One Sunny Day: A Child's Memories of Hiroshima 0870712330, 9780870712333

“Every year when the days begin to stretch and the penetrating heat of summer rises to a scorching point, I am brought b

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One Sunny Day: A Child's Memories of Hiroshima
 0870712330, 9780870712333

Table of contents :
Contents
1. In the Beginning: 1934–1937
2. Changing World: 1938–1939
3. Becoming a Tamura: 1938–1941
4. The Encroaching War: 1941–1945
5. “So You May be Saved, Children”: April–August 1945
6. The Death of Hiroshima: August 6, 1945
7. Lost in the Country: 1945–1947
8. An Awakening of Hope: 1948–1950
9. A Rainy Day in Hiroshima: 1949–1951
10. Road without Turning: 1951–1952
11. America, America: 1952–1956
12. Shadow of Hiroshima: 1956–1962
13. The Darkening Shadow: 1962
14. Farewell, Hiroshima: 1963–1975
15. Survivor’s Destiny—Life Beckons: 1972–2003
16. In Search of Hope: 2003–2021
Epilogue
Appendix
Glossary

Citation preview

one sunny day

hideko tamura snider

One Sunny Day a child ’ s memories of hiroshima Revised and Expanded

Oregon State University Press

Corvallis

Oregon State University Press in Corvallis, Oregon, is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary’s River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians (ctsi.nsn.us). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Snider, Hideko Tamura, 1934– author. Title: One sunny day : a child's memories of Hiroshima / Hideko Tamura Snider. Description: Revised and expanded edition. | Corvallis : Oregon State University Press, 2023. | Previously published: 1996. Identifiers: LCCN 2023041619 | ISBN 9780870712333 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780870712340 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—History—Bombardment, 1945—Personal narratives. | World War, 1939–1945—Children—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. | Snider, Hideko Tamura, 1934– | Atomic bomb victims—Japan—Hiroshima-shi—Biography. | Girls—Japan—Hiroshima-shi--Biography. Classification: LCC D767.25.H6 S56 2023 | DDC 940.53083—dc23/eng/20230914 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041619 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). © 2023 Hideko Tamura Snider All rights reserved. First published in 2023 by Oregon State University Press An earlier edition of this book was published in 1996 Printed in the United States of America

Oregon State University Press 121 The Valley Library Corvallis OR 97331-4501 541-737-3166 • fax 541-737-3170 www.osupress.oregonstate.edu

Contents 1. In the Beginning: 1934–1937......................................................1 2. Changing World: 1938–1939....................................................12 3. Becoming a Tamura: 1938–1941...............................................23 4. The Encroaching War: 1941–1945............................................37 5. “So You May be Saved, Children”: April–August 1945..............52 6. The Death of Hiroshima: August 6, 1945..................................65 7. Lost in the Country: 1945–1947...............................................88 8. An Awakening of Hope: 1948–1950.......................................107 9. A Rainy Day in Hiroshima: 1949–1951..................................117 10. Road without Turning: 1951–1952.......................................136 11. America, America: 1952–1956..............................................152 12. Shadow of Hiroshima: 1956–1962........................................183 13. The Darkening Shadow: 1962...............................................200 14. Farewell, Hiroshima: 1963–1975...........................................221 15. Survivor’s Destiny—Life Beckons: 1972–2003......................234 16. In Search of Hope: 2003–2021..............................................249 Epilogue......................................................................................260 Appendix.....................................................................................267 Glossary......................................................................................273

1

In the Beginning 1934–1937

Little feet take baby steps out of the house and into the small garden. My father’s sandals appear, huge compared to my tiny feet. I laugh as I place my feet into them. I don’t see the bee crawling across one. I scream and shriek when it stings me. My mother is there in an instant, holding me tightly while my father, who is right behind her, checks my foot for damage. This is the first memory I have of my family. We lived in a modest house in Tokyo. Small as it was, it had all the necessary elements, beginning with a zashiki—the main room of any Japanese household—facing a small but carefully tended garden equipped with a big stone lantern, a little pond, some evergreens, and even a few granite boulders. The pond was the foundation of a tiny ecosystem of bugs, frogs, and butterflies. I spent many happy hours squatting on the dirt, watching the bugs. On rainy days, the frogs would hop from one puddle to another. Crouched under an umbrella, I would hobble behind them, following their paths. My early world was filled with an endless array of objects to be discovered and observed. Our little house also had other essentials. Between the zashiki and the garden was the open and impeccably maintained roka, a corridor 1

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that led to the toilet area, separated from the living quarters. We used specially designated slippers for the toilet. It was dimly lit; I refused to go inside alone unless my mother would call my name loud enough to be heard, and could come running if anything happened. It was a bit of a nuisance for both of us. My parents slept on a Western-style bed in a small room behind the zashiki. They did not use Mama and Hideko in our little garden in Tokyo, a futon or sleep on a tra1937 ditional Japanese tatami mat. I slept in an oversized reed cradle. I assume it was oversized, since I remember crawling into it until my fourth or fifth birthday and playfully rocking it during the day. Adjoining the bedroom was the tiny dining area and kitchen where my mother spent many hours preparing meals and snacks. For breakfast, we ate toast, pancakes, eggs, and sometimes bacon—not the traditional Japanese breakfast of miso soup and rice. My mother prepared mostly Western dishes, quite different from the meals my maternal grandmother used to cook whenever we visited. I liked both kinds of food. My father, Jiro Tamura, was the second son of the founder of the Hiroshima-based Tamura Industrial Group, which led the city’s industrialization. The company produced sewing needles and rubber goods, conducted sales operations across Japan, and ran overseas branches in China, Manchuria, and elsewhere in East Asia. Like all second sons in

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Japan, Papa was not entitled to inherit any of his father’s estate—under Japanese law, everything would go to the oldest son, Hisao. Papa’s secondary position in the family gave him a bit more freedom than Uncle Hisao, but he was still expected to adhere to the family’s guidance under the Ie (house/family) tradition, which established a strict family hierarchy with the father or head of the household wielding absolute power. Papa wanted to pursue his dream of becoming an artist studying at the prestigious Tokyo Art Institute, but the family required him to study law at Tokyo’s Keio University like his brother before him. He was brokenhearted, but traditional Japanese culture placed great weight on family discipline. I suspect that this crushing blow may have planted a seed of defiance and discontent long before he met my mother, a seed that led to a serious break with the family later on. Papa had thick, dark brown, wavy hair, making him look quite like the painter he had always wanted to be. He was of average height for his generation, with a wiry frame. He was a powerful swimmer, and his sturdy shoulders gave me a great vantage point when he hoisted me up while strolling through the yomise (nighttime street market) vendors’ displays on evenings after supper. Papa was a quiet man, and there was a flowing rhythm of affability about him. His face broke into soft, carefree smiles when he was around family and friends. After the war, however, when my mother was gone, I seldom saw his beautiful smiles. Then, every speck of post-war agony was evident in his stern expression, while my own pain was tucked away deep inside. My mother, Kimiko Kamiya, was “Mama” to me, never Oka-san (mother), as other children called their mothers. Her father Toshi was a sibling partner in a large real-estate holding company in Nagata-cho, an elite residential section of Tokyo close to the Diet (Japanese Parliament) building. Her great-grandfather had served as district manager for the Kojimachi district, and the family had accumulated extensive property holdings. After passing a formidable entrance examination, Mama attended Daisan Women’s School, where she was studying to become a school-

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teacher. But when her father fell ill with pneumonia and died suddenly, everything changed for her family. My mother, as the oldest child, suddenly transformed from a bright and undaunted teenage student to a hard-working assistant to her mother. Under Japanese law, all of Grandfather Toshi’s property went to Mama’s uncle, who assumed financial responsibility for the entire family. After a year, he terminated the comfortable home life her family had enjoyed while Grandfather had been alive. He moved Mama’s family into a smaller home and gave them only a tiny allowance to live on—which included the money that became available when he terminated Mama’s schooling. Mama had to give up her school uniform and find a job to help the family. In this way, her uncle unwittingly forced her to become independent and self-supporting—a modern woman who abandoned the traditional dependence on male elders. What Japanese society took decades to accomplish after the war, my mother accomplished in just a few years before it even started. Mama was slender in build and tall for a Japanese woman. Her large expressive eyes, long thick eyelashes, and well-defined eyebrows were not typical Japanese features. I remember how striking she used to look when she dressed up, and how people’s heads turned when she walked down the street. Most of the time, she chose Western clothes, with hats and heels, over kimonos and obis. Mama once told me that she had been approached by movie producers for acting roles, but she declined. All my friends commented on her beauty and grace. They used to tell me how lucky I was to have such a pretty mother. I was flattered, of course, but I also felt like an “ugly duckling” in Mama’s presence. Mama spoke in a soft and gentle voice. She had a demure presence, but she was as firm as steel inside. Once Mama made up her mind, she was not easily swayed. “No” meant no and “yes” meant yes with my mother, regardless of how tentative she may have seemed on the outside. At times, this firmness of hers shocked others who least expected such strength from one so soft and frail in appearance. It was at a baseball game in Tokyo where my father first met my mother, and it was a true case of “love at first sight.” He followed her

