scale of opposition to this war and the scale of public mobilization around the issues Regarding the conduct of this [00:22:00] war. And I think this actually links to memorials themselves as institutions, as buildings, as stories. And with regards to Vietnam, I could say that, you know, memorials aren't without controversy. The Vietnam war memorial has a solemn display of 58, 000. Names, right? But what is the fuller picture? What does this memorial signify and what does it omit? I'm going to hand that over to you to give us a bit of insight.
Vincent: Yeah. Have you ever? Oh, you've never been to the memorial? No.
Ola: No, not yet. The U S has got to give me a visa first.
Vincent: Yeah. Yeah. I gotta get that taken care of. If you walk around the National Mall in D. C., it's the World War II Memorial. It's the Korean War Memorial. It's the Vietnam War Memorial, right? Again, it's, there's no, no peace anywhere. , The wall with the 58, 000 [00:23:00] names is 246 feet, nine inches long. It's impressive.
I mean, it's, it's a sight to behold and especially Memorial that you'll see people, they're finding their, , loved one's names and things of this nature, but again, there is nowhere in the United States, not the wall, not anywhere that mentions or talks about the 3. 8 million Vietnamese. That were killed in that war.
And those numbers are from Robert McNamara. So, and
Ola: 3. 8
Vincent: 8
million.
Yes. And if we added those names to the wall, it would be like multiplying it 65 times. It would probably be close to about 10 miles long. And so what message would that send? If people went there and saw a wall 10 miles long with these names and So not only does it, what does it tell you is to go back to your [00:24:00] original point with another, it tells you that these lives, these 3.
8 million lives don't matter because they're Vietnamese. Right. So they don't
matter. It's only the 58, 000 soldiers that matter. And again, it doesn't need to be one or the other. The, excluding of those 3. 8 million, I think, sends a strong message of what, you know, how we look at war. You'll see people go to Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day. Now, Arlington Cemetery is a great place to be. hauntingly beautiful from the rows and rows of crosses and unknown soldiers. And what always gets me is when you go to Arlington to see the eternal flame of John F. Kennedy, where he's buried and his brother and so many others, like it is.
But again, what does that, when you see a cemetery with all of these people that have been killed in war, you know, It should be [00:25:00] causing you to think about peace. Like you shouldn't want this to happen to somebody else and go through this.
But I fear it, goes the opposite way. It just, it creates more of a soldier mentality.
, and to juxtapose that there are, I believe approximately a hundred peace museums in the world, the world. That's not a lot. And only.
Ola: than one per country.
Vincent: And only seven in the United States. There's one in Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Chicago, Philadelphia. I think there's one in California. The most well known I think is in Dayton, Ohio.
But these are not large funded, you know, giant museums. So why is it that we don't have peace museums, but we are so willing to just keep funding more and more and more on war memorials?
Tom Hanks - WWII Memorial: [00:26:00] It was called the greatest generation any society has ever produced. They were ordinary people who half a century ago did nothing less than help save the world. Millions served in uniform, millions more served at home, and nearly half a million gave their lives. And yet there is no National Memorial to honor their sacrifice.
It is time to say thank you. Call now and help build the National World War II Memorial.
Ola: Yeah. There is a selective focus on one over the other
Vincent: yeah. And so shouldn't Memorial Day, shouldn't a day or every day, shouldn't when you see something about the Vietnam War in the U. S., shouldn't it be about educating the horrors of war and , what we did wrong in that war. And so again, it brings up the issue then. Of the phrase never again, right?
This is we're hearing this a lot today. [00:27:00] So, you know, should the phrase never again in our public discourse be used, you know, there are those that say, oh, it can only be used for the Holocaust. Just like the term Holocaust can only be used for what the Jewish people went through with nuts with the Nazis.
There's also the conversation of what is never again even mean for who is it just a blanket term? Just throw it up there. And that kind of covers everything. It's like a all lives matter type thing. So, I think that's important in terms of language and that phrase of, of never again, and it kind of goes hand in hand with if you've been to the Hiroshima Peace Park, the, the, where you have the, the arch and and the flame and, and of course, it says.
