奥巴马广岛行 唤醒历史深处的幽灵

WASHINGTON — For decades, visitors to the ghostly dome in Hiroshima that stands like a sole survivor from the dropping of the atomic bomb there more than 70 years ago entered a world that mixed unspeakable tragedy with historical amnesia.

华盛顿——几十年来，广岛和平资料纪念馆如同70多年前原子弹爆炸后的唯一幸存者一样矗立着，来到这座的冷森森的穹顶下，参观者仿佛走进了一个混合着无法言说的悲剧和历史失忆的世界。

The site, which President Obama will visit this month, reflected an almost universal Japanese view that the city was a victim of unnecessary brutality — parents and children incinerated, thousands killed and a generation poisoned by radiation.

奥巴马总统本月即将访问的这座纪念馆代表着一种几乎是所有日本人的共识，认为广岛是一场没有必要的暴行的受害者——父母和孩子烧成灰烬、千万人断送生命、一代人遭受辐射毒害。

Yet museum exhibits nearby were largely silent on what led to that horror, a Japanese war machine that tore through Asia for a decade before the morning that changed the history of the 20th century.

然而，是什么最终导致了这个恐怖事件，附近的博物馆陈列却基本上保持沉默。当时，日本战争机器肆虐亚洲已经10年，直至那个改变了20世纪历史的早晨。

For Americans of the World War II generation, and many of their children, Hiroshima is at the center of a very different narrative. They believe President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb saved tens of thousands of American lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Honshu, Japan’s main island. Ask the few surviving veterans of that generation — those who fought their way from Iwo Jima to Okinawa and knew what was coming next — and there is no looking back at Truman’s decision, no moral equivalence between a Japanese campaign that killed more than 20 million in Asia and the horror of the bomb that ended it all.

对于二战时期的美国人和很多他们的子女来说，广岛却是另外一个截然不同的故事中的主角。他们认为，哈里·S·杜鲁门总统投下原子弹的决定挽救了数万美国战士的生命。如果进攻日本主岛本州岛，那些美国人很可能就要命丧沙场。要是去问那个时代幸存下来的老兵——他们从硫磺岛一路浴血奋战到冲绳县，而且知道接下来等待他们的会是什么——他们毫不认为有必要反思杜鲁门总统的决定，在造成2000万亚洲人丧生的日本战争行为和终结了这场灾难的原子弹的恐怖后果之间，也没有什么道德上的可比性。

With his decision to speak beneath that famous dome, Mr. Obama is taking a step 11 of his predecessors avoided. Merely by showing up in Hiroshima, he will have no choice but to navigate a minefield of conflicting memory, in Japan and in the United States.

奥巴马总统决定在这座著名的穹顶下发表讲话，迈出了他之前11位美国总统都回避了的一步。仅仅是踏上广岛，就意味着他别无选择，只能在日本和美国两国民众强烈冲突的历史记忆的雷区中谨慎地穿过。

The two drastically different interpretations of what happened have always pulled, sometimes in unspoken ways, at the strong alliance between the United States and Japan that emerged from the ashes. Yet today, with some notable dissents in both countries, those interpretations remain as frozen in history as the shadow etched on the stone steps of a bank building near ground zero — created by the body of a poor soul who was sitting there at detonation.

战争的劫灰之后，两个国家缔结了坚实的同盟；而关于历史的两种截然相反的解读，却总是带来干扰，有时尽在不言中。而今天，尽管两国都存在一些引人瞩目的不同意见，这些解读却仍然冰封于历史之中，就像刻在核爆点旁堤岸石阶上的那道阴影一般——留下那道阴影的，是爆炸发生时一个坐在石阶上的可怜人。

Mr. Obama will make no apology in Hiroshima, the White House insisted on Tuesday. He will not second-guess Truman for the decision to drop the bomb in Hiroshima, or for the far more questionable call to drop a second three days later, on Nagasaki, because the emperor had not yet surrendered.