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Papa and Mama, 1936

home and asked her mother’s permission to court her—an outrageously audacious initiative that was brusquely turned down. It would have been most unseemly for Mama or her mother to accept such a bold request by a young man without a proper introduction by a “gobetween” such as a respectable elder or relative. In those days, people married by arrangement, without courtship. All mixing of the sexes was chaperoned very closely by the elders. Yet Papa’s charm and persistence eventually overcame the social formalities, and he gained permission to court Mama. Papa’s family in Hiroshima, located far from cosmopolitan Tokyo where Papa and Mama were living, strongly objected to the relationship and absolutely forbade a marriage. They had planned to choose Papa’s bride just as they had done for his older brother. Marriages were arranged between the families of social and financial equals, and certainly not between young lovers. A young woman from a family headed by a widow with a limited financial allowance definitely did not qualify as a suitable match for the second son of the Tamura Industrial Group. When Papa refused to yield to the family’s orders, they threatened to formally expel him from the family; he would receive no more financial

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support if he continued this defiance. They expected that he would give up his love as he had earlier given up his pursuit of painting. They were mistaken. Papa’s love for Mama—and soon also for their baby—was more important than money; he accepted expulsion with equanimity. This wealthy man’s son who had never worked a day in his life went out, found a job, and went to work to support himself and his family. American readers will have difficulty appreciating just how radical Papa’s decision was at a time when the concept of individual choice was virtually nonexistent in Japan and one’s life was defined primarily by one’s family connections. The high social position of the deeply traditional Tamura clan in Hiroshima made Papa’s defiance all the more scandalous. To cast off his family connections and sail alone into an unknown future was an act of supreme love and boldness. But that’s how determined my father was—and my mother was every bit his equal in this regard. Papa found employment at Datsun Motors in Tokyo, working as a salesman. At a time when driving was only for the privileged, he usually drove a Datsun home. His friends from work and from his university days flocked to our house. I can still hear their hearty laughter, their clapping hands, and their singing late into the night, as they feasted on food prepared by Mama. But Mama didn’t quietly remain in the kitchen on those occasions; she participated in the conversation as an equal. The combination of her beauty, her grace, her boldness, and her intellect made her the star of the evening. Papa’s friends were ambitious, intelligent, and diligent; they all climbed to the highest ranks of Japanese society, in both business and government.* They stayed in close contact with us throughout their lives and were very kind to me after my father passed away. After his break from the Tamura family, Papa was at last free to pursue his dream of becoming an artist; on the weekends, he often painted * Nabe-san from Nissan went on to become an executive in the company. Ryo-chan from the Takashimaya Department Store rose to become president of a major division of Takashimaya. Ina-san became a high-ranking officer in the Imperial Guard, roughly comparable to a high officer in the Secret Service.

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for long hours. He wore a smock and worked with great concentration. We did not interrupt; we knew better. He would not have heard us anyway. Sometimes he asked me to sit as his subject, but I could never be still long enough. I can almost smell the paint today as I recall his paintings. Their soft colors highlighted the presence of light in his imagination. They were not at all like the photographic paintings popular at that time. Papa taught me how to make drawings in perspective, and how to paint with a sense of light. He admired the French Impressionists; his favorite was Cezanne. Like other Japanese mothers of that era, Mama was always busy cooking, sewing, knitting, and housecleaning. She made all my clothes and was a speedy knitter. My sweaters and leggings had beautiful geometrical designs that she created; I can still see them in my mind’s eye. At the same time, she made everything seem effortless, including teaching me how to fold origami animals, a table and chairs, even a ghost. Step by step, she took me through the intricate folding process with the simple square papers. It was like magic. Instead of store-bought dolls, she made me rag dolls and I learned to make one myself just to surprise her. I was so proud and showed it to anybody who would stop and look. I was doing the best to be just like her who could make anything. In my later years when I saw the movie The King and I, I was reminded of Mama’s love of singing. Like Anna, she shared her open spirit with others by reaching out with tunes new and old, in Scottish, Irish, German, French, Italian, Russian, and, of course, Japanese. Her singing voice was as soft and tender as her speaking voice. Sometimes Mama would make hand and body motions as she sang, which I would imitate, and we would sing song after song together. A song I often requested was a melody for springtime, from a popular Takarazuka Revue musical set in a European village. Its vibrant and upbeat rhythm was perfect for Mama, and for singing in the middle of a cold and dreary winter while we awaited the arrival of springtime. The eager adoption of Western technology by the younger Japanese generation inspired parallel enthusiasm for other aspects of Western cul-

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ture, including its movies, radio programs, art and literature, and even the concept of couples dancing together—how deliciously racy! Tokyo was the center of the modernizing movement; it sparkled with cultural gems from all over the world. Restaurants, theaters, and bookstores opened up a wider world that entranced the city’s younger generation; to them, anything Western was considered “cool.” Mama and baby Hideko, 1936 My parents were part of this new Tokyo generation; and they felt that Western literature and culture had much to offer Japan. They had a large bookcase filled with books. The bottom shelf was stocked with my storybooks, more than half of which were stories of faraway lands. Aesop’s Fables and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson were read to me just as often as the beloved Japanese fables. Stories of kings, queens, princesses, and wicked witches, from Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella to Hansel and Gretel, came into my world as early in my childhood as any small child in the Western world would have encountered them. Japanese translations of Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Little Prince and The Little Princess, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Robin Hood would be added to that bottom shelf in later years. There was also children’s poetry by Hakushū Kitahara among others, which brought a sense of pathos and mystery into my life. These poems were subtle; they lacked simple morals or obvious solutions. Mama must have been partial to their themes and complexities.

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Another Western notion that my parents embraced was that children should be taught to think for themselves and learn independence. Once, when I was very young, my mother sent me on an errand to the shoe shop a few blocks away. The astonished clerk closed the shop and brought me home. Sunday was usually saved for the family; Mama’s sisters and brother (my favorite, Uncle I-chan) would come to visit us. Sometimes we would all go out to the Ueno Zoo or the amusement park, Toshimaen. We were poor then, but we all had a good time on these outings. We laughed, strolled, and played games until we were exhausted and ready to come home. There were other exciting things too, like the Celestial Festival in early July and the Fall Festival for the Hie Shrine every autumn. On these occasions, the star-studded sky above the tall evergreens and gingko trees would be lit up with colorful fireworks, while the merchants lined the street with their goods. People dressed in yukata (a casual cotton kimono worn during summer months) would fill the streets on the festival nights, fanning themselves as they walked. Despite Papa’s formal expulsion from the family, his ties to his father and older brother remained unbroken. My ojii-chan (grandfather) came to visit us every few months; he had too kind a heart to shun his second son. His visits, while kept secret from most family members in Hiroshima, were always a source of excitement and joy for our Tokyo household. He brought gifts of candy, toys, and food. I would climb on his lap, and he would read gently to me. Soon, Grandpa would feign a sore shoulder, wondering aloud if anyone could make his shoulder feel better. I would volunteer to give special shoulder rubs and tapping, for which he would announce I was the best granddaughter in all of Japan. His encouragement usually prompted more shoulder rubs, and his sore back was massaged all evening long. Grandpa’s soothing voice and tranquil presence was like warm sunshine. The next day, he would take us to some of our favorite shops in downtown Tokyo. Mine was an elegant fruit-parlor called Senbikiya, for a chocolate parfait. Papa’s older brother, Uncle Hisao, often accom-

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panied his father on these weekend visits as well. The only issue about which my parents disagreed in my presence was how to discipline me when I was out of line for one thing or another. Papa’s method was to threaten okyu (moss-burning on the skin), a home remedy usually tried by adults for treating persistent ailments but sometimes also used for punishing incorrigible children. Always believing his threats, My Tamura grandparents, 1929 Mama pleaded with him that a skin of a girl child must not be scarred. Papa, albeit a nontraditional man, stopped short each time in response to this traditional plea. I always wailed, though, just in case he was serious. A more effective discipline came from a different kind of threat. I was afraid of street monks. They wore reed headgear that covered their faces when they came to our house. As with the dark bathroom, I was frightened by anyone or anything I could not see plainly. Even the hint of a monk near the house was enough to prompt immediate obedience. It became a joke for my parents to see me reverse my behavior from “no” to a sudden “yes” just because I thought a monk was at our door. Persuading me to bathe in peach-leaf water to cure a summer rash was one of the occasions when the specter of the monks had to be invoked. Nothing else could make me jump into a tub full of smelly green leaves. I felt the same fear toward studio photographers. Facing a man with a bright flashing light who was hiding under a dark cloth and behind a three-legged box was no occasion for me to smile. In one of my rare

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official photos from this period, I was shown seated on a bench with a forlorn teddy bear thrown on the opposite side, hinting at the preceding struggle. These early years in Tokyo were the formative foundation of my life, cementing my love of independence and freedom. I was being raised most unconventionally by parents who refused to accept the tightly woven constraints of Japan’s traditional culture. “I’m not so sure about this . . . .” The family intrusions into Hideko (age 2), 1937 the direction of their own lives had been so distressing that they were determined to provide their child with the freedom they had not been allowed. And—my fears of dark places and obscured faces notwithstanding—these were also the happiest years of my life. Together, Papa, Mama, and I were sailing toward the unknown horizons of the modern world, full of rebellious confidence. The call of war against the West was about to change the tide for us irrevocably. Nevertheless, this is the only time of my life that I now look back upon with undiluted nostalgia.