May we, there's controversy about what it, what it actually translates to,
but most will say it says, we shall never repeat the evil. And [00:28:00] so that phrase of, we shall never repeat this evil, what does that mean? Who is the we? Is the we the world?
Is it the U. S. dropping the atomic bombs? Is it what Japan had done in the war?
Who is the we? What is the evil? Is the evil war itself? Is the evil the atomic bombings? What does that mean? It's open to interpretation. , I think that goes back to something we, you know, said previously, which is language and how you curate these things. What should they say? You know, a lot of people talk about and the Holocaust Museum in the United States gets everybody.
Is the, the shoes when you walk in and see all the shoes, you know, and it just hits you like, my God, these are human beings. Right? , how you, , curate these things and think about exhibits and think about the wording is again, you know, it's really important. And you'll see that. And how many people are going to museums and things, especially on Memorial Day.
Ola: Let's [00:29:00] turn to the actual aircraft that dropped these bombs on Japan. A few exhibits actually captured attention to memorialization, like the Enola Gay, which was the aircraft used for the first atomic bomb.
Enola Gay Restoration: When we first received the aircraft, it was in pretty poor condition. It sat in storage all the way up until 1984, when we brought it out and started restoration.
In total, in restoration time, we took about 19 years to restore this airplane. That's about, It's a quarter million man hours that we have invested here.
Ola: And in 1995, the National Air and Space Museum in the U. S. actually faced backlash over its portrayal of the plane. And the debate Raged on, was the bombing a [00:30:00] necessary evil or was it an unjustifiable act of mass destruction?
Vincent: This, it really started to begin in the summer of 94. And then it kind of came to a head in 95 where the air and space museum of the Smithsonian, Smithsonian federally funded. The air and space museum is a big 1 in the U. S. Kids love to go to it. It's a, it's 1 of the more popular museums in the United States.
And the decision was made to. Put the plane that dropped the atomic bombs, the Enola Gay on exhibit, and it was going to be part of a much larger exhibit., There was going to be, I believe, five parts to it. And the initial script was, that was put together at the Smithsonian, It was called Crossroads, the end of World War II, the atomic bomb and the origins of the Cold War.
That was what it was titled. The first section was called A Fight to the Finish. And it dealt primarily with the final year of the war. And it looked at What Japan had done at Pearl [00:31:00] Harbor and slave labor, but also the racist attitudes we had towards the Japanese.
George Carlin: In 1942, there were a hundred and ten thousand Japanese American citizens in good standing, law abiding people who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind.
The only right they had? Right this way, into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away.
Vincent: , it looked at all of these things kind of coming to a head and it was very clear in the original script that we viewed the war in Japan, different from Germany and Italy. And that's true, especially in our [00:32:00] rhetoric at that time and othering the Japanese.
And there were photographs of Japanese atrocities.
And so immediately there began pushback where conservatives in the media and in Congress conservative groups, veterans groups started pushing back and saying that this was being way too soft on the Japanese and that it was, making the U S look bad that the U S was wrong for doing this. And.
Then you had the decision to drop the bomb. . So they were looking at Truman's decision to drop it and what went into that. It looked at the what the military said in warning him that he didn't need to use it or that it didn't need to be used or changing surrender terms or demonstrating the bomb.
All things that we had talked about is ways to avoid and questioning if it even ended the war, which it didn't . , even the casualty number that we discussed, that was also in the script. So what happens is [00:33:00] the, American legion. Immediately comes out against this and now the people that put this together are essentially under attack and they are being called un American.
Politically incorrect pinheads, the Washington times called them there was the wall street journal said that it was inspired by something other than racism and blood lust. And this was not the right approach. One after another, the Boston globe said the script was anti American.
One disgruntled veteran said that the Japanese have quote, bought Hawaii and lots of the United States. Let's hope they haven't bought the Smithsonian. And so when this happens, , the Smithsonian brings in a group of historians and scholars to look at the scripts as well. And of course, if you're an academic and you're looking at this critically, you're going to be looked at as a leftist and everything else.
And so what ends up happening is. Congress gets involved. They threatened to pull [00:34:00] funding for this. People lose their jobs over this at the Smithsonian. , they decide to basically scrap the entire thing. And when they do that at the very end, you just have a watered down, you know, plaque here.