周二，美国政府坚定表示，奥巴马总统不会在广岛道歉。他不会去事后质疑杜鲁门总统在广岛投放原子弹的决定，也不会质疑三天后因为天皇拒不投降而在长崎投下第二颗原子弹的更具争议的决定。

“This visit will offer an opportunity to honor the memory of all innocents who were lost during the war,” Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, wrote on Tuesday. For a president who came to office talking of a world without nuclear weapons — a vision he has had more trouble realizing than he could have imagined — it is also a chance to say, in the last months of his presidency, that the risk of new Hiroshimas is hardly gone.

美国副国家安全顾问本杰明·J·罗兹(Benjamin J. Rhodes)周二写道，“这次访问会是一个契机，缅怀所有在战争中丧生的无辜的人。”奥巴马在上任之初曾说要建立无核世界——一个他后来发现比想象中更难实现的愿景。对他来说，此行也让他有机会在任期的最后几个月告诉世界：广岛悲剧重演的风险并未远去。

It may also be the right moment to leap into that historical breach. Hiroshima has unleashed great literature — starting with John Hersey’s unparalleled account in The New Yorker, published in 1946 while the city still lay in ruins — and some of the most profound moral debates of the 20th century. Today, survivors of that morning when the Enola Gay swept high over the city and delivered its payload are even harder to find than American veterans, now in their 90s, whose believe their lives were spared by the same act.

这也可能是跳入那个历史大断裂的好时机。广岛事件催生了一批伟大的作品——最早在1946年，广岛还是一片废墟之时，约翰·赫西(John Hersey)就在《纽约客》上发表了一篇无与伦比的报道——也激发了20世纪最深刻的道德辩论。今天，“埃诺拉·盖伊”号轰炸机飞越城市的高空并投下炸弹的那个早上幸存下来的人，比仍然健在的美国老兵更加凤毛麟角。老兵们都已年过九旬，他们相信，同样是那颗原子弹，他们的生命因而得救。

Newer exhibits in Hiroshima have reminded visitors that the city was no random target, but a buzzing manufacturing hub of the Japanese war machine. “Some of us believe that when we think about the bomb, we should think about the war, too,” Hiroshima’s mayor told me in 1994 as we walked through the new exhibit, which Japanese rightists had opposed opening.

新近的展览提醒着游客们，广岛当年被锁定为攻击目标，绝非偶然，而是因为它曾是日本战争机器的繁忙的制造中心。“有人认为，每当我们想起那次轰炸的时候，也理应想到那场战争，”广岛市市长在1994年参观新展览的时候对我说道。那时，日本右翼人士还竭力反对新展览开幕。

Yet even today, 22 years later, the sanitized accounts of the war taught to a new generation of Japanese schoolchildren largely avoid delving into the decision-making that led to the Pacific War, the Rape of Nanjing or questions of whether the “comfort women” were organized by the Japanese military. The vividness of Hiroshima has been melded with anodyne accounts of what preceded it, reinforcing the sense among Americans that, unlike Germany, Japan has never fully grappled with its past.

但即便是在22年后的今天，日本对战争的洗白式解读还在教育着他们新一代的学生，避免对引发太平洋战争和南京大屠杀的决策追根究底，也不过多探讨“慰安妇”是否是由日本军方所组织的这一问题。广岛的鲜明形象，已经和日本对轰炸之前的历史的委婉叙述紧紧地联系在一起，让美国人更加强烈地感到，日本从未像德国那样直面他们的过去。

Many Japanese say the same of the United States. They remember that when the Smithsonian organized the first exhibition of the Enola Gay in 1995, for the 50th anniversary, veterans objected so loudly to the effort to conduct a dispassionate examination of the decision to drop the bomb — and its aftermath — that Congress held hearings and the museum’s director was forced to resign. The exhibition was watered down, and even today — when the famed B-29 can be seen at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside Dulles International Airport — any discussion of the short- and long-term horrors of dropping the bomb are cursory, and the history behind it controversial.

