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Students feel 'responsibility' after Japan trip

Tuesday, Sep 13, 2011
Loraine O'Connell

From left: Elisa Carvalho, Dr. Vincent Intondi and Nick Flores

Listening to survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a recent trip to Japan, Seminole State student Elisa Carvalho realized she felt privileged to hear their stories.

“Having the chance to hear testimony from the survivors was incredible,” says Carvalho, who is from Brazil but now lives in Winter Park. “They’re dying, and not many people have the opportunity to hear from them. I have the responsibility of passing on their testimony.”

From July 30-Aug. 11, Carvalho and Seminole State graduate Nick Flores traveled to Japan as part of an annual summer program sponsored by the American University Nuclear Studies Institute. They joined more than 60 other students from American University, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and Fukushima Medical University.

“It was really different this year because there was an emphasis on the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown,” says Seminole State history professor Dr. Vincent Intondi, who is also director of research for the Nuclear Studies Institute. “We had two Japanese students who were from Fukushima. They talked to the visiting students about their experience.”

But it was learning about the devastation wrought by “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that inspired Flores, of Apopka, and Carvalho.

“It really hit me when I got into the water” of the Motayasu River, says Flores, 20, who graduated from Seminole State in the summer and is attending the University of Oregon this fall. While placing paper lanterns in the water to represent the Japanese who died, Flores remembered scenes from John Hersey’s Hiroshima, in which the author described the plight of radiation victims plunging into the river.

Elisa Carvalho and Nick Flores meet survivor Sumiteru Taniguchi.

“Looking around me, it’s nighttime, the lanterns are glowing in the dark, peaceful Japanese music is playing,” Flores recalls. “In that moment, everything I’d seen and heard throughout the trip really hit me. It was a powerful, emotional experience, and I’ll never forget it.”

Carvalho, 20, recalls her last night in Nagasaki, strolling to the Hypocenter with some other American students at 11 p.m.

“It was a really dark place, with no lights but moonlight,” she says. “One of my friends almost stepped on a cat.” Moments later, the students were gathered around the orange-brown kitten as it lay directly in front of the memorial. “We saw the cat as a symbol of the people who had died that day,” she says. “It was so powerful that we all fell on our knees and cried.”

The students’ time in Japan also included lectures, museum visits, and visits with survivors, including Koko Kondo, whose father was the lead character in Hersey’s Hiroshima; and Keiji Nakazawa, whose Barefoot Gen graphic novels depict the effects of the Hiroshima bombing.

Japan’s peace museums were especially instructive, Carvalho says, because they don’t glorify war. “Japanese learn at a young age that their country was also a perpetrator, not only a victim.”

Flores and Carvalho have regaled their friends with stories from their trip to Japan and plan to keep on talking about it.

Flores wants to join – or start – an anti-nuclear club at the University of Oregon.

“I’ve been on this trip, seen all this, learned all this – now how do I use this information to better the future?” he says. “How do I take this knowledge and apply it to work toward the goal of a non-nuclear world? I feel obligated to do something.”

This is the second year Intondi has brought Seminole State students with him to Japan as part of the program.