They, scuttled the big exhibit and Instead, when the actual exhibit opened in June of 1995, the label copy just said, quote, the use of the bombs led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. Such an invasion, especially if undertaken for both main sides, would have led to very heavy casualties among American and allied troops and Japanese civilians in the military.
It was. Thought highly unlikely that Japan, while in a very weakened military condition, would have surrendered unconditionally without such an invasion,
yeah, so where you should have a museum and if you wanted to put this [00:35:00] plane up fine, but again, let's have that discussion.
You can say that there are two competing narratives. Here's 1 narrative. Here's another do your own research. Do your own thinking. That's what a museum should do. Instead of the threats of losing your job and you're un American , . And as a result of this, that's what American University to basically counter.
What was happening started the nuclear studies Institute brought Hiroshima survivors over to the U. S. during this and partnered with Ritza making university to bring students from the United States to Hiroshima Nagasaki every year going forward. That's how I got involved in this entire topic and field of study.
, it really makes you think about what should the, what should something like that have what should it look like? What should it say? Growing up and seeing that, and again, [00:36:00] juxtaposing it with what I saw in Japan, so one of the museums in Japan that really got me was the, and I'm probably gonna pronounce it wrong, but the Oka Masahiro Memorial Museum in Nagasaki.
It's a small museum and it's a museum about what the Japanese did to other people in Japan. So to have my Japanese students, who've had their history largely whitewashed, and then to have a contingent of Chinese students who have had their history whitewashed, to watch them go through this museum holding hands and seeing comfort women.
And beheadings and just the brutal nature of the Japanese military and to have them crying and apologizing to one another. Isn't that what a museum should do? Reckon with these things. [00:37:00] So imagine if the U. S. or the U. K. or France said, we're going to have a museum about what we've done to other countries.
First of all, in the U S I don't know how many stories it would be. And then what would it include? Like, and again, you never get it done because it would say it's un American and, but imagine being able to reckon with that and say, the only way we're truly going to be a better country is if we acknowledge what we did acknowledge these, these atrocities.
And say, we need to learn from this to so so truly quote unquote, never happens again. Right? , it's it's an amazing museum that I think we can learn a lot from.
Ola: And I think that the underlying narrative that we're unearthing here is that memorial museums, much like the movies, aren't by default objective sites of learning or [00:38:00] objective, you know, recollections of history, but they're highly subjective. And can be motivated to pursue an agenda of continuing conflict or an agenda of peace and reconciliation. And I think it's extremely important that we remind the audience that the stories we tell and the symbols we uphold actually shape our collective memory. And we all have a part in building up this picture of a collective memory. The example of Japan actually having a museum that talks about their exploitation of other people, I think is something that's extremely important and has been called for in many different ways through various protests in the UK, for example, to various countries in the global south, requesting the, you know, return of historical artifacts that were looted during periods of [00:39:00] colonization.
June, you know. These sites, these museums, and these days that we actually set aside to memorialize past conflict should be used for this, , reconciliation agenda. But obviously there are interests that go against having such an agenda entrenched. There are continuing interests in exploitation and war. And unfortunately, many of these sites are designed to explicitly serve that agenda instead
Vincent: Yeah, it's, you know, it's a narrative of. That if you grow up in the United States, there's a narrative of us exceptionalism that we are the city on the hill that we have done nothing wrong. And so you just don't deviate from that. And this just adds to it, right? This just reaffirms it. And, you know, I was in Brussels not too long ago and to see still the amount of King Leopold stuff.
Pay attention to see if every bookstore had King Leopold's ghost, [00:40:00] which I would highly recommend if you really want to learn what, what Belgium did to the Congo. But you think about that, right? How is his memory and how is that, you know, what is taught? How is it thought of? And and it, it brought me to beyond museums, the whole issue of statues in naming buildings.
You know, the two airports in Washington DC. One is Ronald Reagan National Airport, the other is Dulles, named after John Foster Dulles, former Secretary of State. And if you go to Reagan's National Airport, there's that statue of him. I wonder how people that know about Ronald Reagan breaking the Air Traffic Controllers Union and destroying labor forces, In the United States, how they feel about seeing that when they pull up, you know, for me[00:41:00]
Ola: at the airport.
