HIROSHIMA, Japan – Keijiro Matsushima was in eighth grade, sitting at his school desk next to a window facing the sea. He recalled looking out at the sky the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, drawn to the sound of American B-29 bombers flying over his island.

Much of the Japanese population was starving. “They were so beautiful and I was so hungry that they looked like silver pancakes to me,” he said of the bombers overhead.

Matsushima figured it was a routine reconnaissance mission and turned back to his books.

Second later, he was hit by the blast. He felt the shockwave, then the wave of heat. He was forced to close his eyes when hit by a surge of blinding, orange light.

“The whole world turned into a sunset world,” he said. He covered his ears and jumped under his desk. Though his school was destroyed, a standing stairwell protected his desk.

Today, the 84-year-old retired schoolteacher is one of the storied hibakusha, the Japanese word for “explosion-affected person,” or survivors of the atomic bombs dropped by the B-29 bombers 68 years ago this week. Their average age is 78 and they have spent decades enduring discrimination and prejudice on top of their heartache 

Matsushima was addressing two dozen international scholars and policymakers at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, including a delegation from Stanford University collaborating with the city in its efforts to become an international symbol of peace.

“Seeing the Hiroshima museum and meeting with a hibakusha was a moving reminder of the importance of moving as far and as fast as we safely can toward a world without nuclear weapons,” said Scott Sagan, a Stanford political science professor and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and its umbrella organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Matsushima sat in a classroom in the basement of the museum, seated before a map that laid out the hypocenter of the explosion. He was stoic in his narrative about events that day and often referred to himself as a “lucky boy.”

“It was a very bad war,” he said. “We didn’t know that at the time, and it continued on, a very long war. It just got worse and worse.”

Born in Hiroshima in 1929, Matsushima saw the militarization of his native city as he grew up. He remembers hearing optimistic statements about the grand Japanese success at Pearl Harbor, the surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, which resulted in the U.S. declaration of war on the Empire of Japan.

The pressure on Japanese civilians mounted as the war prolonged; rationing of food, water and electricity took its toll on morale. By 1944, the U.S. had conquered several strategic Pacific islands, built airbases and began bombing Japanese cities.

As the Manhattan Project progressed, meetings of the Military Targeting Committee in 1945 designated certain Japanese cities as likely targets to test the new atomic device, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Enola Gay dropped the 4-ton atomic bomb on Hiroshima and half the city vanished, along with 70,000 to 80,000 lives, or a third of the populace.

Though Matsushima was in a classroom of 70 middle-school pupils, he remembers absolute silence after the “big noise.” He was relatively lucky; his school was on the outskirts of the blast radius, several kilometers from the hypocenter.

Though lacerated by glass and rubble, his bones were unbroken and he was able to walk. He helped a wounded classmate to a rescue truck – a young boy whom he would later learn had also survived.

“I think I should have tried rescuing others, but I was a 16-year-old, selfish young boy and I just wanted to leave the city as soon as possible,” Matsushima said with regret.

His mother had left Hiroshima a few months earlier to stay with her in-laws in the surrounding hills. Matsushima walked across the burning city, where tens of thousands of people lay wounded and pleading for help, for water, or for their gods. He walked all night until he arrived at his grandparents’ home.

The atomic bombings in Hiroshima and three days later in Nagasaki claimed between 150,000 and 240,000 lives. The bombs – dubbed Little Boy and Fat Man – would leave thousands more suffering from severe burns, radiation sickness and cancer.

Few cities in history are as closely associated with single, punctuating event than Hiroshima is with the bomb. The metropolis of 1.7 million people has been rebuilt in the last 68 years, its homes refurbished and its port revitalized.

Yet for generations, the city has been known as ground zero. Local leaders are trying to reinvent the city’s image as a beacon for global zero – the elimination of nuclear weapons.

“Policymakers of the world, how long will you remain imprisoned by distrust and animosity?”  Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, himself the son of a hibakusha, asked in his annual peace declaration on Tuesday. “Do you honestly believe you can continue to maintain national security by rattling your sabers? Please come to Hiroshima. Encounter the spirit of the hibakusha. Look squarely at the future of the human family without being trapped in the past, and make the decision to shift to a system of security based on trust and dialogue.”

Sagan, one of the nation’s leading scholars on nuclear proliferation and safety, advocates for global nuclear disarmament as a member of the Hiroshima for Global Peace Task Force. He has worked closely for years with Hiroshima Prefecture Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki in an effort to reach global zero.

