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Ordinary People...continued
The RVPC Peace Journey to Japan
August 2006

The first sun of August 6, 2006 in Hiroshima dawned gently, as the bustling city’s focus shifted to the activities at ground zero. The annual commemorations drew people from all over Japan, and a handful of others from the rest of the world including 38 members of our choir.
At 8:15 sharp, the time the bomb fell, the city fell silent, traffic stopped in its tracks, bells tolled.

Our August 6th schedule began with the annual service at Hideko’s school – which can be seen on the map of Ground Zero – for the 350 members of the school family who lost their lives 61 years ago. Our singing of “Finlandia” was nearly trite compared to Hideko later on giving the student body a full, unvarnished accounting of her experiences as an 11-year-old that fateful day. Covered with debris, she ran from the fiery red ball that engulfed her surroundings, ending up at the river where she hoped to find her mother. At the assembly for all junior and senior high students, she spoke for half an hour without notes, unhesitatingly, forcefully at times. Diminutive in stature behind the massive lectern, her words stood tall, commanding rapt attention from all. And even though none of us (but one) could speak Japanese, the vision of this first-person account being delivered at this particular spot at this particular time in history moved us all profoundly.
“Peak experience” had become the cliché of this journey for peace from the very beginning in Kyoto when an assortment of Americans and Japanese of many different ages sat down to sing together on Day One of ten to come. Strains of “You Are My Sunshine” and “Auld Lang Syne” floated out the door.

It was an ordinary hotel conference room that could have been anywhere in the world. Round tables with starched linens on them.  Slightly soiled carpeting. An upright piano not altogether in tune. Draperies that might have been silver grey. A podium with a Rotary International insignia affixed to it.  And lighting bright enough for overexposing the endless picture-snapping by nearly everyone in the room and the official photographer.
           
How we knew we were in Kyoto and not just anywhere was the amazing banquet of Japanese food, two full long tables of it; the over-sized beer bottles on every table and plenty of smiling faces on our hosts, who had come to welcome us, hear us sing, sing for us and then sing along with us. The rudimentary English spoken by them combined with strategic smiling and nodding by most of us Americans whose Japanese was even less than rudimentary opened vast channels of communication between the two groups, setting the stage for instant, powerful relationships. Our mission of song was resonating in their hearts and in ours.

We’d already exchanged songs with the chorus from the YWCA and sung most of the songs in the Singalong song book we’d brought along with us when our host took to the microphone.
           “I have a very special announcement to make. We’ve been asked by the members of the Rotary glee club if they can sing for you. They were down the hall practicing, heard our voices and wondered what was going on. Is it all right if they come in?” our Japanese host asked.
            Everyone in the room signaled a definitive, “Yes!” and seconds later we had another 15 singers filing in the door to sing with us. Directed by a woman with unruly henna hair and irresistible irrepressibility, they sang a song or two and then we did.
            Before it was all over, the entire crowd had joined hands, circled the room and launched the first of many verses of, “We Shall Overcome.” Everyone sang. Everyone teared up. If the purpose of the trip had been achieved in these few moments, how could there be more?

This was simply our first taste of what was to come rolling out for us as one day folded into the next in Kyoto, Kobe and finally, Hiroshima. With unparalleled passion, Hideko and her best friend Etsuko had managed to marshal old school friends and colleagues into organizing committees in each city that raised the money and put together a program for us that included opportunities to sing, to see the country and most especially, to know the people.  When we got nametags at the airport in English and Japanese, we began to understand that every last detail was anticipated. When we were given fans on the bus for our outing to the Shrines, we began to understand that every possible amenity was going to be provided. When yet another Japanese snack was passed through the bus, we knew we’d be fed, endlessly and well. And when we kept seeing the same people from one stop to the next, we understood the deep commitment and effort that had been put into making the journey a success.


Unforgettable in Kyoto…frozen frames from the choir
Sharing an hibachi dinner with our Japanese guide. SUSAN

Delightful lady who came to wave good-bye when we left. Brought photographs of our performance for me. CHRISTY

The faces of the hospital patients as we performed…all the history they contained, and the healing, too. ELIZABETH AITKEN

The woman in the second row trying not to cry and finally giving up. 
Our bento lunch…its beauty, balance and variety. MARILYN

Miko (Hideko’s daughter) singing “Amazing Grace” and the audience’s enthusiastic response. KATHARINE

Day Four found us back on our big bus. Rounding another bend and starting down a hill, there before us spread the panoramic seascape we came to know as Kobe, site of our second big concert.  We’d sung for hours en route, everything from the Beatles to our repertoire, current and past and lots in between. Our billeting was at the Village of Happiness, an amazing campus just on the edge of town. Built by the city of Kobe, it’s a massive multi-billion yen project designed to accommodate the needs of the disabled and aging population, with several different medical facilities, vocational rehabilitation class rooms, respite care, a huge spa and the Silver College, where retirees can enroll for three years to learn ways in which they can be of service to “give back.”