很多日本人说，美国也是一样。他们犹记，1995年，史密森尼博物馆(Smithsonian)举办“埃诺拉·盖伊”号轰炸机的首次展览，纪念二战胜利50周年。那时，美国老兵强烈反对冷静检讨投掷原子弹的决定及其后果，以至于国会举行了听证会，博物馆的主管被迫辞职。展览内容被严重删减。直到今天，赫赫有名的B-29被安放在杜勒斯国际机场(Dulles International Airport)外的史蒂文·乌得沃尔哈齐中心(Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center)，任何关于原子弹投掷所带来的短期和长期的恐惧的讨论都还是草草而过，其背后的历史也仍然充满争议。

“The top American military leaders who fought World War II, much to the surprise of many who are not aware of the record, were quite clear that the atomic bomb was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender, and — for many — that the destruction of large numbers of civilians was immoral,” Gar Alperovitz, a leader of the movement to revise the United States’ own historical accounting, wrote last year in The Nation.

“参加过二战的美国高级军方领导都十分清楚，当时日本已经濒临投降，因此投掷原子弹是没有必要的。此外，他们当中很多人都认为，伤及如此多的无辜平民有违道德。那些对这一记录毫不知情的人对此一定会非常吃惊”，加尔·阿尔佩罗维茨（Gar Alperovitz）去年在《民族报》（The Nation）中如是写道。加尔正在领导一场运动，试图修正美国自身的历史解读。

Between now and May 27 — when Mr. Obama is to visit the site — the big question will be how views have evolved in both countries since 1995.

从现在到5月27日奥巴马总统正式访问广岛期间，一个重要的问题将是，美日两国自1995年以来对待这一历史事件的态度有何转变。

“In Japan, I don’t think there has been much real evolution, at least among the right wing and the amnesiacs who deny Japan’s destructive war in Asia and insist they were the victims,” said Richard Samuels, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written some of the most insightful works on Japan’s military, and the pre- and postwar cultures that surrounded it. “For them, Obama’s visit will be a chance to reiterate that they were right.”

“我认为日本对历史的态度并没有真正的改观，至少，右翼分子和那些坚决否认日本曾在亚洲发起破坏性战争并坚称日本自身才是受害者的人的态度没有改变”，麻省理工大学的理查德·塞缪尔斯教授（Richard Samuels）说道。他著有一些关于日本军方的书，观点鞭辟入里，并围绕日本军队探讨了日本战前与战后的文化。“对这些人来说，奥巴马总统此次的访问不过是他们重申观点的一个契机罢了。”

Mr. Samuels said it would be harder to predict the reaction in the United States. In the midst of a presidential campaign, he said, “this will be a rich target for those who say this is the next stop on the Obama apology tour.”

塞缪尔斯先生认为，要预测美国民众的反应会更加困难。值此总统大选之际，“这无疑是给那些认为广岛是奥巴马道歉之旅下一站的人提供了充足证据。”

But, if anything, the questions surrounding those last months of the Pacific War in 1945 have only grown stronger. The firebombing of Tokyo in March of that year resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths by some accounts. And many who questioned the decision to drop the atomic bomb have asked why it was not first exploded in an uninhabited place to demonstrate the dimensions of this new weapon’s power.

但是，要说有什么不同的话，那就是对1945年太平洋战争最后几个月历史的质疑越来越强烈。根据一些统计，当年3月的东京大轰炸夺去了近10万条生命。另外，很多对投掷原子弹的决定持质疑态度的人都曾问过这样的问题：要测试新武器的威力，为什么不挑选无人居住的区域？

But the biggest change, Mr. Samuels said, may come from the absence of witnesses. Twenty years ago, “the Greatest Generation, people with a living memory of World War II, were still around.”

但塞缪尔斯先生认为，最大的改变也许是由于没有证人。20年前，“最伟大的一代，同时也是对二战有着最生动记忆的一批人，都还活着。”

Today they are down to a precious few, and soon the only ones who will be debating the legacy of Hiroshima will not have felt the urgency to drop the bomb, or lived the horror of the result.

而如今，这批人已所剩无几了。再过不久，为广岛遗留问题而争辩的少数群体也将是从未感受过炸弹投掷之时的紧迫感、或从未生活在爆炸之后的恐惧中的一些人了。