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Changing World 1938–1939

One day I found Mama sitting down, looking worried. She had her face covered. Mama was not the worrying kind. She hesitated to explain, as though she were at a loss for words. Again, this was not my Mama. When Papa returned home, they locked the amado (rain door), which is usually only done at night before going to bed, and sent me out to the garden. Uncle I-chan came over to sit with me there while they discussed the problem in the zashiki. Their voices were muffled, so I could not make out the words, but Papa sounded stern and emphatic, while Mama sounded pleading. I grew worried. Uncle I-chan didn’t know what they were talking about either, but he guessed something very serious was taking place. The next day, Mama left me with my uncle again, this time to go talk with my father’s best friend, Ryo-chan. My uncle was only nine years older than I and we were like playmates, but he was resourceful and observant so I was sure he knew what was going on; and this time I persisted in trying to find out. Uncle I-chan was tentative in his reply. He said that the red paper had come to Papa, which meant that he was being drafted into the Imperial Army and had only a short time before he would have to 12

report for service. Papa, Uncle I-chan continued, wanted to place Mama and me under the care and protection of his family in Hiroshima while he was gone. This would ensure our financial security and social protection should he die in the Emperor’s service. Understandably, however, Mama preferred staying with her own mother in Tokyo rather than moving in with the family that had vociferously objected to her presence in Papa’s life. So that’s what they Mama and Hideko, 1940 had been arguing about. In any other Japanese family, Mama’s refusal would have sparked righteous outrage from Papa, but theirs was not a traditional Japanese marriage; Papa respected Mama as his equal. The irresistible force of Papa’s plan had temporarily met its match in the immovable strength of Mama’s will. When Mama spoke with Ryo-chan, however, he advised her that Papa’s plan would protect our future, and Mama eventually yielded. Papa, by way of consolation, gave her a beautiful new Astrakhan fur coat with a matching veiled hat and a pair of high heels, knowing how much she loved fashionable clothing. So within a short time, we closed up our little house and boarded a train, riding toward the home from which Papa had been exiled. He was now returning with his wife and child to attempt a formal reconciliation. He must have loved us profoundly to have undertaken such a daunting and humiliating task. Or perhaps he had known all along that as his father’s beloved son, he would never be permanently disowned. My first train trip spanned half the main island of Japan, from Tokyo to Hiroshima. It took all day and all night to travel the five hundred

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miles between the two cities. At each stop, vendors offered bento (box) lunches, tea, and cakes, shouting their wares as they walked up and down the platforms. Leaning out the window, you had to choose and transact quickly to get your food and your change. I was mesmerized by the process. As the steam engine chugged along, rivers and mountains passed behind us for hours on end, unlike the short rides in the amusement parks I knew. We had not yet learned to close the window when the train entered a tunnel; the first time that happened, the smoke and soot flew into the cabin without warning, covering my face and hair, and a cinder flew into my eye. As Tokyo receded farther and farther behind us, I peered out the window at the wonderful sights, oblivious to the future awaiting me. Arriving in Hiroshima, we were met by Aunt Chitose—my grandfather’s oldest daughter by his first marriage—and her husband Tokuichi. They brought us to their two-story house built alongside the Ota River. One could actually step into the river’s cool, clear water directly from their bottom-floor stone steps. Aunt Chitose resembled a celestial fairy out of my storybooks, delicate and fair. She and Uncle Tokuichi welcomed us as if we were already family. Their two young sons, Hiroshi and Shoji, clean-cut and shy, had stayed with us in Tokyo, so my mother and I already knew the boys. We were to wait at this house while the members of my father’s family negotiated the details of restoring my father’s rights and privileges with his new family. Everything had to be decided in advance, including how and when we were to arrive at Grandpa’s estate (where we would be living) and what should be worn. While these talks were being held, Aunt Chitose kept us occupied in and around her house, which was located diagonally across the newlybuilt landmark T-shaped Aioi Bridge. Across the bridge stood the Sangyo-Shoreikan, Hiroshima’s commerce promotion center. No one could have suspected it at the time, but the center’s skeletal dome would become a world heritage site and peace memorial; the house in which we waited was barely two hundred yards from the future Ground Zero of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. I have a roof tile that Uncle

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Tokuichi recovered from the ruins of this house; its upper surface was melted and blackened by the bomb’s searing heat. Fortunately, the family had moved to a location outside the city limits just before the bomb fell, and so they were unhurt. From an open deck on the top floor of the house, where Aunt Chitose hung her laundry out to dry, one could see not only the flowing Ota River upon which ferries Mama and Hideko with cousins Shoji and and pleasure boats passed Hiroshi, 1938 by day and night, but also the graceful Hiroshima Castle only half a mile away. At night, a long array of lights from the buildings lining the Ota’s banks was reflected in the river water, moving with the wind tide. It was the most enchanting sight that I had ever seen.* The Tamura clan consisted of Grandpa Hidetaro, his younger brother Tadaichi, brother-in-law Genji Nishikawa, and cousins and second cousins and their children. All these families occupied a district * The site of Hiroshima was originally a bay fed by the Ota River. A site on the eastern edge of that bay was used for a primitive port and, later, as the administrative headquarters for the region. Over the centuries, silt from the Ota River filled in the bay, and in 1589 the powerful Mouri clan built a castle in the center of the newly formed land. Little markets sprang up around the castle, and the town of Hiroshima was born. The new town was an ideal location for a port, and when Japan industrialized after the Meiji Restoration, Hiroshima became an important industrial center. My grandfather played a major role in this industrialization process, thereby becoming one of the pillars of the community. Because of the many branches of the Ota River threading through Hiroshima, the city became known as “the Venice of the Orient.”

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along the Ota River adjacent to the Tamura Industries factories. As expected, Papa’s wish for us to live under the same roof with his family was initially met with some objections by the family elders; but ultimately, these elders, over whom my grandfather presided, approved the deal. My mother and I were officially entered in the family registry at this time, bestowing important legal rights upon us. I never doubted that Grandpa himself was anxious to have us close by, and we soon moved from Aunt Chitose’s house to his grand estate. For that occasion, Mama wore a new kimono in yellow and blue with a light green haori (half-coat), sent by her mother-in-law as both a classic Japanese gesture of acceptance/welcome into the family and a hint that Mama’s Western clothing was considered inappropriate by the Tamuras. I wore a knit suit in gold and white, made by Mama. As was appropriate for the man who paid the highest taxes in the entire prefecture, the Tamura Industrial Group chairman’s awesome estate was an elegant and traditional home on a plot that was both rich in vegetation and intricately landscaped. The estate had been built originally by the Baron Ueda, whose ancestors served the Lord Mouri, the ruling house over Hiroshima and surrounding territories from the sixteenth century to the Meiji Restoration of 1867. The house stood on an elevated ground platform made by carefully assembled rocks, much like in the old warlord castles. The estate was ringed by tall white walls covered by protective tiled roofing. At the formal entrance was an impressive wrought-iron gate adorned with ivy designs. The large side/ rear entrance, which was for daily use, featured a stone staircase covered by a tiled roof leading up to the door. On the appointed day, we were ushered through this entrance, greeted by a line of white-aproned women—my aunts and grandmother—and, of course, by Grandpa Hidetaro and Uncle Hisao, whom I recognized from our previous friendly visits in Tokyo. (Papa had warned me not to mention these prior contacts in the presence of the rest of the family). One by one we were formally introduced to each member of the household. The first morning in the new house came early, as I woke to sounds of voices and footsteps. I ventured out to explore, prancing down the

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long corridor, and upon hearing a child’s voice, I peeked inside a room where Uncle Hisao, his wife Fumiko, and their son Hideyuki slept. Aunt Fumiko was just helping Hideyuki put on his shirt. She was surprised to see me but invited me to come in and sit with my cousin. I recognized a familiar book on the shelf, so I grabbed it and offered to read with him. He was too taken aback to respond, so I sat down beside him, opened the book, and began to read aloud with great animation. Aunt Fumiko was surprised by my brazen style, for Japanese girls were expected to be shy, cute, and quiet. Moreover, children generally did not learn to read until they were several years older than I was. (With my parents’ help, I had taught myself to read by the age of four.) The tale of the unorthodox little girl from Tokyo quickly spread through the extended family’s grapevine. Venturing farther down the corridor, I heard soft voices and followed them to a large dressing room with a giant wall mirror. I gasped, seeing a very strange phenomenon. A creature with no hair on top was seated before a three-sided vanity. Several women were fussing, combing, and painting white liquid from the neck up. She resembled the illustration of an octopus monster from one of my storybooks. On the verge of terror, I ran back to my room and frantically reported this sensational news to Mama. Seeing that I was truly serious, she stopped laughing, and in a hushed voice deciphered the mystery. She explained that the person was Grandma Tamano. By the time I returned to the scene, a new set of hair covered Grandma’s head. More make-up was being applied by the same attendants who now assisted in robing her in a kimono. Most Japanese homes have small altars, often no more than a shelf on a bookcase, where reverences may be made. Here in my grandfather’s mansion, the altar was large and had its own room, called the butsuma (room of Buddha). Each morning before breakfast, Grandpa placed an offering of freshly cooked rice on the Grand Buddhist altar, burned incense, struck a gong, and chanted a sutra. The main service was conducted every evening before supper. We congregated in the butsuma for longer worship services conducted by my grandfather. We all chanted the sutra, after which Grandpa would

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read from a holy text during which time our heads were bowed down to the tatami floor, showing humility and reverence. When he was finished, he intoned “Anakoshiko, anakoshiko,” meaning “Amen, amen.” Mama instructed me to do as I was told during the service, without asking any questions. I obeyed, for this ritual was mandatory in our new home. After a while, I learned the words and chanted in unison with the others. This family took their customs seriously, and this was by far the most solemn occasion. By learning the chanting, I was being led to the way of Buddhist teaching. The entire household came together at mealtimes. We ate in a large dining room next to an even larger kitchen. In proper Japanese form, our meals consisted primarily of rice, fish, and vegetables. Grandpa sat at the head of the table, at breakfast time sipping his morning tea, followed by carrot juice or miso soup, daikonoroshi (grated white radish), and pickles and rice. Uncle Hisao and Cousin Hideyuki sat on one side of the table, and Papa (when he was there) and I sat on the other side. Grandma Tamano was usually at the end of the table opposite her husband. Aunt Kiyoko, father’s oldest sister, divorced and childless, sat next to Grandma. Mama and Aunt Fumiko were kept busy making and serving the food, and they ate next to last, followed by the three maids and little Auntie Kimie, who as I learned much later was Grandpa’s daughter by a mistress who had died—he brought the child home after her mother’s death, but always treated her more like a maid than a family member. Meals were generally a happy time, but I had to be careful not to make any references to the prior visits from Grandpa and Uncle Hisao. Once I almost forgot. I started to say something but was caught by a sudden pain in my toes, which were tucked under my bottom on the tatami floor. Mama was pinching me. Most of my daytime hours were spent playing with Cousin Hideyuki, who became my brother-in-residence. He was a master tree climber, and he taught me how to catch dragonflies by sneaking up behind them and using my fingers like a fork to separate their wings. We often played marbles; he was an excellent player. I learned and prac-