“Our hope is that by hosting international conferences and research workshops, Hiroshima can turn from being the memorial site of the deadly ground zero to being the catalyst for moving to a world without nuclear weapons,” Sagan said.

In this photo on August 10, 1945, a mother and her son received a boiled rice ball from an emergency relief party. One mile southeast of Ground Zero, Nagasaki, August 10, 1945. Photo Credit: National Archives and Records Administration

 The visit to Hiroshima in late June by the Stanford delegation also included Francesca Giovannini, a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC; Michael May, a CISAC faculty member and director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Edward Blandford, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of New Mexico and a former nuclear fellow at CISAC.

They were attending the conference, Learning from Fukushima, sponsored by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, CISAC, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Hiroshima for Global Peace Project.

It brought together American and Japanese nuclear power and nonproliferation specialists as well as nuclear experts from Southeast Asia. They examined the regional implications of nuclear safety and regional security after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

A devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, prompting a nuclear meltdown and the release of radioactive materials from the plant.

Conference delegates listened to Matsushima’s story and met with Mayor Matsui and other city officials to discuss the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative, which Sagan co-chairs with Steven Miller from Harvard. It offers technical and safety advice to countries that are developing nuclear power programs, while examining the regional and global implications.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the region’s most binding economic and political force, has long been proud of Southeast Asia’s status as a nuclear weapons-free zone. Vietnam, however, is changing that dynamic as it has commissioned several reactors from Russia, the first of which is expected to go online in 2020.

Scholars from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia attended a panel to discuss proliferation, security and competition in the region and whether a nuclear-powered Vietnam would change the delicate balance of ASEAN.

Giovannini, who is also the program coordinator of the Global Nuclear Future Initiative, said her first visit to Hiroshima was spellbinding. The contrast between the vibrant, modern city and the heavy sorrow of its history was palpable. She said the narrative by Matsushima brought the 30-member delegation to silence.

“He was able to bring to life his memory, his past, and the history of the bombing through personal details that allowed us to picture vividly that little boy as he moved through what he called a ghost town,” Giovannini said.

She recalled someone asked Matsushima if he harbored enmity toward the United States.

“No,” he replied, and then smiled. “To move forward – one must forgive.”

Reed Jobs is a Stanford senior majoring in history and a CISAC honors student who traveled with the Stanford delegation to Hiroshima. His honors thesis will focus on the historical study of preventive warfare.

Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, will join the Korean Studies Program (KSP) at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as the program’s 2013–14 Koret Fellow.

"Kathy Stephens was perhaps the most popular American ambassador ever with South Koreans, because of her long experience, deep knowledge, and great love for Korea and its people," says Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin. "As one of the United States' most experienced and senior professional diplomats, she will make a major contribution to the research, educational, and outreach efforts of the Korean Studies Program and Shorenstein APARC in the coming year."

Ambassador Stephens aims to write a book about aspects of Korea’s modern journey, with particular attention to South Korea’s political development, to the impact of cultural and social change on its politics, and to the role of the United States. The book will draw from her experience over the decades working in and on Korea, buttressed and expanded upon by research using both English and Korean-language sources. In the winter quarter she will teach Issues in U.S.-Korea Relations, a Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) course.

Ambassador Stephens recently completed thirty-five years as a career diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. She was Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in 2012, and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, 2008 to 2011.

Ambassador Stephens has served in numerous posts in Washington, Asia, and Europe. From 2005 to 2007 she was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP). While Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (EUR) from 2003 to 2005, she focused on post-conflict and stabilization issues in the Balkans. Other Washington assignments included Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration, Senior United Kingdom Country Officer in the European Bureau, and Director of the State Department’s Office of Ecology and Terrestrial Conservation in the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Scientific Affairs.

Ambassador Stephens’ overseas postings have included Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal (1998–2001), and U.S. Consul General in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1995–1998) during the consolidation of ceasefires and negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement. Earlier foreign assignments included consular and public affairs officer in Guangzhou, China, chief of the internal political unit in Seoul, principal officer of the U.S. Consulate in Busan, Korea, and political officer in fracturing Yugoslavia.

