Published 39 years after the detonation of the first nuclear bomb used against civilian populations, Salter’s poem explores how Hiroshima has recovered and developed economically, but how history lingers on, even if only invisibly in the form of historical memory. Salter eloquently captures the horror that persists silently beneath the commercial interests that have grown from the decimated landscape.
A Verbal Split Screen
Salter verbally juxtaposes the two Hiroshimas: the repulsive grotesqueries of its past decimation and the commercial appeal of its contemporary development. Onto the imagery of consumer progress, like the brightly lit Toshiba billboard, coffee shops, and fusion cuisine, she projects the visceral images of the suffering that occurred during and after the bomb’s detonation. There are the tactically chosen phrases: “mutations of cuisine”, “blood and scum afloat on the Ohta River”, and “blistered grass” in the first few stanzas. She then turns her attention to ground zero, which she compares to a flower’s reproductive center, and examines the city’s double erasure--first through the bombing itself and (although she does not broach the subject directly, the virtual vaporization of victims near the detonation point) and then through economic ascendancy. Salter writes:
…Passing by
the Peace Park’s floral hypocenter (where
how bravely, or with what mistaken cheer,
humanity erased its own erasure),
With the final line, Salter indicates that during its multi-decade commercial development, Hiroshima has effectively obliterated all evidence of its population’s decimation.
Poetic Devices and Effect
Because “Welcome to Hiroshima” is an example of open verse, it does not contain a consistent rhyme scheme. Nevertheless, when rhymes do occur, they create a kind of melody that stands in direct aural contrast to the repugnant subject matter. This tension between melodic sound and unappealing subject matter emphasizes Salter’s desire to reveal the grotesque contrasts between inviting contemporary commercialism and Hiroshima’s grotesque history, which lives on in the modern psyche through both personal experience and photographic record.
Symbolism through Repetition
A word that appears repeatedly throughout the poem, in lines 15, 21, 39, and 41, is ‘glass.’ In each case, the reference to glass is directly associated with exhibition and display, suggesting that visitors to the city—even Salter herself—might consider Hiroshima an opportunity to demonstrate a cautionary tale. This is especially relevant when the reader realizes the poem was written in 1984, following ‘Able Archer 83’, a NATO command-post exercise simulating nuclear release in Western Europe. In America, where Salter was born, Reagan had recently proposed the “Strategic Defense Initiative.” When Salter writes:
adjacent, an exhibit under glass
Is glass itself: a shard the bomb slammed into
A woman’s arm at eight-fifteen, but some
Three decades on—as it to make it plain
Hope’s only as renewable as pain,
Salter is making direct reference to the fragility of Hiroshima’s, and by extension humankind’s, perceived progress. Given the historical circumstances in which the poem was written, her allusion to glass is a portentous signifier of the brittle nature of peace and humanity.
Overview
Salter’s work is deeply affecting because it juxtaposes enticing, gustatory imagery with the repulsive descriptions of physical deterioration. And primarily because it strikes the reader on a visceral level, Salter’s word choice also has great emotive power, calling up the photographic images of radiation burns, genetic mutations, and the ghostly shadows left on building facades by humans vaporized during the blast. As a socially conscious piece, her work points up the disconnect between the advance of contemporary society, the notion of progress, and the dangers of waning (but instructive) historical memory.
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