Vincent: at the airport, right?
For me I had a long time ago. I got a grant to go and live in the former strongholds of the gorilla of the FMLN, the guerrilla groups in El Salvador to, to research the Reagan doctrine and what we did in El Salvador and. You know, learning about death squads and learning that we, what we did at the the massacre at El Mazote, 75, 000 people in total in the civil war that we fueled and funded and trained killed.
It turns my stomach. I don't, I won't, I mean, I said it on this podcast, I never in my, my personal life say Reagan airport, it's national airport. I won't use the word Reagan. It sickens me to be honest. And the same, what, you know, Dulles, secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. I mean, this is the guy that, Installed the military junta, , in Guatemala.
This is the one that helped overthrow Jacobo Arbenz [00:42:00] in 1954 when he kicked out United Fruit. This is the same Dulles that was, you know, organized the Iran coup in 1953 to take out Mosaddegh and install the Shah. And we have an airport named after him. The FBI building is named after J Edgar Hoover. When you see these kinds of things , and to bring it back to what we often talk about nuclear disarmament Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill.
The two former United States senators, one Republican and one a conservative Democrat out of Missouri, they're, they've both retired since then. But back in, I want to say about seven years ago, they, a bill to rename Union Station in Washington, DC, the train station, they wanted to name it the Harry S.
Truman train station. He was from Missouri and, and, you know, they, McCaskill had, she had her name plate that said the buck stops here on her desk and they wanted, and I, and I thought about this, I wrote a piece in Huffington Post about this, [00:43:00] how you want to name now a train station after the man that dropped these bombs, you know?
And so these symbols
of who we have streets named after, you know, think about my God, the amount of things named after Columbus, all of these things play a role in our memory. And how we view these things. And this was, you know, brought to the forefront when, you know, you had all the issues with taking down conservative or conservative, taking down racist statues, you know Klansmen and all these types of things,
renaming things that, you know, Woodrow Wilson building at Princeton and all of these things and what you do with these and, you know, where you put these statues and so on and so forth.
So, you know, it, yeah, this type of public history. I mean, What we do with these, these symbols is, is crucial and how we, you know, how our, how education is done in the, in, in the world. And so with that, I wonder, is there anything, what is it, have you ever been or know what it's like in Rwanda in terms of [00:44:00] the genocide?
Is there plaques? Is there a museum? Like what is over there?
Ola: I know there's a memorial park in Rwanda. I haven't been personally. But I do know that there is a memorial park that is Visited by the president and the senior government every year. And I know that there's a strong push or a strong narrative around reconciliation, around community building and whatnot. But I also know that there are conversations around continuing omissions as well. And how these omissions in some way serve or help to enamour the continuing exploitation of Rwanda now, of its neighbouring region, or its neighbouring countries in the region, you know, so there's a very [00:45:00] strong core.
and nationalist identity in Rwanda that serves Rwandan interests, but at the same time, there's those communities at the fringe that are still under the boot of some sort of systemic repression and oppression. And these stories emanate. From memorial sites as well, or in some cases are legitimized by memorial sites. So
there's always this contestation,
you
Vincent: right. You know,
Ola: history, his
Vincent: yeah.
Ola: right? There's always contestations in how we, you know, think about past occurrences.
Vincent: Or even, you know, the, the sanitation. Of folks, you know, so wanting to portray somebody like Harriet Tubman is being this passive old woman in her shawl versus the strong militant gun toting, , Harriet Tubman that was saving so many lives, right? So it's this again, this narrative of like, oh, this is what is deemed [00:46:00] safe.
This is safe. We can do a monument or a museum to this, but not something that's too deemed too radical, right? So Yeah, I think all of that is crucial. And our collective memory and how we look at these things. And, you know, I'm in the Netherlands right now. And a couple of years ago, the royal government and the president or the prime minister formally apologized for the role in the slave trade.
Ola: Hmm.
Vincent: And now there's a really multi million dollar effort to build a museum about slavery in this country. And I was told Lonnie Bunch, who actually was the person who put together Created the, it was the head of the African American history museum, the new one in the Smithsonian did a great job. He's going to be in charge of this as well.