Ambassador Stephens has received numerous State Department awards, including Linguist of the Year in 2010, and the 2009 Presidential Meritorious Service Award. Other awards and recognition include the Korean government’s Sejong Cultural Prize (2013), the Korean YWCA’s Korea Women’s Leadership “Special Prize” Award (2010), and in 2011 the Pacific Century Institute’s Building Bridges Award, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, and the Kwanghwa Medal of Diplomatic Merit from the Korean government. Her book, Reflections of an American Ambassador to Korea, based on her Korean-language blog, was published in 2010.           

Ambassador Stephens was born in El Paso, Texas and grew up in Arizona and Montana. She holds a BA (Honors) in East Asian studies from Prescott College, an MA from Harvard University, and honorary doctoral degrees from Chungnam National University and the University of Maryland. Ambassador Stephens studied at the University of Hong Kong and was an instructor at the Outward Bound School of Hong Kong. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea in the 1970s.

The Koret Fellowship was established in 2008 through the generosity of the Koret Foundation to promote intellectual diversity and breadth in the KSP by bringing leading professionals in Asia and the United States to Stanford to study U.S.-Korea relations. The fellows conduct their own research on the bilateral relationship, with an emphasis on contemporary relations, with the broad aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries.

The Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP) is an online course for high school students sponsored by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Annually, around 25 exceptional high school students from throughout the United States are selected to engage in an intensive study of Korea.

Celebrating its inaugural year in 2013, SKSP provides students with a broad overview of Korean history, literature, religion, art, politics, economics, and contemporary society, with a special focus on the U.S.–Korean relationship. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts throughout the United States provide online lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions. Students also complete readings and weekly assignments, with the coursework culminating in an independent research project. Final research projects are printed in journal format. Students who successfully complete the course will earn Stanford Continuing Studies Program (CSP) credit and a Certificate of Completion from SPICE, Stanford University.

Selected students participated in 8–9 "virtual classes" via the Internet with the course commencing in February 2013. From 2014, two courses will be offered per year. Students should expect to allot 3–6 hours per week to complete the lectures, discussions, readings, and assignments. Since this is a distance-learning course, however, students can structure most of the work around their individual schedules. Although intensive, this program will equip participants with a rare degree of expertise about Korea that may have a significant impact on their choice of study and future career. Students do not need to know the Korean language to participate in this course, and there are no student fees.

Sejong Korean Scholars Program Award Event

This year, 3 students will be honored for their exceptional performance in the SKSP program. The finalists were chosen based on their final research papers, which were reviewed by a committee, and their overall participation and performance in the course. 

SKSP Finalists:

Madeleine Han, Dougherty Valley High School, CA

Katie Lee, Choate Rosemary Hall, CT

Andrew Pester, Lawrence Free State High School, KS

The finalists will be presenting their final research papers during the Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for Secondary School Teachers on July 31st.

My wife and I are again spending the summer on our farm in Eastern Iowa. I am fourth-generation from land just a mile away, first settled by the Falcon family in 1858. My wife is also fourth-generation, from the farmstead we now own. Our land is a medium-sized corn, soybean, and cow and calf operation in the heart of a very rural Iowa county—though Starbucks is only seven miles away!  Summers here provide a pleasant change from my day job, which is as Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy at Stanford University.  It helps when teaching agriculture to have one’s feet in the soil.  In 2013, “in the mud” is a more appropriate phrase.

My farm notes from 2012 chronicled the problems of farming during one of Eastern Iowa’s most severe droughts. Because of high temperatures and low rainfall, it was a truly miserable production year for farmers—made only mediocre financially rather than miserable—by the widespread use of crop insurance. Drought affected many states, and last year the national federal subsidies on crop insurance were nearly $15 billion, more than the total that was spent combined on all of the other farm-related programs in the federal Farm Bill. 

But what a difference a year makes. We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. But what a difference a year makes.  We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. For Iowa, it was the wettest spring ever, eclipsing the 1892 record.  The riskiness of farming is something to see in real time; it is also very instructive to listen as farmers talk about coping with uncertainty. Listening to them is not very difficult if one is prepared to invest a bit of time.  In most rural areas, there is typically a restaurant, diner, or some other slightly disreputable place where farmers gather for early morning coffee.  For our group, it is the old limestone store in Waubeek—the limestone having been hauled by horses in 1868 from nearby quarries at Stone City, the historic home of Iowa’s most famous painter, Grant Wood. What have not changed from last year are the watery coffee, the stale cookies, and the energetic exchange of farm tales—mostly true, occasionally coarse, and sometimes more than a little embellished.