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ticed all of his crafts so that we could play together. He loved having a playmate. We rarely quarreled, but sometimes he made me cry. Aunt Fumiko always stopped her son from being rough with me and apologized on his behalf. When Cousin Hideyuki was otherwise occupied, the vast garden of the estate was at my disposal for endless pleasure. There were five or six decorative gardens inside the wall, each meticulously maintained. There were beautifully shaped pine trees, well-placed giant rocks, and stone lanterns. Large azalea bushes, camellias, flowering trees with heavenly scents, evergreens, and maple trees were laid out in such a way that every vantage point in the garden presented a beautiful sight all year around. In the winter, the camellias bloomed in bright red, pink, and white, next to shiny green holly leaves with red berries. Early spring brought azaleas of every color as well as golden and silver lilacs that filled the air with their wonderful aroma. Herbs and other condiment plants grew in shady spots, and a small orchard across the street produced figs and persimmons galore. Cousin Hideyuki and I feasted on the fruits even before the picking time. Besides birds and insects, there was a variety of stunning-colored lizards and large ground toads. These were not like the little jumping wet frogs I had enjoyed in my parents’ garden in Tokyo. They were huge, covered with unsightly warts, but harmless. On rare occasions I also saw a white snake going across a pond. The sight of a long, stringlike creature effortlessly crossing the water was awesome. Although my life changed drastically in many ways after our move to Hiroshima, it was nothing compared to the changes my mother endured. She went from being a carefree young wife and mother to being a member of a large, structured household, responsible for a thousand-and-one chores and governed by countless rules. This must have been extremely difficult for someone accustomed to being her own boss and running her own household freely for so long. Aunt Fumiko, Mama, Auntie Kimie, and the maids were up at the crack of dawn, washing the floors and sweeping entrance ways, as well as preparing breakfast. Their work did not end until long after dark.

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Grandma Tamano and Aunt Kiyoko made the housekeeping decisions and organized and supervised the performance of chores, ordering the others around like supreme commanders. Their standards were high, and the other women were kept on their toes. The hardest part of my adjustment was the loss of my mother’s time and company. Our private time together was mostly at bedtime, unless I became ill. Sometimes Mama bent the rules, incurring my grandmother’s wrath, especially after Papa left. It was a classic Japanese feudal household, worlds away from the cosmopolitan existence Mama had enjoyed in Tokyo. Shortly after our arrival, Papa reported to the army. After basic training, he was assigned to the transport division because of his driving experience from the Nissan days. We were secretly delighted that he had not been assigned to the infantry, in spite of the patriotic fervor of the time. Within six months, his division received orders to go to Northern China. On the morning of Papa’s departure, the entire Tamura clan gathered at the harbor with a spread of festive foods and sake bottles. Decanters were filled and emptied quickly. Men were singing send-off songs and women were busy filling the plates for the men. They were all congratulating the man who was going to serve his country for his Emperor, but for me there was nothing festive about this event: I was losing my Papa. I remember being very thirsty and reaching for the nearest teacup, not realizing that it was filled with rice wine, not tea. I had never tasted an alcoholic beverage before. I finished the cup and helped myself to more. No one realized what was going on until I began to sing Papa in uniform, 1937 and dance, circling a telephone

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pole. A few of my male cousins were amused when they guessed what had happened. Papa was dressed in a khaki uniform, and his curly hair had been shaved off. Looking very much like a soldier, he gave a military salute to his family before boarding a small ferry with other inducted men. Everyone was calling out the last well-wishes and goodbyes. I shouted a wish for a letter and watched him become a pinpoint on the horizon. The exotic food, together with the multiple helpings of sake, had given me a giant stomachache. I began to cry and called to Mama for help. Mama tried to comfort me, but she, too, was weeping. We walked along together, feeling very tired and lost, toward our uncertain future without Papa. Papa had always been the rock on which our family was built. He sustained us and protected us, and he always knew what to do. Now he was gone, and Mama and I were alone among strangers. These people were not at all like Mama’s family back in Tokyo; we knew that here we had to be on our best behavior every minute. Mama and I were always in our tatemae mode, never able to relax in honne.† So began an abrupt transition of an urban mother and her child, accustomed to freedom and independent ways and suddenly forced into prescribed roles of tradition under heavy supervision. Mama and I were devastated. We were lost without Papa, who would have translated for us the dos and the don’ts of the household and the Hiroshima ways, especially the dialect, which was a foreign language to us. The sound had unfamiliar tones, almost like slow wailing instead of the fast-pitched and crisp Tokyo dialect, and we could neither speak nor understand it. The cultural gap between our former and current life was huge. Our modern ways clashed directly with the Tamura family’s old traditions. It was a very difficult and traumatic adjustment for us, but in many † Every Japanese learns from childhood the ideas of tatemae versus honne, a code of personal conduct requiring one to maintain a proper courteous and pleasant outer demeanor (tatemae) while keeping one’s own feelings to oneself (honne). Usually, tatemae was employed in public and honne at home.

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ways it must also have been a great challenge for the Tamura household to break in the “wild” newcomers. As was expected of my father at the army’s basic training, our complete and immediate subordination was expected at home; and although we tried our best to comply, it took time to learn how. Gradually, though, we learned to hide our first reactions and stifle our independent thinking behind an anxious or blank stare. Waking up to a new day no longer triggered excitement as it used to. We were changing under duress.

The Tamura family on the eve of Papa’s departure, 1938

3

Becoming a Tamura 1938–1941

As is customary in Japanese households, Mama and I were required to comply with the standards and practices of our new family. Mama had to work all day on the cleaning, cooking, and other tasks involved in maintaining the household; and my own freewheeling ways were frowned upon. My father’s relatives called me ba-sakuro, meaning “tomboy,” but the Japanese word includes a strong note of disapproval. I was no longer allowed to wear short pants like those that little boys wore; now I had to wear dresses. My hair had to be cut in the traditional fashion for little girls. Still, we children were free to occupy ourselves as we wished while the adults were kept busy throughout the day, and I could romp around as I pleased, inside or out. Frequently, however, my private adventures in the new household were interrupted by childhood ailments to which I had always seemed especially susceptible. The first one after moving in with the Tamuras was a serious bout of pneumonia, along with high fever. I remember the pediatrician’s visit to our home, accompanied by his nurse, and the injections with big thick needles. I remember screaming in pain in the darkened room filled with humidity from a vaporizer. I subsequently fell prey to many other childhood diseases as well, and the same doctor 23

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and nurse became regular visitors to our home. After treating me, the doctor would be given a clean pan of water and a towel as well as a snack. One very welcome benefit from these unpleasant episodes was my mother being excused from her domestic duties so that she could stay close by my bedside, tending to my care. Buddhism was central to the life of this Tamura household. In addition to the daily sutra chanting, the family often participated in rituals at the temple. Mama and I were required to follow these practices, but only many years later did I come to appreciate them. Since I had just turned five and Hideyuki had just turned seven that first fall with the Tamuras, we were to participate in the religious ceremony called shichi-go-san (meaning “seven-five-three”) at the temple our family attended. This Buddhist ceremony, held on the fifteenth of November, marked a seven-, five-, or three-year-old child’s formal entry into a temple’s congregation. Our temple was called Tokuoji—“The Temple of the Virtuous King.” Along with the other participants, Cousin Hideyuki and I paraded in ceremonial costumes, carrying ornamental water lilies and bells and wearing delicate golden tresses on our heads. I felt like a clown and hated being forced into a ritual I did not understand. Hideko (age 5), 1939 I remember crying and not wanting to be paraded around or to have my face painted white, but there was no bucking Japanese

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tradition. We walked in a circle on the temple stage, around and around, cheered on by our proud parents. Another formal initiation into the tradition of the Tamura family was attendance at the Seibi Academy, a unique private academy established shortly after the Meiji Restoration as a powerful educational auxiliary of the Japanese military and located on a Hiroshima army base. Both Uncle Hisao and Papa had graduated from this school, and some of Cousin Hideyuki and Hideko, 1939 their teachers were still on the faculty. The students wore navy blue uniforms that sported three red lines along the sleeves and collar, with pleated skirts for the girls and short pants for the boys. The Seibi students stood out in public because other grade schools did not require uniforms. We were seen as special little kids. My first attendance at the academy was informal; Aunt Fumiko had taken me along on Cousin Hideyuki’s first day of first grade, and we stayed on to observe. Mr. Sato, the teacher, opened the class by asking easy questions, like the ages of his young students: “How many here are six years old…? And how many seven…?” Eager children raised their hands. “Is there anyone five?” Way in the back, sitting with the parents, a lone hand went up: mine. Mr. Sato was hesitant, clearing his throat, but finally saying, “Of course, class, you are not five.” I could hardly wait to be admitted to the academy’s kindergarten. To do so, I first had to pass an entrance examination in which a couple of kindly teachers asked questions about colors, animals, and numbers that I had to identify by moving colored beads. It was almost too easy.