And, you know, I'm very curious to see what is included. What do they really include here? In terms of, of the slave trade, because there's also those that are conservative saying they don't want this. They don't want to fund this. They don't want any part of this. Right. And they don't want to ignore that history.
It's often here. [00:47:00] You can see that again, you learn about. Okay. World war two, because the Netherlands were on the right side of that one, but slavery, Indonesia, those things we don't really want to talk about. And so yeah, it'll be very curious to see how that, how that comes to fruition. But again, you know, saying what, what should we, what should we be doing here?
Because I don't, I think the. You know, a lot of the museums in the U S the Smithsonian just, you know, gloss over so much and I'll be curious. There's a new Latin American museum that's being built. I'll be curious to see how that looks as well.
Ola: I mean, there's, there's so many parallels between most museums in the global North. The first time I ever laid my eyes on the Benin bronzes, which were a collection of practically priceless bronzes that were looted from Nigeria in the 19, between 1900 and 1950. First time I ever laid eyes on it, Was in the United Kingdom and I had to get a [00:48:00] visa to get into the United Kingdom and of course pay the entry fee and whatnot before I could see. historical artifacts that were made by my kinsmen. And I'm one of the extremely few Nigerians that possibly would ever lay their eyes on a Benin bronze in their entire lifetime because their artifacts were pilfered from them, you know, locked away in the capitals of one of the Western countries. You know, So there's even a continuing parallel as well between the establishment of memorials, the stories they choose to tell, but also the power they have to own and control access to the artifacts that make up people's histories and identities,
Vincent: and it makes you think, if I were to look at those same Obviously, I could [00:49:00] never, have a reaction or the way that you would for obvious reasons. Right? And so when you are in that space where you are in charge of creating those memorials, those exhibits, you have to think who is the target audience.
Are you trying to inform? Are you trying to educate? Are you trying to inspire? Are you trying to right a wrong? Like what is, who is your audience? Because, you know, if you go into a certain museum you're going to have so many different reactions based on your own, what you bring to it, your own personal experiences and what you bring to it.
So that is, again, incredibly important. And then the issue of, Who should be in these museums, right? I mean, literally as, as patrons, right? There, there is this issue of should a white person go, the door of no return in the, in the slave [00:50:00] quarters , In Africa, is that something that, you know, because if you're white, you're not going to have the same reaction as if obviously if you're somebody of color and what does that mean?
You know, in those kind of things. So I do think about the cultural element of this and who the audiences are. And, you know, again, I would often look at my students in Japan and what they were getting out of these museums and, you know, What was hitting them and , there was an exhibit in the Hiroshima museum of they were almost like mannequins, incredibly lifelike where their, their skin is dripping down.
They're walking like zombies because that was obviously was happening. And so many have written about it. Survivors have talked about it and kids were getting. They said kids were getting scared seeing it, so they decide they made the decision to remove it. And I thought it was incredibly powerful. But again, that's not for me to say.
I, I asked Coco Kondo, who's a atomic bomb survivor, what she thought, you know, I was like, what did you [00:51:00] think? And she said, if it scares the kids, I understand. And there were some people that, you know, thought it was time, you know, so but again, what, what is the message? Are you trying to, because if you're trying to show the horrors of this, You know, that does
it.
But even the, the Hiroshima Museum versus Nagasaki are quite different because if you go through the
Ola: even very quickly, I just, I just thought about the, because you mentioned Hiroshima survivor and question, you know, asking a question about what they thought about the fear that this was causing kids. And the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, Setsuko Thurlow and some of the other survivors who were kids when they witnessed these horrors firsthand and didn't have, , They're in a sense governed by some sort of censorship to where exposed to not just the sights and sounds, but the pain and continuing horror of living with the effects.
So it's a very complex question, , in
today's day to talk [00:52:00] about.
Vincent: which raises another great point, which is the museums, the exhibits, the memorials, I firmly believe. Should be guided by the people most impacted. So I don't know, but I hope that the Hiroshima museum, they ask survivors, what do you feel should be in here? Right. I mean, that to me is critical. We talk about in the nuclear disarmament movement, how we believe, I believe that people that are affected by colonialism and radiation and nuclear weapons should be the ones leading.
