Commentary | Alex Jania, How Should Americans Remember COVID-19?: Lessons from Post-Disaster Memorials in Japan
This year, July 4th marks more than Independence Day for Americans, it is also the benchmark set by the Biden Administration for at least 70% of American adults to receive one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Although achieving that goal is unlikely, large portions of the country already have high vaccination levels and case counts are dwindling. If the pandemic is not over for Americans just yet there is at least a sense that it is in the process of ending.
Dropping infection rates are not the only measure of how the pandemic ends. As medical anthropologist Martha Lincoln remarked in the Atlantic, Americans are also “collectively deciding what we are going to remember and what we are going to forget.” Unfortunately, if history is any guide, when it comes to disasters, Americans often chose to forget more than they remember. While the United States excels at remembering wars and acts of terrorism, memory culture around disaster is lacking and insufficient.
“When it comes to disasters, Americans often chose to forget more than they remember...Americans should look to Japanese examples of post-disaster memorials.”
This deficiency is apparent in the memorial landscape of the United States. Memorials to wars like WWII or Vietnam exist both on the symbolically important National Mall and in localities across every state. In contrast, with COVID-19 bringing the events of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic back to popular consciousness, it became apparent that memorials to the 1918 pandemic are notably absent from public space in America. The memorialization of disasters like COVID-19 is important beyond collective memory or the symbolic recognition of national and individual traumas. As disaster historian Scott Knowles stated when writing about the need for a National Hurricane Memorial Museum, memorials are often institutions that collect archival sources and fund important research on historical events.
There has been some institutional recognition of COVID-19 loss. Biden’s Inauguration was preceded by an official COVID-19 memorial ceremony held the night of January 19th, consisting of lanterns around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. However, a temporary memorial service threatens to enable once again the typical collective amnesia surrounding disasters in the American public consciousness.
To counteract this amnesiac tendency following disaster events, Americans should look to Japanese examples of post-disaster memorials. Japan’s memory culture, particularly its relation to its wartime atrocities, deserves critique; however, there is much to learn from the country’s robust tradition of memorializing disaster events like earthquakes and tsunami. Because Japan occupies a mountainous archipelago perched on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” residents have long been subject to a variety of natural hazards (typhoons, volcanic eruptions, seismic events, etc.) and the disasters and human loss they can cause. Correspondingly, post-disaster memorials can be found across Japan from major cities like Tokyo and Kobe to more rural prefectures like Niigata.
The memory culture around earthquake and tsunami disasters in the often-hit region of Tōhoku, in the northeastern part of Japan’s main island of Honshū, is instructive for envisioning effective post-disaster memorials. Even readers unfamiliar with Japanese geography would remember Tōhoku’s most recent major encounter with disaster. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami which struck Tōhoku on March 11, 2011 (also known as 3.11), captured the world’s attention with gripping videos of the tsunami washing ashore and the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
3.11 also brought attention to the rich history of post-disaster memorials in Tōhoku. Following the 1896 Meiji-Sanriku Earthquake and Tsunami localities affected by the tsunami erected large carved stones that served as memorials to the disaster. Similarly, after the 1933 Showa-Sanriku, the Miyagi Prefectural government built “Tsunami Memorial Halls” in affected towns across the coast that served as commemorative spaces, community meeting centers, and housed “tsunami libraries” that provided information about tsunami. Following 3.11, survivors created a tremendous number of memorial spaces and practices in response to the losses, human and material, brought about by the disasters. The variety of forms that these memorials take is stunning, ranging from preserved disaster ruins, coastal parks, Buddhist statuary, memorial museums, and other creative spaces. The entities in charge of these spaces are just as diverse. Some projects are led by national, prefectural, or local governments, others by grassroots organizations, and others still the work of a single individual.
What makes the post-disaster memorialization in Tohoku generally (and after 3.11 specifically) instructive, however, is not its abundance or diversity of forms, but the principal that many post-disaster memorials in Tohoku exist for the future as well as the past. Of course, most memorials, in addition to commemorating the past, are built to endure over long stretches of time and to inform future generations of what is being memorialized. Importantly, post-disaster memorials not only attempt to honor the memory of those who were lost and preserve the story of the disaster for future generations, but they also try to instill a lesson of disaster awareness and preparedness to future visitors. This dual function, to inscribe the story of the past, and prepare the future, is not new. The memorial stones erected after the 1896 and 1933 tsunami in Tohoku often performed this dual function, mentioning the date of the disaster, the number of the victims, and instructing future generations on how to avoid future disaster. These instructions sometimes were not to build beyond the spot where the stone marked or to run to high land if an earthquake struck to avoid getting caught in the resulting tsunami wave. 3.11 memorials similarly strive to provide both spaces to reflect and heal for survivors and a place that warns of the past and potential destruction of earthquakes and tsunamis. This is vital because the threat of seismic hazards for these communities will never end, they are always on the horizon. For communities affected by earthquakes and tsunami in Japan the post-disaster moment is also the pre-disaster moment.
Americans, and humans generally, are in a similar situation as we enter the “post-COVID” moment. There will be future pandemics and Americans would be smart to not recreate the amnesia that followed the 1918 Influenza. In addition to giving people spaces to grieve for loved ones and cope with their trauma, memorials to COVID-19 could be modeled after Japanese post-disaster memorials by instilling messages about the importance of public health systems, disease prevention methods, community organizing, and disaster preparedness. A broader National Pandemic Memorial Museum could even memorialize COVID-19 while incorporating remembrance of the 1918 Flu and under-memorialized AIDS Pandemic (among other deadly diseases). This would provide the public with a space to contemplate humanity’s relationship with deadly pathogens as well as create a central institution for researchers of historical disease.
The challenges to erecting a COVID-19 or even a broader Pandemic Memorial Museum in the United States are real. Disasters are not natural. Instead, as Ilan Kelman explains succinctly, they are result of human choices. Often the choices that turn hazards like earthquakes, tornadoes, or zoonotic viruses into disasters with heavy human tolls are made by governments and political systems. Memorial spaces that reflect on the history of disaster events and point towards changes that could be implemented to avoid future tragedy are implicit critiques of the status quo. It will be hard to convince national, state, and even local governments to fund or allow memorials that subject those who (mis)governed to scrutiny. Memorializing disaster is not as politically convenient as memorializing patriotic heroism in war.
That does not mean we should not try. The country, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, is currently reevaluating what parts of history we choose to commemorate in memorial spaces and monumental architecture. COVID-19 memorials, especially those that recognize the social, racial, and environmental disparities that contributed to vulnerability to the disease, would be a fitting addition to a new memorial landscape that promotes social and environmental justice. In this moment of creative reassessment, Americans would benefit from using Japanese post-disaster memorials as examples of how to honor those lost as well as prepare future generations.
Alex Jania is a PhD Candidate in History at University of Chicago. His research focuses on post-disaster memorialization in modern Japan and its place in global memory culture.
To cite this Commentary essay, please use the suggested entry below:
Alex Jania, “How Should Americans Remember COVID-19?: Lessons from Post-Disaster Memorials in Japan,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, June 23, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/UCCW6304.