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First-grader Hideko in Seibi school uniform, 1940

The kindergarten was divided into three classrooms with names of flowers. The teachers were always surrounded by the children pulling at their beautiful hakama—ankle-length, roomy pant skirts worn by both men and women for martial arts and other traditional activities—from all directions. I never could find a spot to grab on to their hakama, or maybe felt too shy to run up, so instead I watched enviously from close by. My shyness in such situations was something new. In Tokyo I had been an open, gregarious child, giggling and reaching out to people freely. Here in this strange world, I was becoming timid and unsure. So many new people, so many new rules. For the first time in my life, I was acting like a traditional girl-child:

quiet, subordinate, and hesitant. But then, my shyness might also have arisen from a devastating development at home: One morning I awoke to find that Mama was gone. She had been scolded the night before by Aunt Kiyoko and Grandma for failing to put away a kimono tie that I had borrowed to use for a jump rope. A woman who did not keep all her kimono ties safely tucked away was regarded as being ungenteel. Afterward, she didn’t tell me much about the incident, and I didn’t realize that by forgetting to return the tie I had put her in such a compromised position. The humiliation that Aunt Kiyoko and Grandma heaped on her for that misstep was the last straw for my mother, and she left the estate.

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She didn’t come back by the end of the next day, nor the next, nor the next. A few days later, we learned that she had returned to Tokyo. It was scary enough to be in the unfamiliar world of the Tamura household even with Mama, but to be without my one-and-only ally was unthinkable. I didn’t believe she could have left without preparing me for her departure. Perhaps she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to start crying. Perhaps she decided that she couldn’t take me with her because legally I belonged to the Tamura household. I had suspected all along that the Tamura family environment and the absence of Papa were more than Mama could bear. I had seen both Grandma Tamano and Aunt Kiyoko speaking to her harshly. I remembered that once when I was ill, I heard soft running footsteps, followed by heavy but fast strides and the sound of hard slapping. My mother ran into my sickroom, red-eyed and crying, with Aunt Kiyoko right behind. I was stunned and terrified while Aunt Kiyoko continued to scold Mama, only now she was accusing Mama was making her look bad in front of me. I could hardly believe it; I had never seen anything like this from my parents or within my mother’s family. That an adult woman could resort to such violence against a younger woman for any reason was simply incomprehensible to me. Much later I learned that Aunt Kiyoko’s second husband had divorced her after she left him several times, always heading to the Tamura house. At first, her husband would come for her and beg her to return home. Eventually, though, he gave up and stopped coming for her. Having overplayed her hand, she found herself in the humiliating position of being a childless divorcee with no real future. Mama, on the other hand, was beautiful and happily married to a man who, in Aunt Kiyoko’s view, she didn’t deserve. She was elegant and self-assured, had already started her own family, and could look forward to a rewarding life. The contrast between the two women could not have been starker, and it engendered envy and resentment in Aunt Kiyoko’s heart. I have only a vague memory of how I coped with Mama’s sudden abandonment. There was simply nothing I could do; I was all alone now. Papa was hundreds of miles away in Northern China. Nobody

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informed him of Mama’s departure because it would have undermined his morale while serving the Emperor. I didn’t know how to get in touch with him; and even if I did, he couldn’t have come home. Aunt Fumiko took me into her living quarters within the house, and I hovered around Hideyuki, hoping to catch a few crumbs of parental affection from his mother. I went through the daily routine mechanically, going to the Seibi kindergarten as before and coming home with Hideyuki and his mother. I gave up all hope of ever seeing my mother again, but one rainy night less than a month later I heard excited chatter coming from the telephone nook. They told me that Aunt Shizuko, who lived in Osaka, had chanced to run into Mama and had persuaded her to return to Hiroshima. I couldn’t believe she’d actually come back—but Lordy, accompanied by Aunty Shizuko, she did. When she returned, Mama entered the house through the formal guest entrance, supported on both sides and looking as if she had been in convalescence. She was wearing her blue velvet dress under her favorite Astrakhan fur coat and matching fur hat. I stayed in the background, unable to believe that she was really here. In the days that followed, I warmed up to her slowly and made her promise to never, ever leave me again. She kept that promise as long as she lived. On her return, Mama was given more leeway in tending to my care and protection. She traveled with me to school and back every day, an hour-long trip each way. Aunt Fumiko took Cousin Hideyuki, so the four of us now had a daily group outing. Our mothers became like sisters, and my cousin and I became even more like brother and sister than we had already been. Mama introduced her new sister and nephew to foreign cuisines at a popular restaurant in downtown Hiroshima. Spaghetti, hot dogs, and pancakes were our favorite foods. Cousin Hideyuki would always drown the pancakes in syrup. I showed him how to melt the butter first, tucking it between the pancake layers. We learned a secret that Aunt Fumiko had long hidden underneath her dutiful exterior. Her mother had passed away before she married. Her father’s new wife was friends with Grandma Tamano, and they

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arranged Aunt Fumiko’s marriage to Uncle Hisao without her knowledge. She first saw him at their wedding, where she had to hold back tears, for she had not wanted to marry a man who wore glasses. How silly she had been back then, she laughed, for she came to realize that her husband was a good man. We laughed, too. Aunt Fumiko’s endearment to Mama brought Uncle Hisao under Mama’s influence. Mama gave them lessons in ballroom dancing, much to their delight. Uncle Hisao had wanted to be able to dance just like Papa could, and now he and Aunt Fumiko learned as a pair. Arranging the time and place of the lessons, however, was a delicate business in this traditional household. We had a portable phonograph, the kind that was hand-cranked before it played, and it was taken to a far corner of the main corridor, which had a smooth floor surface. After the lights were out in the evening and the more conservative household members were sleeping peacefully, Mama showed her two subversive dancing students the fox trot, tango, and waltz, with the music at the softest volume. My bespectacled, traditional Uncle Hisao and my Aunt Fumiko, a model Japanese wife, danced in each other’s arms just as free in spirit as my parents had been in Tokyo. Once or twice the dancing woke others, and after that, the phonograph was taken away and the lessons were discontinued. Be that as it may, the couple’s second child—a daughter, Kumiko—was born the following spring, ten years after the birth of Hideyuki. A happy break from routine came when the household bath facility had to be repaired and remodeled, which meant that everyone had to wash without the usual soaking in the tub. The only alternative was to go to the neighborhood public bathhouse. The Tamura family disdained anything so vulgar, but Mama and I were willing to try it. We were, after all, Edokko (Tokyo-ites), known for their dedication to personal cleanliness. We would walk to the bathhouse in the evening, bringing our own soap, towels, and a little washing bowl. It was such a relaxing and refreshing pastime. On our short walk home we’d sing songs, and Mama would point out the constellations: the Little Dipper,

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the Big Dipper, and the Pole Star. I don’t know how she knew about everything except that she had once begun studies to become a teacher. Although she had had to give up that dream for financial reasons, she never stopped being a teacher to her little girl. Papa kept his promise to write us often, and our letters to him were filled with news and pictures that I drew just for him. We also frequently sent imon bukuro (care packages). In one of her letters, Mama requested his permission to visit her family in Tokyo and take me with her. He consented and in turn asked his family to allow these trips. Ensuring Papa’s peace of mind while serving the Emperor was important enough for the family to accede. Mama and I began to make the long train rides back and forth to Tokyo during extended school holidays, staying in her family’s home. One midsummer night while we were vacationing in Kamakura (a seaside town just south of Tokyo) with my aunts and uncle, I came down with the whooping cough. To help me recover my strength, my mother and I spent the rest of the summer in a coastal village in Chiba Prefecture, famous for its stunning miles of white sandy beach. We rented a zashiki in a farmhouse and spent a happy time together enjoying plentiful fresh air, healthy food, and unrestrained seaside activities. Almost daily we walked along the beach, collecting seashells of intricate shapes and colors, the ocean breeze brushing our cheeks and the sound of the surf in our ears, beating a steady marine chorus. I had not yet learned to swim but felt just like the song about the children of the sea and the white waves. Mama also tried out every health tip from the village women, including roasted garlic. She roasted a bulb every morning and I ingested it much like medicine, squeezing my nose while I swallowed so I wouldn’t inhale the garlicky smell. After all the stresses that Papa and Mama and I had suffered, this cozy vacation was exactly what we needed; and when we returned to Tokyo at the end of that summer, Mama decided that we would remain there. I certainly had no desire to return to Hiroshima either. I suspect that our subsequent extended stay in Tokyo lacked the formal consent of the Tamuras, but no official convoy from that family arrived to force

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us to return. We loved our regained freedom. This change of residential locale required me to attend second grade at the newly built Nagata-cho Grade School, which had been the talk of the town because of its modern appointments: a spacious pool and indoor gym, as well as—astounding to behold—flush toilets! The school was situated in the heart of Tokyo, close to the Diet building and not far from the Imperial Palace. Whenever the Emperor and Empress left the palace, their motorcade passed in front of the school, and all of us would line up along the street, bowing low in the saikeirei position, the deepest and most reverent. We were told to keep our eyes down and not to look, because the Imperial Couple was so holy that seeing them would burn our eyes. I of course couldn’t resist the urge to peek, and I saw the sweet face of the Empress, fortunately without incurring blindness. After the war, this all changed; instead of averting our eyes as the couple passed, we would wave joyously to them, and they would wave back to us. Not only was the modern grade school facility mesmerizing, but the coursework there was far more challenging than it had been at Seibi Academy. The student demographics were also quite different. While the Seibi students were the children of military families, former noble families, and prominent business families, my classmates in Tokyo included children of cabinet members, merchants, and the elite of Japanese society—including the vivacious daughters of Prime Minister Tojo. Only a year or two ahead of me in school, Yukie and Kimie were usually surrounded by admiring younger students with whom they took turns proudly sharing their famous father’s anecdotes. No one could have guessed then that in just eight years the family would be loathed and scorned by many Japanese people, especially because their prime-minister father had attempted and failed a suicide by shooting himself in the chest. “If he were to end his life like a true samurai, he would have shot himself in the head,” they complained. Instead, Yuki and Kimie’s father would be executed by conquering invaders. Years later, I read that one of the daughters had come to the United States to attend a school in Michigan. I was relieved that she, at least, was able

