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• 1 2020-05-26T15:13:22+00:00 Tsurumi Bridge 3 plain 2020-07-28T22:41:57+00:00 Shikoku recalls that, after going to the movies when he was young, he and his elder brother would often stop for a cup of sweet sake at a stall at the west end of this bridge.  The nostalgic lyrical context of this page is significant for what it omits. During the 1930s and 1940s, Shikoku and his two elder brothers were of the age to be conscripted as soldiers by Imperial Japan’s military and went off to war. It is their youngest brother Naoto, who never left Hiroshima, about whom Shikoku writes most vividly. “Eldest brother died at the front; the second son went missing in New Guinea. You and I were only 3 years apart in age, so before I went to the front in Manchuria, you and I were able to spend time together as adolescents and get to know one another well.” After Shikoku’s return from military service and Soviet internment in 1948, he was devastated to learn that Naoto had died from atomic bombing injuries and radiation poisoning at age 18. Naoto left behind a diary that detailed his service in homeland mobilization, the bombing, and its aftermath in painful detail. In retrospect, Shikoku traces his decision to commit himself to antiwar and antinuclear activism to this loss: “I cannot help but conclude that my life course was decided my brother’s diary.”