Growing up in California during the 1970s, in a Japanese household a generation after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima , it was often hard to work out how I felt about the event that ended the second world war. Aside from my brother I was the only Japanese kid at my school, and fitting in was kind of important. At home my mother would sometimes talk about her grandmother who was killed in Hiroshima; she suffered in the summer heat for a month before expiring.
我在上世纪70年代在加州一个日本家庭长大，属于广岛原子弹爆炸后出生的一代人。我总是很难理清自己对这一给二战画上句号的事件怀着怎样的感受。除了哥哥，我是学校里唯一的日本孩子，和大家打成一片可是一件重要的事情。在家里，母亲有时会谈起在广岛遇难的祖母；离世前，她被酷暑折磨了整整一个月。
Even when I was aged nine or 10, Hiroshima was taught at school and debated both in the classroom and on the playground. Never once was I subject to ill feeling — as my parents were when they moved to the US as students in the war’s aftermath — but a question always floated in the air: what do you think America should have done? And more deeply, a question only once put to me out loud, by the father of my best friend when I was seven: are you American or are you Japanese?
在我9岁还是10岁的时候，学校还在教授广岛事件，教室里、操场上都有围绕这一话题的争论。我从未对美国怀有敌意，正如战后我的父母作为学生来到美国时那样，但总有一个挥之不去的问题：你觉得美国本该怎么做？还有7岁时我好朋友的父亲问的一个更深入的问题：你是美国人还是日本人？这是唯一一次有人向我问出这个问题。
At school I learnt that the atomic bombings probably shortened the war and prevented greater suffering on both sides. At home I learnt that my family had been touched intimately by one of history’s worst calamities. The way I have reached not an answer but a resolution to these contradictions is by listening to the actions of my forebears more than to their words.
在学校里我学到，原子弹轰炸可能缩短了战争持续的时间，而且阻止了战争双方出现更严重的伤亡。在家里，我感受到的是，家人的命运已深受这场史上最惨烈的灾难之一的影响。我找到的解决这些矛盾（而非寻求一个答案）的方法是去观察长辈的行为，而不是听他们怎么说。
Four years after war’s end, my father left Japan aged 16 for boarding school in St Louis, Missouri. He wanted to study science in the country that was best at it. JJ Sakurai went on to become one of his generation’s leading physicists, and died while working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research testing atomic theories — for purposes of human advancement — 40 years after atomic research yielded a weapon that brought destruction to his country.
战争结束四年后，父亲（时年16岁）便离开日本，踏上了去密苏里州圣路易斯的求学之路，在寄宿学校就读。他希望在这个科学技术最发达的国家学习科学知识。后来，父亲樱井纯(JJ Sakurai)成了他那一代人中顶尖的物理学家，并在为人类进步而试验原子理论的欧洲核子研究中心(CERN)工作期间去世，这距离人类依据原子研究成果研制出给他的祖国带来毁灭性灾难的核武器已过去40年。
My mother, Noriko, who lost her grandmother to Hiroshima, enrolled at International Christian University, an idealistic university on the outskirts of Tokyo founded in 1949 as a “university of tomorrow”, and left for America on an exchange programme at Keuka College in New York. It did not occur to her that she was bound for upstate New York not the Big Apple. She braved the shock and loneliness of having cows as neighbours instead of the Broadway stars who filled her dreams. She went on to meet my father at a party in Princeton — and did not return to live in Japan until well into her fifties.
母亲法子(Noriko)在广岛爆炸中失去了祖母。她入读东京市郊、创立于1949年的国际基督教大学(International Christian University)，一所被称为“未来大学”的充满理想主义的大学。后来，母亲也离开日本，赴美参加纽约州库克大学(Keuka College)的一个交流项目。让她没想到的是，她去的是纽约上州(Upstate New York)，而不是有“大苹果”之称的纽约市。她经受住了与牛群做邻居带来的震惊与孤独，虽然她原本梦想与百老汇明星为邻。后来，母亲在普利斯顿的一次聚会上认识了父亲，直至50多岁才回到日本居住。
My maternal grandfather, after the war, rarely spoke about his pain; during the war he went around saying, in private, that Japan was going to lose. I cannot imagine how he must have felt when the bomb proved him right. In 1947, still grieving for his mother, he did something I admire. He coached his alma mater, Meiji university, to victory in the Hakone Ekiden university relay race, run in stages from Tokyo to the foot of Mount Fuji and back. It was the first time the race was run after a three-year wartime hiatus. He taught a new generation the importance of character as his nation strove to build a better future from its ashes.
战争结束后，我的外祖父几乎从不提及自己的伤痛；战争期间，他不断地在私下里说，日本将战败。我无法想象，当原子弹爆炸证明他的判断时，他是怎样的感受。1947年，仍陷丧母之痛的他做了一件令我十分钦佩的事。他指导母校明治大学(Meiji university)在箱根驿传(Hakone Ekiden)大学接力赛（从东京到富士山脚下往返）中获胜。那是该项赛事自战时中断三年后首次复办。那时的日本正在一片焦土中努力建设更美好的未来，他让新一代日本人懂得了坚毅性格的重要性。
The visit of US President Barack Obama to Hiroshima on Friday should not be a time to dredge up old recriminations, or to weigh the respective wages of guilt, but to look to the future — one in which two still civilised societies can build a world without nuclear weapons. One in which the qualities of sanity, tolerance and forgiveness guide our actions. Perhaps we can make America — a certain idea of America, perhaps as a place where a Muslim child fleeing war in Syria might grow up to become president — great again.
美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)周五对广岛的访问不应被当作一个翻旧账或是评判各自罪责的时机，而应用来展望未来：一个日美两个依旧拥有灿烂文明的社会可以共建无核武世界的未来，一个由理智、宽容和宽恕指引我们行动的未来。也许我们能让美国，一个怀有确定信念的美国，一个逃离叙利亚内战的穆斯林儿童有可能成长为总统的地方，再次变得伟大。
As Mr Obama comes to the end of a presidency that has proved at times disappointing, let us encounter tomorrow a moment once again, emphatically, of hope.
随着奥巴马有时令人失望的总统任期行将结束，让我们再次坚定地用希望迎接明天。