The organizations because they have so much, you know, stake in this. , I hope that they're, you know, but my fear is that you have bureaucrats and you have, like, everything else and you have, you know, people thinking they know what's what's best. The thought process of how you craft something and who you want for your audience and what the message [00:53:00] portrays and I hope that, you know, listeners are thinking if you're in the U.
S. Of course, Memorial Day, but just in a general sense, when you are looking at these things, you know, how you think about them and what you think the message is. And then also think about, you know, If this is a path you want to go for your career because again, it is super interesting. So needed. And people often look like, Oh, what can I do to history degree?
You know, can I do? Well, this is one path you can take, you know, and again, there's national parks and, you know, all these types of things. What, you know, a plaque here or what it says and where it's placed and how it looks. It's all very, very important.
Ola: Absolutely.
Vincent: especially when there's a lack of people willing to read a 400 page book there, they can get their information this way.
So it's even more critical now than, than previously.
Ola: Exactly. And I mean, we have become almost generationally unable [00:54:00] to read lengthy historical accounts. And so walking people through three dimensional spaces where they can see and hear and, you know, connect with historical occurrences, probably the most powerful way of educating people about history today. So it's become even more important that we have people with the skill set to actually recreate and make alive history in a way that is meaningful for this generation that's become much more disconnected from books. I have an interesting piece of trivia, very disconnected from the Subject matter of peace, but connected to history and museums and something I found as a personal observation that isn't talked about or documented in historical accounts yet. So I mentioned the Benin Bronzes earlier in this episode, [00:55:00] I've always found it curious how many names, many words, many. Styles of dressing and modes of governance in the Benin empire, which is now in present day Nigeria in Edo state. I always found it curious how there's so many connections between that and the Japanese way of life from the way they wear their clothes to the swords to the headdress to even what they call their political leaders. And so it was really odd and really interesting when I was looking at the Benin bronzes. And the British museum and interspersed between around 56 plates were about five plates that [00:56:00] literally had the depiction of like Japanese samurais, like extremely detailed. I took pictures of them and zoomed in. So I could probably upload this as part of the site content, but there's no account of any historical connection between the Edo people and Japanese. the language, the culture, the government, and the bronzes clearly depict that there was even a visual connection, like some artist somewhere saw Samurais during the height of the Benin Empire and included them in the Benin bronzes. So I think that's a little bit of a trivia mind blown.
Vincent: Somebody, somebody out there that's looking for a dissertation topic. There you go. Get on it.
Ola: absolutely. You know, we're, we're, we're given, you know, intel for people to
explore.
Vincent: Exactly. You know, I think two of, you know, what is the responsibility of, of, of. [00:57:00] adults when it comes to children too, because I remember when the African American History Museum first opened and you had to get tickets to get in there. It was such a, it was crazy how, how many people wanted to get in and so on and so forth.
And it starts like each floor brings you up. So the basement, the bottom floor starts with slavery. So you ultimately make it up to sports, pop culture, things of that nature. And I'm looking at, you know, the, I'm down in the basement, looking at the bottom floor, looking at, at all these, Pieces about slavery and then a whole group of kids ran past me and they were clearly on a field trip and They weren't looking at anything.
They're literally running And they had obviously just stopped off at a corner bodega and they all bought MAGA hats. So to watch these kids running around with these Trump hats on in this sacred place, really. [00:58:00] Kind of hit me like, what are we doing here? Like, should they even be allowed in this? If you're not, you know, this is not just some pop culture thing.
This is, you know, and so then I, when I made my way up a couple more floors, there is a piece where they have an entire behind glass Ku Klux Klan outfit, the cone shaped hat, the white robe, and discusses, you know, Ku Klux Klan. And I thought to myself years from now, will that red make America great hat?
Will that be in an exhibit next to the Ku Klux Klan? What will that artifact mean years from now? Because
to so many now it represents racism and hate in, in so much of what's bad in the world. So you
think about even now you think about what's happening in Palestine and, you know, or Ukraine, you think about future exhibits and museums and [00:59:00] memorials.
Right, and what it's going to look like and what we would include and so on and so forth.
So, yeah, I think it's something that's always I always kind of thinking about how, you know, how we are, we are looking at these things. And then the other pieces will like so many other things will we tragically see museums, brick and mortar museums start to go away because of virtual reality.