As with last year, the talk is about weather—though now the signs have all been reversed.   Last spring it was dry; this spring it was wet. It rained and rained and rained.  During the critical planting period of April, May and June, it rained in significant amounts in our area for 40 days. We received 21 inches in total, as compared with less than 8 inches last year.  Much of it came in torrents, leading to significant erosion, runoff, and flooding. Moreover, the weather was cold.  The local weather station reports that average temperatures for May and June were about 6 degrees cooler than in 2012, which is huge as those kinds of comparisons go. 

Farmers have had plenty of time for morning conversations, since the fields were so wet there was not much else to do.  They commiserated about a lot of things, and here are some of things I heard and learned. Virtually everyone said planting had been delayed at least three weeks beyond the first week in May, the date most think is their optimal planting time.  Perhaps a quarter said that the delays were so bad that they were shifting some fields from corn to soybeans, since the latter typically do better than corn if planted in June.  Everyone spoke of having fields with low spots that would simply go unplanted, or if planted, were flooded out with zero yields expected.  (And everyone was checking the fine print of their crop insurance policies to determine coverage for land that could not be planted due to weather, so-called “prevented” acres.)

The temperatures were so cool that corn seeds often lay in the ground and rotted or only germinated partially.  They talked about the merits of re-planting—the costly process of “tearing out” what had already been planted to replace it with new seed.  The calculus of that decision is complicated, since it involves further delays in the crop cycle and, at a minimum, the cost of new seed and tractor fuel. New corn hybrids cost up to $100 per acre, depending on the special traits that have been stacked into the seeds, thus putting seed costs on par with those of nitrogen fertilizer.  All farmers grow genetically modified corn, and those who initially had paid extra for the more expensive, drought-resistant seed seemed more resigned—“the cost of doing business”—than angry.

There was also great concern about fertilization this year.  Agronomists have been urging farmers to put nitrogen into the ground (called side-dressing) when plants needed the nutrient, rather than prior to planting, to help prevent nitrogen losses due to runoff or into the atmosphere and groundwater.  My neighbors know that nitrogen runoff is a problem, but as one put it, “this year we are screwed; because of the rain, we can’t get back into the fields with supplemental nitrogen.”

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The number of rainy days was totally frustrating for livestock farmers as well, most of whom also grow alfalfa for forage.  There was barely a sequence of dry days long enough to make hay.  The quality of the alfalfa diminished, as it grew tall and coarse. On our farm, we actually baled hay on the 4^th of July. The lateness of this first cutting will mean the loss of at least one, and possibly two, later cuttings. The latter, of course, are the most valuable in terms of quality and price per bale.

The 4^th is also the traditional benchmarking date for the corn crop.  Historically, corn was supposed to be “knee high by the 4^th.”  But with new varieties of seed and early planting dates, corn is typically shoulder high. In 2013, however, it really was knee high and looking puny and yellowish.  The 4^th is traditionally also the start of the season for sweet corn—the best in the world!  But it too was delayed by more than two weeks.  The bit of good news is that the Japanese beetles, a fierce pest in 2011 and 2012 to both soybeans and home gardens, have yet to appear.

The flooding that accompanied the rain was huge. Iowa expects to lose substantial acres of corn because of flooded fields.  Almost every farmer I know was affected in some way or another.  The week after we arrived from California, for example, we had two severe storm warnings and one tornado warning in the first four days.  The tornado blew around us, but the latter of the storms came in torrents. With the rivers running high, and with the soils saturated, flash floods happen almost instantaneously, as we experienced first-hand.  Our large permanent pasture, summer home for the red Angus cow and calf herd, contains a medium sized creek.  It quickly overflowed flooding the entire pasture.  The cows and calves were understandably unhappy, bawling loudly and persistently, thereby triggering a 5 am rodeo in the rain as they got moved to the barn on higher ground.  (Rodeos in the rain are not fun, however glamorous and intriguing the thought may be. There is always one calf….) But it was a good thing the move was made.  For later in the morning, we saw that the flood had taken out 50 yards of fence, thus opening the pasture up to the adjacent highway.  And for those interested, repairing creek fences is not a whole lot of fun either.