The concert, which attracted a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people, was held in a huge Methodist church which was just recently rebuilt after the 1995 earthquake. Hours and hours of waiting, practicing and working out the logistics of getting on and off the stage laid bare the challenges of cross-cultural communication as well as just plain communication.

When the Japanese head of the event saw the American women carrying in their concert white dresses, he was worried.
“Please not to change cloth now,” he said in a panic.
“Oh, no, we’re just going to leave them here now,” someone said in the tone of voice reserved for getting across your point loudly when you think the person doesn’t understand English
 By the time the hour of the concert arrived, the number of people working on the event had multiplied exponentially. The church sanctuary was full. As we filed on to the stage, they began clapping, louder, louder. Turning to look out as we took our places, we all took a collective deep breath, a little overwhelmed at the sight of all these strangers who’d come to hear us.

One of our last songs was to be “Cranes Over Hiroshima,” which tells the story of Sadako, a little girl who got leukemia as a result of the bomb. She attempts to fold 1,000 paper origami cranes to fulfill a Japanese legend that promises a long and healthy life if this is accomplished. Before we sang it, a group of women from the Kobe YWCA came on stage and presented us each with a lei of 70 cranes they’d folded for us, making the song all the more poignant to sing. We learned later that it was a group of five women who go to the Y regularly to read to young children had had the idea, and one of their number single-handedly folded 2,000 of them.

Arriving for an event the next day at the Silver College, we were greeted with a huge printed banner welcoming us and an amazing logistical plan to get tables assigned so there would be two Americans and eight Japanese at each table.

Our presentation was followed by their choir’s and then we had another singalong, ending in “We Shall Overcome,” everyone again in a huge circle around the room. When I came back to the table, a man who said he’d had a career in computer software said he wanted to tell me something about the song we’d sung that ended with, “Never again the A bomb. Never for the third time.”
“I think you should see if there are some North Koreans who could go with you to Hiroshima,” he said. “If they saw it, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing now.”
I asked him if he’d been to Hiroshima many times and he said, “You only need to go once.”
The rest of our stay in Kobe was taken up with home visits. Tea ceremonies were the common denominator, as each of us forged new individual relationships with new friends, new places and in some cases, new songs.
 
Unforgettable in Kobe…..Frozen Frames from the choir
Trying to walk in the kimono after being meticulously dressed in it by two women; suddenly I was a Japanese woman! MARY

Hearing the Kobe men sing “Tenting Tonight” with our men. ANNETTE B

Being led in singing by “Ben” who was playing Beatles songs on a Micky Mouse guitar that had been sent to Kobe for victims of the earthquake. RON

Going to a baseball game and being the only non-Japanese there. The score was 3-1 for the Buffalos. DAVE

Being present with a Japanese family for a ceremony at an ancient temple.CHRIS
I was nervous and hot before we processed into the concert and the next thing I knew, the director of the Japanese choir was fanning me. HOLLY

When I got out of my kimono, I felt very different and very ordinary. DEE

A man at my table told me he was ashamed of what he’d done as a young man in the Navy. He’s 80 now. MARY ANN

And then it was August 6th. The Peace Park immediately became our focus upon arrival in Hiroshima. Located on Heiwa Boulevard (“Heiwa” being the Japanese word for peace), it was just a few blocks from our hotel.. Fever built over the first few days as we watched preparations there, at the Peace Museum and even in our hotel, where we saw guests arriving with shopping bags filled with their strings of 1,000 cranes to place at the memorial.