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to put the past behind her and forge ahead. In fact, I was almost jealous of her. My new, more cosmopolitan classmates at Nagata-cho Grade School also had higher expectations of themselves than the Seibi students did, and I struggled to keep up with their pace. Only in calligraphy did I enjoy an obvious advantage, thanks to my private lessons in Hiroshima. At Nagata-cho Grade School, many of my calligraphic works were pinned on the wall as models, and one was sent for a display at the Ise Shrine, the guardian deity of the Yamato tribe, the ancestral God of the Imperial Family. At my new school I also learned about the cruelty that children can sometimes wreak on each other. One morning, while standing on the playground, a girl hit me on the back for no apparent reason. She was the older sister of a girl whose desk was directly behind mine, and she was now making faces at me. Since this sort of thing didn’t happen at Seibi Academy, I was stunned speechless. Her attacks continued at any time or place, and I was helpless to prevent them. This experience revealed another difference between Seibi Academy and Nagato-cho Grade School. At Seibi, all students were raised with a strong sense of duty and obligation to others. Older students were expected to watch out for and take care of younger students— not attack them. Younger students were expected to obey the older students—which is why I felt I could not defend myself against this girl. Then one day Mama came tiptoeing into my classroom to bring me some homework that I had left behind at the house. She was dressed in a light-blue, soft flannel dress and looked very pretty. After she left, the other girls surrounded me, wanting to find out who that stunning and elegant lady was; they couldn’t believe she could be my mother. After that visit, my tormentor reversed herself and now spoke to me with a weirdly artificial admiration. I will never understand what was going on in her mind. The little house in Tokyo was nothing like the awesome Tamura estate with its oppressive atmosphere of formality and correctness. Here

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in her own family home, Mama and I were intimate and close, laughing and playing pranks on each other every chance we got, and happy to be free from the harsh discipline of my father’s family. Here, Mama was pretty much in charge of herself, and her family authority was second only to her mother’s. I couldn’t have explained why, but I felt infinitely more comfortable with my mother’s family. Within less than a year, however, this respite came to an end. Papa was discharged from the army, and we had to be at his family’s home when he arrived. We dropped everything and, leaving behind Nagata-cho school and my mother’s family, hurried back to Hiroshima. I felt a bit shy when I first saw Papa. We had to get to know one another all over again. It was difficult for him, too, as I had grown and changed so much in three years. I wanted to tell him all that had happened but found myself tongue-tied; I was no longer the bubbly child he had left behind. We did manage to find our way back to each other in time. He had seen and lived a very different life in the three years he was gone. I did not know how his experiences in those years might have changed him, but I wondered if he recognized the changes that had taken place at home while he was away. He was full of colorful tales from his tour of duty, and everything was recorded in several thick black-and-white–photo albums. The vast deserts of China and Manchuria and the people in their native garb now looked into our eyes from a faraway country. Papa had brought back several artifacts as well. The most impressive of these were Mongolian utensils: an awesome cutting knife and long chopsticks that were stored in an intricately decorated case. I imagined the sharp knife blade plunging into meats as I fantasized about the Silk Road and the conquests of Genghis Khan. The history and stories I had read were coming to life through Papa’s narratives. I longed to see such a land someday, but just hearing about it was exciting enough. Papa also spoke of his delight in finding simple and inexpensive cures, such as powders from broken clay roof tiles, for Chinese villagers sick with stomach problems. It made him feel good to help alleviate their suffering. He also recalled how he had never anywhere else seen the

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vast level of poverty in the streets and such a great difference between the rich and the poor; he could not understand how they coexisted. In China a huge number of poor people were ruled by a small number of very wealthy people. Life back in the Tamura mansion in Hiroshima was much better with Papa there, especially for Mama, for now no one dared to openly berate her. We remained fearful of offending the female heads of the household, Grandma and Aunt Kiyoko; but with close ties to her sisterin-law and friends among my classmates’ parents, Mama was becoming more comfortable with her status as wife of the second son of the Tamura family, and with enjoying the associated privileges. Since my grandfather owned most of the stock in the electric/utility company that ran Hiroshima buses and trams, we received family passes that allowed us to ride them for free, and our utility bills were minuscule. Mama—and the other ladies of the household—also never had to go clothes shopping. Their kimonos were custom-made by a seamstress, from fabrics brought to the Tamura estate by selected vendors. The various Tamura clan members and their families congregated with each other frequently. Their grand homes along the Ota River would be open to one another as they took turns serving elegant, festive food to their oyobare (party guests). The many children played together in the gardens, like a big junior clan. Even with the many duties arising from our position, the comforts of being a Tamura were becoming more and more apparent to us. During this period, Papa Mama, 1942

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worked his way up through the army ranks to become an officer, and he was allowed to commute from home. He coached Aunt Fumiko’s younger brother on how to qualify for the kanbu kohosei (officer candidates’ corps). If one had no choice but to enter the military, this was the way to go without completing the formal schooling otherwise required for career advancement. Papa had passed the kanbu kohosei qualification test at the time he was drafted, so he moved up fairly quickly. I, however, would not have wished to undergo the terrifying training that grown men were being subjected to on the huge military training ground next to Seibi Academy, where I was now back in school. I saw both young and old soldiers being pushed and yelled at, sometimes punched, shoved, and kicked, and I wanted to cry and run as I passed by. Now and then one of the drill instructors yelled at me for watching the battering, so I tried to walk past the training ground looking only straight ahead; but I could never feel indifferent—and I still feel bad today, just thinking about it. Once I spoke about these incidents to Papa. He was quiet and said very little except to acknowledge that basic training was rather harsh, but everyday army life was not like what I was seeing. It was, he told me, more like a family that took care of one another. He took me with him to his base compound so I could see the workings of military life. This experience opened my eyes to daily life in the Japanese Army. One section of the base was reserved entirely for the cavalry regiment. It had a distinct equine scent with rows of horse sheds. Soldiers were tending to the beautiful animals with affection and care. There were even pig pens. Having never seen a live pig, I was startled by how large and hairy they were. They likely were kept for military consumption, though this did not occur to me at the time. The men who worked under Papa were cheerful and in good spirits, unlike those I saw on the training ground, and from time to time they gave my father a live turtle or a stray kitten to take home to his little daughter. The caring quality I saw in my father toward his men was much like the ways of his own father. Grandpa’s three thousand employees included handicapped men and women who were given tasks within

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their ability to perform. I remember that a worker named Ben-san, whose spine was severely curved, had light duties and used to help in our garden. No one who came to our door begging for charity was turned away without being given food or clothing. In those days, food was scarce, and meat was almost impossible to find. But when my grandfather, a devout Buddhist, learned that a foreign Catholic priest was suffering a long illness, he sent the man a package of beef with a note explaining that he knew foreigners required meat in their diet and hoped that this nourishment would help the priest back to health. Such acts of open-handed charity, uncommon in Japan’s highly stratified society, were never talked about by Grandpa, just done. On one occasion there was a disgruntled employee with special demands. The man climbed to the top of the huge chimney, about sixty feet up, and the factory had to be shut down to prevent any harm to the man. Grandpa simply waited until the man eventually tired of sitting up on the chimney and came down. He was a paragon of wisdom and strength, and I wish I could talk to him today. A short time after his return from China, Papa was discharged from the army altogether and our family was free to return to Tokyo. Mama was ecstatic, and in the fall of 1941 our happy threesome settled into a little house in the Kojimachi district a few doors down from Grandma Tome. With our boxes unpacked and furniture in place, we resumed our urban lifestyle. Papa was rehired by Datsun (now Nissan Motors), and I re-enrolled in Nagata-cho Grade School. My old schoolfriends welcomed me cheerfully, and back in the familiar neighborhood, my chums and I resumed our games as if nothing had happened.

