Hartmann Explores Dissonance in Heritage Tourism with a Visit to Hiroshima

Published: Sept. 29, 2015

Associate Professor C/T in Geography and Environmental Sciences Rudi HartmannThis August, the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American aircraft in 1945. Though the bombings arguably ended WWII, the attacks were responsible for the tragic deaths of more than 300,000 people, and remain among the most controversial acts of war in human history. While bringing up painful memories for both the Japanese and American publics, both cultures demonstrate a compelling urge to preserve and explore that memory.

This is not an unusual reaction to historical tragedy. In fact, interest in the memorialization of tragic events is demonstrably on the rise in the realm of tourism and tourism studies. Associate Professor C/T in Geography and Environmental Sciences Rudi Hartmann has a particular interest in "heritage tourism" and sites with a controversial history like Hiroshima. As an undergraduate student, Hartmann began his studies in heritage tourism with empirical studies about visitors to Dachau concentration camp near his home in Munich, Germany. These studies will be included in an upcoming book, alongside more recent studies about memorial sites commemorating events of the Pacific War (also known as the Pacific Theater of WWII and the Great Asian War).

Hartmann's research explores, in particular, eight historic sites associated with the Pacific War: in Japan the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Iwo Jima Memorial; in China the Memorial Hall of the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese War at The Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, and the Memorial Hall for Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders to China; in the U.S. the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, the Manzanar Relocation Center in California, the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming and the Amache (or Granada) Relocation Center in Colorado.

Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Most of the memorial sites discussed in Hartmann's research receive a million visitors or more annually, and all of them have controversial histories, often leading to disagreements over how the sites should be managed. His work explores this dissonance with consideration of how disparate perspectives, as well as historical and cultural contexts, influence the presentation of the memorials at each site. At some, there are controversies of facts, such as the actual numbers of casualties. The memorial site to the Nanjing Massacre in China is an example of this. The Chinese believe close to 300,000 perished, but Japanese history reports a lower number. At other sites, there is disagreement about the conceptual presentations of an exhibit. For example, at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan the exhibit begins its account on the day of the bombing, omitting the context of the events leading up to the bombing. Likewise at the USS Arizona in Hawaii, the brutality of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor is emphasized over the Japanese context of being blocked by the U.S. from valuable resources.

"If you have places where tragedy and violence occurred you have victims and perpetrators. If you protect the site, which story do you want to tell?" Hartmann explains, "There are different groups and they have different motivations on how to preserve a site or what the message or the mission of the site should be and that is why we have dissonance at these heritage sites. Hardly any site has no dissonance or no debate over how the story should be told."

Thanks in part to a grant from the Office of Research Study and additional support from his department, Hartmann had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima this summer and gave a visiting lecture at the University of Hiroshima titled, "Tourism to Heritage Sites with a Controversial History: The Commemoration of War and Peace at Sites of the Pacific War." The lecture was given in English with Japanese translation, and was streamed live to colleagues and students in Germany.

Japanese school children visiting the Cenotaph at the Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace.

Japanese school children visiting the Cenotaph at the Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace.

During his visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Hartmann met with the director of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. While he admits to having some differences of opinion with the presentation of the exhibit, he thoroughly enjoyed his visit with his Japanese colleagues. The memorial park in Hiroshima includes the UNESCO World Heritage designated Genbaku Dome, which was the only building left standing in the center of downtown Hiroshima after the blast. It also features the famous Children's Peace Monument memorializing the children who died in the attack. Thousands and thousands of folded paper cranes decorate the monument commemorating the well-known story of a young girl who survived the blast but fell ill and eventually died from the effects of radiation.

Hartmann also visited an important Japanese cultural site in Tokyo, which he felt greatly enriched his knowledge about the Japanese perspective on the war. While Americans usually refer to the Pacific War within the greater context of World War II, the Japanese call it the Great Asian War and see it as a fight to keep Western Colonialism out of Asia and preserve Asian culture. The Yasukuni Shrine in Kudan, Tokyo, is a Shinto temple where the souls of more than 2,400,000 people who died while protecting Japan and the Japanese way of life are believed to be enshrined. This is one of the most important religious and cultural sites in Japan and receives nearly five million visitors per year. Drawing serious protests from China and South Korea, and creating diplomatic crises in the past whenever a Japanese Prime Minister visits Yasukuni, among them are fourteen Class A war criminals (convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 1946 – 1948) who were enshrined in a secret ceremony. Hartmann believes that understanding the loyalty and honor associated with dying for Japan is an important aspect of seeing how the Japanese view the events of the war, and how they now manage the exhibits and memorials at places like Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Iwo Jima.

In addition to addressing historical and cultural context in the presentation and interpretation of these controversial events, Hartmann's research also examines other factors that add to the complexity of managing these sites, such as the tension between commemoration and commercialization. Hartmann notes that the way we memorialize changes over time and that there are certain trends at play. During the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the typical approach to handling a site where tragedy occurred was to either erase all signs of the tragedy or to restore the site to a state in which it could be used again. Starting around the 80s and 90s a trend toward commemorating tragedy by creating permanent memorials at or near the site of the event began to become more widespread. The reasons we are compelled to preserve tragic memories and how they have changed over time are, to Hartmann, one of the most complex topics surrounding heritage tourism. He believes that "people are curious to find out what humans are capable of doing, the darker side of humanity." Hartmann feels that it is important for us to understand the horrors of events like the holocaust and nuclear war because these kinds of tragedies are not in some distant past, but a reminder of recent human history and our present capacities for doing each other harm.

"It's often closer to us than we think. We have Columbine here in Colorado and the Aurora Theater killings. We have a memorial for Columbine. Most likely we will have one for the people who died in the theater shootings. First we have spontaneous memorials with flowers or, if kids were killed, with toys and dolls. And then, eventually it becomes official. It seems important to us, we have started to recognize these events," says Hartmann.

As societies try, in ever-changing ways, to recognize and comprehend natural disasters and acts of war, terror, heroism, and brutality, approaches to memorialization will likely take on many different forms morphing alongside changes in political, cultural, religious, and social beliefs. Geographers like Rudi Hartmann help us track and understand these changes.

Rianna Riegelman is a CU Denver and CLAS alumna (1999) with a BA in English Writing. She works as a freelance writer, editor and graphic designer in Denver and Boulder.