Peace groups and neighborhood associations donned their matching tee-shirts and unfurled their banners. Cub scout troops greeted those arriving with small bunches of flowers to be placed at the memorial. An enveloping fog of incense sweetened air growing soggier by the moment. The enveloping heat simmered, then boiled over on to the heads of those in the seats for 15,000 set up in the Peace Park, with special sections reserved for “Atomic Bomb Survivors and their families.” Every five rows, the end chair sported a bountiful bouquet of lilies. Banks and banks of yellow chrysanthemums all at the same stage of bloom surrounded the cenotaph and eternal flame, the A-bomb dome in the distance with its burned-out iron roof structure the only visible remnant of what once was a thriving section of the city.

After a reception at the school, the day stretched well into the evening when we assembled for a performance in front of a modest audience of 150 or so at one of the many smaller memorials that surround the Peace Park. It was beastly hot and sticky. The cicadas threatened us with their volume, nearly as many decibels as we could muster.

Hideko’s daughter Miko sang her song she’d been waiting to sing, one she’d composed called, “A Prayer for Hiroshima.” To the tune of  “Danny Boy,” her amazing soprano voice carried us through her mother’s experience of waiting in vain by the river for her mother to return and her lament for the grandmother she never even knew.

“I would have been a different person,” she sang, had her grandmother not been robbed from her by the bomb. All at once, we were dipped into the sea of remembered pain that surrounded us. Hideko stepped up to comfort her daughter as her voice cracked, and for a moment, seemed unable to continue. Rubbing her back, Hideko gently encouraged her to go on, telling her it was all right to cry.

Just behind us was the sacred mound of a million lost souls, the final resting place of her grandmother, her uncle and countless others of the tens of thousands who died that day and day after day for months. “Step lightly here, for you tread on thousands of lost souls,” Hideko had cautioned us as we approached the mound where many were buried. How close we were to them all. We couldn’t help crying.

On our way back to the hotel, we added our own paper lanterns to the thousands floating out to sea, all with messages of peace and hopes for a time when the specter of an atom bomb would no longer be a threat. Please do not permit the atom bomb a third time, we sang.

Unforgettable in Hiroshima
Watching the faces of older Japanese people at the Peace museum and feeling shameful that Americans know so little about what happened here. VIVIENNE

I was born on the day of the bomb and I’d always been told it brought peace. Now that I am 61, I know it didn’t bring peace. Being here to see for myself the rebuilding has shaped my own hopes for the future and intention to do more for peace than I have in the past. ANNETTE LEWIS

Before I came, I worried that the people of Hiroshima spent too much time raking over the coals of the past. Now I understand what an important role they have to play in the world so that we all understand just what it is to experience the atomic bomb. DOUG

Michiro-san and I had an instant closeness, even though we couldn’t communicate very well. I wanted to tell him I felt like his brother but held back for fear that was too intimate. He struggled for a moment for the word he wanted and then blurted, “You are my brother,” gripping my arm. JOHN FISHER SMITH

As we were walking on the morning of the 6th, we passed some protesters who gave us a pin with a Preserve 9” on it. [This refers to Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, written by the United States, which stipulates that Japan renounces the threat or use of force forever. Pressure is on from many sides, including the US, to amend this.]IAN

Seeing where my grandmother is, her picture and more information about her last day. [From Miko, Hideko’s daughter] JAN

Being horrified to learn that Japan is today the central launching point for all American nuclear warheads aimed at China and Russia. CHARLIE

Feeling that singing is a powerful response to artillery. ONOLEE

Finding out that everything we sing about in “Cranes over Hiroshima” is true broke my heart. ELIZABETH BINGHAM

My host family welcomed me eagerly, even though they lost two members to the bomb. This was the first year the survivors told the details of their experiences and everyone said it helped. MARK
A small group of us took the 1,000 cranes the choir had brought from the US to the Sadako Memorial, our final gesture. We gathered close together and sang, “Cranes over Hiroshima.” ESTELLE

What Hideko will never forget.
Finding that my school friends and I can work together, even after all these years. This experience made us school girls again.

Seeing the choir accept and be accepted. This was a high point.

Having people tell me that other choirs’ singing was pleasant to hear, but only ours reached the heart.

Speaking to the students at the school and hoping I inspired them.

At the end of our presentation August 6th,  being told by my classmates from the military academy where we trained 61 years ago to defend our country that ours was a good presentation.
Being with the choir  in Hiroshima, reaching out with the  sound of "true heart" and harmony in the spirit of collective healing gave me an opportunity for the final healing of what has been nearly a lifetime of grief.

Hearing from Etsuko 10 days after we left Japan that she looked up into the blue sky we’d sung about in “Aoi Sorawa” and our song rang in her ears.