4

The Encroaching War 1941–1945

On December 8, 1941, in the sixteenth year of the Shōwa Emperor, the news of the declaration of the Greater East Asian War reached our family. It was a gray winter day. The news came just as my parents and I had begun to settle down and renew our ties in Tokyo. Papa had been rehired at Nissan and was returning to his former job. When I got home from school, I saw the members of Mama’s family scurrying around, whispering to each other with serious and worrisome expressions. Their somber and hushed tone immediately told me that something was terribly wrong. “The war has started,” my aunts and uncle said to each other with uneasy expressions. “What are you talking about? What war?” I asked. “Japan is fighting the Americans and the British. They are our enemies now, besides Chiang Kai-shek in China.” I thought about my young uncle’s and my aunts’ photo collection of foreign movie stars. “We are fighting them? Can’t we see their movies anymore? I love Chaplin,” I said in amazement and shock. Everybody loved Western movies. Well, maybe not the rural people, because movies were only in the cities. Mama’s favorite actor was Charles Boyer, and all the women 37

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swooned over Clark Gable. Many people had placed photos of their favorite actors on their walls. Japanese women were fascinated by the freedom and independence of Western women depicted in the films. And of course, everybody loved Mickey Mouse! “Hush, don’t say anything out loud. What if someone heard us and thought that we were unpatriotic?” “Can’t we ask?” “No, not out loud.” “Are we going to be alright, Auntie? Can we win?” I simply could not understand what war meant. The adults looked at each other and told me not to worry, as the news of a naval victory had been broadcast. They didn’t know what to make of it for sure. They gave short replies to my questions, answers that I could not comprehend. It was clear that they were shocked and surprised by this news. The new anti-West situation was difficult for Mama. She had been born and raised in Tokyo and had lived most of her life wearing dresses rather than kimonos, eating ice cream and parfaits more often than rice cakes. Seeing foreigners was a daily occurrence, living near embassies. The reality of such news took time to sink in. Until then, the war was being fought somewhere far away. Now that the Imperial Decree had been published, the war had come to our doorstep. The dreaded red draft paper came to Papa again, shortly after my seventh birthday in January and barely a month after the Pearl Harbor bombing. Papa was to report back to the army base in Hiroshima immediately. I still remember the contrast between my happy birthday celebration with friends and the desolate feeling after we learned that Papa was drafted again. Receiving a call to serve the Emperor was considered an unsurpassed honor, but it was bad timing for all of us. With the cloud of battle duty hanging over Papa, we journeyed back to Hiroshima and settled back on Grandpa Tamura’s Hiroshima estate, knowing that this time it would be for good. Papa was promoted to Captain. I was re-enrolled in Seibi Academy and rejoined my old teacher and classmates, who were happy to see me back. My old navy-blue uniform,

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with its red stripes at the collar and cuffs, still fit me. I did have to get reaccustomed to the old-style squatting toilets and running around barefoot in the schoolyard during physical education classes. Seibi Academy, with its tall green poplar trees lining the spacious schoolyards, was like an austere military compound. The teachers were firm and demanding but revered by the students. My teacher, Ms. Yamaoka, was a young woman, fresh out of school, with a gentle round face. She was very patient with me as I readjusted to the Seibi curriculum. Inside the school gate was a stone mausoleum-like structure that contained the goshinei, the sacred pictures of the Emperor and Empress. One was not permitted to walk past the goshinei without an expression of deepest respect and humility. We were taught to give them the deepest and most reverent bow, the saikeirei, reserved only for the highest authority. The mythical origin of Japan was presented in our textbook and taught by our teacher with great pride, and we memorized it with equally great relish. We loved to recite the story of how the Land of the Rising Sun was created by a pair of celestial Gods who stirred muddy water, and the droplets turned into our islands. The Celestial Grandson was sent down on a cloud from Heaven to a point in Kyushu, the southernmost island. From there his realm extended northward to the central region of the main island, establishing the seat of the Yamato tribe to reign over all of Japan. I never doubted that this was exactly as it had happened twenty-six hundred years before. We sang commemorative songs on Founding Day every February and also on the Emperor’s birthday. Honors were paid to Japan’s war heroes in every formal activity. On the eighth day of each month (the anniversary of the December 8 war declaration), Seibi students marched to pay homage to the National Guardian, the Gokoku Shrine, which was located at the end of the grand training ground at the large military compound adjacent to the academy. The children whose fathers had died in action lined up in the front. The line was beginning to have more and more children.

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Those who had sacrificed their lives for their country in a very special way were called gunshin, military saints. We were taught that the seven men who died while acting as undersea human torpedoes in the attack on Pearl Harbor were gunshin. No one disputed their determination and courage, and the thought of dying in an explosion filled me with horror, but I wondered why there were so few of them for such a large-scale attack. We heard the story of each man going home to bid farewell to his family. They could not divulge the secret of their mission, but their mothers were proud to give their sons to their country. We also heard the praises of many other similar self-sacrifices in the war, and we came to feel that dying for our country and Emperor was the most glorious and desirable thing in the world. I must confess, however, that I couldn’t imagine myself becoming a human torpedo exploding underwater. On the other hand, I did envy boys who were heading for the special flying squadron forces, like the “Young Eagles” of the Kasumigaura air force base. Soaring in the sky, free as a bird, seemed so inviting. Becoming a kamikaze pilot against an enemy denounced by all did not seem so horrible. I also remember public references to Americans and British being “demon-beasts.” A newspaper showed a front-page photograph of a smiling teenage American girl with a skull of a Japanese soldier on her desk. The skull had been sent by her sweetheart in the Pacific. No Japanese person could possibly have pictured him- or herself doing the same thing with an American’s skull. From time to time, flashbacks to experiences from my early childhood returned. I recalled seeing blond, blue-eyed little girls or boys walking with their graceful mothers by our house near the foreign embassies in Tokyo. We used to wave and smile at each other. I couldn’t imagine that they could possibly have anything to do with demons. I also remember the day my own mother was accused of accepting the enemy’s ways. We were coming home from my school. It was a blustery winter day, and she was wearing her Astrakhan coat with matching hat and high heels. A kenpei (military police officer)

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stopped us and accused her of being an enemy sympathizer, judging from her Western attire. Their conversation ended when she informed him that her husband was an officer in the Imperial Army. The kenpei could not have known how right he was, although it was not about her clothing but rather her spirit, which could not be bent. He could not have known of her bookcase with the glass sliding door, in which I can still see the lettering on the covers of works by Hermann Hesse, Gide, Longfellow, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Edgar Allan Poe—even Gone with the Wind. How could a kenpei have suppressed them all? For the most part, my own free spirit that I brought back from Tokyo stayed tucked away inside. But I still loved my European and American storybooks, and on rainy days, or days when our teacher was absent, my classmates would often clamor for my tales of kings and queens and knights from another world. I was only too happy to oblige, becoming the regular class storyteller. No one saw conflicting loyalty in my role as purveyor of the wonderful stories from the West or in my classmates’ enjoyment of them. As a part of the Japanese military establishment, Seibi students rehearsed the military code of honor and marching routine daily, and we underwent strenuous physical training. Our school days usually began with an assembly. The principal, who stood on a wooden platform a few feet off the ground, issued instructions and announcements. This was followed by morning calisthenics performed to the rhythmic sound of music from the loudspeaker. As the war progressed, stamina building became more important, as if our lives depended on pushing our physical capabilities to the maximum. And in fact, this rigorous training did ultimately save my life later on, when my physical endurances were tested time and again. The daily drill began to include running long distances, often around the military training ground where the soldiers trained. Being able to carry a partner on our backs while marching was also included in the mandatory exercises. The only way one could be excused from these activities was to pass out from exhaustion.

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During morning and lunch hours, there was additional stamina building in which we stripped ourselves down to our underpants to give our bodies a wet or dry washcloth rub for twenty to thirty minutes. In the dead of winter and in the scorching summer heat, we went on rubbing our bodies furiously, calling out numbers, “One, two, three.…” The teachers praised us when our skin glowed pink, proof of a job well done. For the older girls, it was embarrassing to stand unclothed before the boys and male teachers; but this was wartime, and wartime demanded that we make ever-greater sacrifices. The demands for sacrifices kept coming until we were repeating to ourselves, like a mantra, that wartime justifies any and all things. We were forced to numb our natural feelings and to suppress any pangs of resentment about the required sacrifices. The competitive sports activities were no less important than the physical training. Passing performances in gymnastics, short- and long-distance running, hurdles, jumps, vaulting, bars, rope climbing, and throwing were compulsory; failure at any of these was unacceptable. Our efforts were timed and recorded, and we worked until the expected level of performance was achieved, which for many proved difficult. Our successes were rewarded with badges: the red one signified the highest merit, and the blue and brown ones ranked below it. I wore the red badge with pleasure after making a laborious effort to achieve it, performing fifty front-wheels on the bar and nearly killing myself from exhaustion. There was always homework during the school holidays, even over the New Year, and throughout spring and summer. One of the requirements was an illustrated diary. Most students forgot daily entries and made them up a few days before returning to school, a royal pain at the end of a long vacation. Still, there were always one or two children who kept elaborate and exemplary journals, which would be displayed for all to see with excerpts that were read to less-ambitious children. I struggled in science. At the end of each summer, we had to return with an original invention or a special collection of some sort. The most popular collections were of insects and pressed plants; the most popular

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gadget was a sand wheel, a device that consisted of a wheel attached to a base and which, when sand was poured over it, kept turning. I haven’t the faintest idea why the sand wheels were so popular. I imagine someone brought one and others copied it; in those days, we were encouraged not to be creative but rather to be more like everyone else, accepting and following orders. Cousin Hideyuki and I loved our own limited freedom in chasing after colorful butterflies and catching big and small insects, which were plentiful in our grandfather’s garden and a large open field nearby, as we assembled our own back-to-school collections. We netted and admired them all summer long. By the winter and spring of my fourth-grade year (1944), the mood of our country was changing from optimism to apprehension. The war losses were slowly coming to light, despite the cheerful navy music that continued to preface war news. We learned that many ships had been lost at Midway and Guadalcanal. My first real sense of grief came when the principal announced at our morning assembly that the troops stationed at Attu Island had met the fateful gyokusai suicidal end. We sang for the fallen heroes.

To the Sea A willing corpse in water. To the Mountain A willing corpse in the thickets. Never turning back, As we serve our Supreme Master.

The melody was set to an ancient poem written by a sakimori—a special dedicated sentinel—who was sent to guard a remote island. We compared his ancient patriotism to the reality of the war being fought in the South Seas, Saipan, Tinian, Iwoto (then Iwojima), and the other islands to which younger and younger men were being sent. We sang and sang, feeling sad but not grasping the real meaning of war until after the Marshall Islands fell and air attacks began over Northern Kyushu. We heard stories of massive fires and many people killed.

