"Welcome to Hiroshima" - Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter (1954 - ) is a poet  and an editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry in addition to being a Writing Seminar’s program professor. Many of her poems take inspiration and context from foreign cultures.

"Welcome to Hiroshima"

is what you first see, stepping off the train:

a billboard brought to you in living English

by Toshiba Electric. While a channel


silent in the TV of the brain

projects those flickering re-runs of a cloud


that brims its risen columnful like beer


and, spilling over, hangs its foamy head,

you feel a thirst for history: what year

it started to be safe to breathe the air,

and when to drink the blood and scum afloat


on the Ohta River. But no, the water’s clear,


they pour it for your morning cup of tea

in one of the countless sunny coffee shops


whose plastic dioramas advertise

mutations of cuisine behind the glass:

a pancake sandwich; a pizza someone tops

with a maraschino cherry. Passing by

the Peace Park’s floral hypocenter (where

how bravely, or with what mistaken cheer,


humanity erased its own erasure),

you enter the memorial museum


and through more glass are served, as on a dish

of blistered grass, three mannequins. Like gloves


a mother clips to coatsleeves, strings of flesh

hang from their fingertips; or as if tied

to recall a duty for us, Reverence


the dead whose mourners too shall soon be dead,


but all commemoration’s swallowed up

in questions of bad taste, how re-created


horror mocks the grim original,


and thinking at last They should have left it all

you stop. This is the wristwatch of a child.

Jammed on the moment’s impact, resolute


to communicate some message, although mute,


it gestures with its hands at eight-fifteen


and eight-fifteen and eight-fifteen again

while tables of statistics on the wall


update the news by calling on a roll


of tape, death gummed on death, and in the case

adjacent, an exhibit under glass

is glass itself: a shard the bomb slammed in


a woman’s arm at eight-fifteen, but some


three decades on—as if to make it plain


hope’s only as renewable as pain,

and as if all the unsung


debasements of the past may one day come


rising to the surface once again—


worked its filthy way out like a tongue. 

While this work seems to describe a trip to Japan, it is packed with deeper symbolisms that all relate to the Hiroshima’s experiences in World War II. At 8:15 A.M on August 6^th, 1945, the first atomic bomb ever used in combat was dropped on Hiroshima by the United States. What the speaker sees and the diction they use all relate to this historical context and how it relates to the situation of her visit. It seems that not only has an atomic bomb been dropped over Hiroshima, but a bomb of American and Western culture has also exploded over it. Instead of seeing something of Japanese culture when getting off the train, she sees a typical welcome sign, written in English reminiscent of a foamy head of beer. The atomic bomb killed and caused fatal abnormalities in organisms. She learns when “it started to be safe…/to drink the blood and scum afloat/ on the Ohta River,” in remembrance and indignance for the US’ action in WWII. In the shops, he sees “mutations” of American foods. Not only has Japan been “infected” by an outside culture, the food itself is deformed, mimicking the suffering caused by the atomic bomb. In the museum are displayed “on a dish of blistered grass, three mannequins”. The grass is blistered, as if it were the skin of an innocent non-combatant who suffered severe burns due to the bomb, like the mannequins with their hanging flesh. The speaker contemplates whether the museum is enough or if it would not have been better to leave the city in ruins as a testament to the tragedy. A child’s watch is “Jammed on the moment’s impact… it gestures with its hands at eight-fifteen”. Seeing the watch jammed at the exact time the bomb was dropped makes this relic from oblivion powerful and serves as a constant reminder of all the innocents killed. The context of the bombing of Hiroshima grants deeper meaning to small details and reveals the indignant, mournful power and tone of the poem.