Are you going to put, are you going to put, you know an oculus on and you're going to virtually go through a museum with an avatar? And is that a good thing because it will help reach more people that can't travel to these places
or is it taking the place of physically seeing that and what emotionally that can do to you?
And I'm not sure
what is the right answer to that.
Ola: it's a very tricky, a complex question, not tricky. Tricky is a bit too reductive. There is definitely scope and I'm working backwards from your comment here. There is [01:00:00] scope for increasing the accessibility of these historical spaces by leveraging digital tools and technologies that we've developed in the past few years.
Thank you very much. But there's always going to be a question about the connection, the physical connection being in spaces that are considered sacred, for example, and what that means for people's appreciation of historical activities that went on there. But also secondly, I wonder how much control Will be retained in future recollections of today's events in the sense that how much can institutions and organizations be able to censor in our collective recollection, given that we are documenting, you know, petabytes of data on a daily basis on a what would become historical events in the future. We have so [01:01:00] much more detail now of the day to day occurrences, even inside the theater of war. Let's take Gaza, for example. We think about social media and we think about all of this content being produced as fleeting, primarily because our brains Right now have been designed to consume social media in a fleeting manner.
So we're scrolling up in the endless scroll and we're sort of forgetting about things and our attention span isn't that great, but we are creating data that is somewhat permanent. If we think about it and they are being stored in data servers worldwide, physical structures where they can be retrieved, reconstructed and put on display. And so it means that we're having a much more fuller picture of things that think of 9 11, even before the advent of social media as, as it is today, but just the fact that camcorders were much more prevalent [01:02:00] during that, during that event. And when we talk about 9 11, we. Always see the videos from multiple angles of bystanders of news channels, whatnot, looking at those planes smashing into the twin towers, almost a 360 degree coverage. And there's been tons of analysis and even conspiracy theories on the basis of that footage. And that's 2001 level coverage. So what does this mean going into the future? Would Israelis, for example, be able to glorify their occupation of Palestine in the same way that the British were able to glorify the occupation of, you know, much of West Africa with Israel? The gory pictures of the violence that occurred, it's going to be an interesting future
to be a historian.
Vincent: , as always, we like to close out our shows with, a book recommendation for you. [01:03:00] So mine is Considering the topic today, living with the bomb, American and Japanese cultural conflicts in the nuclear age edited by Laura Hein and Mark Seldin.
What is yours? Well, a
Ola: That's definitely a book I would want to read. I haven't actually had the pleasure of looking through it. Mine is an interesting and somewhat disconnected book from our Specific topic of memorials today, but it actually plays a very key part in retelling a historical story of a country that's not been covered as much as it should be. So my recommendation is Atomic Step from Tungshan Casanova.
Vincent: great friend talks on. Yes.
Ola: Oh, yes. And she looks at how Kazakhstan essentially gave up the nuclear bomb, but in identifying the process of Kazakhstan, you know, [01:04:00] acquiescing to becoming a non nuclear weapon state, there was a lot of granular historical data and research that took her over about 10 years to conduct to be able to tell this very comprehensive story. And I think I definitely like to give this book a shout out just to illustrate historical research done right,
Vincent: Yeah. Talks on as a tax on as a an amazing scholar. That's a, it's a beautiful book from cover all the way through. So yeah, definitely check that book out. And as you are Eating your hot dog or taking in your baseball game or enjoying whatever it is you do for Memorial Day. We hope that you will take a little bit of time out to kind of reflect and think about these museums, these memorials that you are seeing and you know, think about what the message is, what you are learning from them and maybe how you would do things either similar or different if you were in charge of, Of creating one of these pieces.
If you liked what you heard, please hit that [01:05:00] subscribe button. Give us a follow things like the. Che Guevara story or some of the other things like the Enola Gay exhibit controversy. We will have sources and the show notes on our website for you. If you want to learn more about that. And until then we thank our team, especially Jason Lex international.
And we will see you all in the next episode. So thank you again for listening. See you soon.
Ola: See you next time. Bye.
Minds Blown. Is produced by Jackson Street Collective and made possible by Lex International.