That same storm had countywide effects as well.  The Linn County Fair was to open on June 26th, and unfortunately the fair grounds sit alongside the good-sized Wapsipinicon River.  The storm had pelted areas upstream and the river was rising rapidly. There was a decision to be made.  National and local weather service models projected a crest of 25 feet, which would mean four feet of water in the grandstand, and a small lake where the exhibits were to be.  The fair was called off, and that is a BIG decision for a rural area. It affected almost every farm family, especially the farm boys and girls who had spent literally a year preparing their 4-H and F.F.A. (Future Farmers) projects—from livestock to sewing—for the competition. Everyone then waited in gloom for the fairground to flood.  But it didn’t!  The fair had been canceled for naught.

The forecasters had missed the river crest, and missed badly. What was estimated at 25 feet, turned out in fact to be 14.95 feet. Everyone thought that a miss by one foot was understandable, but that a miss by ten feet was sheer incompetence!  They were relieved that the flood had passed, and bore no ill will against the fair committee.  But the coffee conversations the next few days were blue about government forecasters.  I cringed, given my day job, when one of my neighbors said, “those weather guys are even worse than the damned economists.”   And that comment then triggered a lengthy conversation about the Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts for the size of the new (2013) corn crop.

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Despite the wetness in the Midwest, the USDA at the time was predicting a record corn harvest for 2013.  Farmers, who tend to be a bit myopic and to see and think the whole world is like their county, simply didn’t believe the numbers—neither the area nor the yield forecasts.  Those estimates of a big crop were helping to drive prices for the 2013 crop down to about $5 per bushel for corn, relative to the $7 per bushel farmers had received during 2012 and the early months of 2013.  Several of them argued that it was a deliberate attempt by the government to drive down prices. I suggested that it wasn’t what the government thought, but what markets believed that was important.  But they had a point, because the markets couldn’t figure out the estimates either, with a great deal of day-to-day variation in prices based on weather assumptions, both in the U.S. and in China.

At last the rains finally broke and there was a week of dry weather.  What happened in the countryside then was nothing short of amazing. Farmers, typically with help from their spouses and extended families, worked 24/7.  Tractors, with lights, comfort cabs, and sophisticated GPS systems to do virtually all of the steering, pulled 16- or even 24-row planters; they were everywhere one looked. So much planting took place in those few days that fertilizer dealers were overwhelmed by the logistics of moving sufficient quantities of starter fertilizer into the countryside. During that one week alone, 56 per cent of Iowa’s entire corn crop was planted!

These notes are being written in real time, and what this year’s harvest will bring eventually is now anyone’s guess.  At a minimum, the harvest will be late, which means that an early frost could be a very serious problem.  Farmers now are beginning also to worry about late-season precipitation. (My wife is convinced that we have had our rain for the season, and that from now on we will see drought.) Farmers are not an optimistic lot when it comes to forecasting weather! But at this point in the season, most of farming is waiting.

My clearest conclusions from the last two years are about risk.  Farmers and farming communities face lots of it, and in almost every direction they turn.  (I smile inwardly every time I am told by neighbors, “I don’t see how you can live in California with all those earthquakes!”) Modern corn-belt agriculture is complicated, capital-intensive, and uncertain. That is why federal crop insurance is already such a key element in the new Farm Bill, and likely to become even more so in the context of future climate variability and change.  Finally, anyone who believes that farming is done by those who can’t do anything else, or that farms are quiet, idyllic places, ought really to spend a summer on an Iowa farm. 

Japan Studies Program at Shorenstein APARC has received a grant from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan for the New Channels project.  The project aims to broaden the dialogue and understanding between the United States and Japan and to reinvigorate the alliance with a focus on 21^st century challenges faced by both nations.

Under this multi-year project, the center will lead a new bilateral policy dialogue on U.S.-Japan relations in the 21^st century.  The annual dialogue will be held alternately at Stanford and at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, between Japanese scholars, entrepreneurs, and policymakers and their American counterparts, mostly from the West Coast of the United States, with an emphasis on engaging the rising experts in both countries. 

The dialogue will be supported by creation of a Sasakawa Peace Fellowship in U.S.-Japan Relations at Stanford University, based at Shorenstein APARC.  This fellowship will bring top notch scholars or policymakers to Shorenstein APARC for extended visits with responsibility for organizing the annual dialogue. 

The close U.S.-Japan relationship has endured for 60 years, a tribute to the shared interests and friendship forged in the aftermath of World War II between the two former foes.  It now must reinvigorate itself in the new century to face not only the traditional challenges of security but also common concerns that both countries are now facing in the era of globalization.  Stanford University and the Shorenstein APARC look forward to taking on the challenge of creating New 21^st Century Channels between the U.S. and Japan.