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By now, goods were disappearing from the local markets, and some closed because they had nothing to sell. The rationing systems established earlier by the government for necessities such as food and fuels were extended to clothing. The draft age was lowered so that college-age men could be called up. Factories without fuel and manpower were forced to shut down, except those that had converted to producing weapons. My grandfather managed to keep his plants open, even while insisting that his was a peacetime industry; but with the drastically reduced labor forces and depleting supplies, the plants were barely able to operate. The government took away the decorative iron gate at the front of our house so that it could be melted down and used in the war effort. Despite the increasing food scarcity, our household had more food supplies than the average family. Papa’s position as an administrator of military transportation for the Inland Sea bases enabled him to salvage old food that would have spoiled on the long ocean journeys, and channel it to us. This situation enhanced our reputation in the Tamura household, and, accordingly, Mama was treated with more respect by the people whose home we shared. The Tamura family had also begun opening their eyes to Mama’s “city folk” ways. The other women of the household, including Grandma Tamano, began wearing simple one-piece, single-layer appappastyle casuals during the humid summer months. They still preferred wearing kimonos on formal occasions, but these day-wear dresses were cooler, more practical, and easier to move in. Mama even made some dresses with plunging backlines, something truly racy for provincial Hiroshima, but nobody said a word about it; Papa’s special status as an honored military officer spilled over to his wife and child. Grandma and Aunt Kiyoko were also becoming more open to my mother’s Western-style cooking, and she was given permission to show others how European- and Chinese-style foods could be prepared. Another subtle change was seen in Aunt Fumiko, who in the past had rarely made any contrary remarks to anyone. We noticed as she became livelier and more talkative, even with her husband.

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Even with Papa’s supplemental food supplies, there was no longer enough rice for three meals. Grandma and Aunt Kiyoko presided over dumpling soup for lunch and sometimes also for supper. What rice we did have had to be mixed with other grain mixtures and soybeans— something that would have been unthinkable in peacetime. All these tribulations weighed down on my spirit; I could not resist a growing sense of impending doom, and sometimes I would sing to console myself. The fact that the war news was becoming less detailed only heightened our fears. One day, a bad banana I ate set off a sudden gastric upset and high fever. The doctor who came gave me a big shot of glucose with a gigantic needle jammed into my thigh. Even though I had become accustomed to needle stings as a sickly child, I still remember that awful pain. The high fever went down shortly, but I couldn’t shake it completely, and the stomach pain persisted. We tried many folk remedies to treat the sickness, but without good results. Finally, Aunt Chitose suggested that we see a pediatrician a few doors down from her house. This doctor prescribed regular shots of vitamin B, a burning sensation accompanying each one. Mama and I made the trip to his office every day, delighting in seeing Aunt Chitose’s family again. Cousins Hiroshi and Shoji took me to the sandy Ota River, just down the steps from their house, for clam digging, shrimp scooping, and boat rides. Their bookshelf was a treasure trove of new books, all boys’ adventures, and I devoured them. These visits were a time of renewal for both Mama and me. Being thrifty and resourceful, Mama had no trouble converting anything available to meet our wartime needs. Our tablecloths and curtains turned up as casual wear for the family. She even invented a way to refine brown rice, putting it in an empty sake bottle and churning it with a wooden stick until the friction released the outer-layer husks. This was obviously a tedious process, but Mama seemed to relax with the motion. We would sit and talk as she tirelessly swished the rice up and down, turning it into white rice, which was as dear as gold. Nowadays, we choose brown rice over white for nutritional reasons, and

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perhaps it would have been a healthier option then, too, but we vastly preferred the white. My schoolfriends and I still found time to do the things we loved. We did school projects in each other’s houses just as before. My best friend, Miyoshi, came to my house to complete an illustration of how charcoal is made. Together we drew detailed drawings of men cutting trees, building kilns, and burning the wood, all while munching and chatting away. I still remember those cozy afternoons with my friend. A gifted friend among us was Kimiko Nishimoto, who was not only outstanding in every subject but also an accomplished musician. Her piano playing was so beautiful that even our music teacher lost track of the time while listening. I had no idea at that time that these would be our last remaining years together. She was killed by the A-bomb. All of the Tamura children who attended Seibi Academy walked to school together each day. Cousin Hideyuki and my second-cousin Kiyotsune were beginning to notice pretty girls at school, and I was starting to notice some of their athletic male friends. I also admired Cousin Kiyotsune’s gymnastic ability. He and I waited for one another to walk home together, chatting about this and that. Once he began asking me whom I really liked, calling out names and asking yes or no. He saved his own name for last. How sweet he was. I never had the opportunity to tell him that I admired him the most, because he too was killed by the A-bomb. Cousin Hideyuki and I still played and kept busy doing things together. We would walk to the Ota River just a few blocks from our house, and fish in its clear, unpolluted waters. We would also catch shrimp by carefully lowering a handkerchief into the mud and then, synchronizing our breathing, quickly yanking it back out of the water before the shrimp could get away. One night Cousin Hideyuki and I decided to hunt for bats near the house just before dark. Ignoring the old saying that stalking bats brings misfortune, we went around hitting the poor creatures, one after another, and hanging them on a pole. By the time we returned home, the house was dark, and the family was frantically looking for

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us. Grandpa fell ill with a chest pain that night, and we felt as though we had caused this by disregarding the old saying. During the ensuing weeks, Grandpa improved some, but within less than a month, just as he was recovering from pneumonia, he died from a heart attack caused by hardening of the arteries. He was sixty-two years old. My beloved grandfather and the revered Tamura patriarch was no more. Everyone was away from the house at the time except for Auntie Kimie, who was with him when he died. It was an ironically fitting farewell, attended only by the daughter he had seldom shared private time with. This was my first personal experience of death. Grandpa’s body was draped in a white kimono and laid in the butsuma in a white silk futon, with his face covered by a soft cloth for the wake. The family sat in the room all through the night keeping vigil as his soul began the journey to the River of Sanzu, the Path to Beyond. To accommodate the mourners who came from all around the country, the mourning period was extended and Grandpa lay in state for several days. Thousands paid their respects to the man who had led the industrial development of Hiroshima. The estate’s main gate was opened for the funeral procession, and we took turns placing portions of Grandpa’s ashes in an urn after the cremation. I saw Papa weeping for the very first time; wearing a military uniform did not stop him from expressing his sorrow. Picking up a piece from what may have been Grandpa’s shoulder, Papa looked at it thoughtfully, recalling how that shoulder had hurt so often. I was sobbing the whole time. Auntie Kimie also wept, soundlessly and behind the crowd. A few months later, she disappeared from the house in the middle of night while everyone slept. My parents were suspected of having aided her departure, as Auntie Kimie’s tiny room was just behind ours and she could not have left without our knowledge. My parents denied any foreknowledge of her flight, but Mama occasionally heard from her unfortunate sister-in-law afterward, and told me that Auntie Kimie was finally happy.

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Uncle Hisao inherited Grandpa’s position at Tamura Industrial Group and took charge of running what was left of the company. He also decided to run for City Council, and won a seat after a vigorous campaign. On the night of his victory, the estate’s grand zashiki was brightly lit until dawn, and the night rang with the sound of celebration as arms were raised in repeated Banzais.* Papa, on the other hand, became more reserved as the days passed. He came home late at night, so I hardly saw him, but sometimes I couldn’t help but notice that he was drunk on his return and required Mama’s help to make it back to their bedroom. His knowledge of the true predicament of the Japanese military was taking away his sleep and his peace of mind. All the ships he was sending out with supplies to the Pacific bases were being sunk; and the Allied submarines now had free reign of the Inland Sea, amidst Japan’s home islands. Despite his increasing inner turmoil, though, Papa still took an interest in my activities, especially my art-related pursuits. He lent a hand with a last-minute art project I was having trouble with. He was pleased with my progress in pencil sketching and continued to guide me in the importance of light and perspective in my drawing. Within a year, Tokyo was incinerated by American bombers. It crushed my mother to see a picture of her hometown burning on the front page of the newspaper. She sobbed for a long time. Luckily, Grandma Tome and my aunts and uncle were unharmed, and they soon evacuated to Grandma’s hometown in Okayama Prefecture. We never heard from Auntie Kimie after Tokyo’s incineration. She had also been living there at the time, and it was rumored that a distant relative had found her charred body. * The cheer Banzai is often misunderstood by Americans; it is not a war cry like “Geronimo!” An exact translation is impossible because it expresses an element of Japanese culture that is quite alien to Westerners. The Japanese have an intense sense of solidarity, personified by the Emperor. This solidarity is vaguely similar to patriotism, but it differs in that the focus is not on an individual’s loyalty to the country but instead on the loyalty and pride of all Japanese to each other, as symbolized by the Emperor. It is a combination of “Three cheers for us and the Emperor!” and “All for one, one for all!”

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In Hiroshima, bomb shelters were being dug everywhere, and water was stored in hurriedly built cement cisterns all over the city. Residents were repeatedly drilled on how to put out the fires caused by incendiary bombs. Allied bombers were now all over Hiroshima Prefecture, and the air raids were destroying cities all around us, but Hiroshima City itself was strangely untouched. I remember the first air raid warning we experienced; it was on March 29, 1945. The siren went off in the middle of the night, and we ran to the shelter and stayed there until morning. The hundreds of huge bombers we heard passing overhead had been heading to Kure, six miles away, but their deep thundering paralyzed us with fear. I remembered clutching Mama and asking her, “Mama, are we going to be hit? Are we going to die?” Very quietly, she told me that she didn’t know, but we were together, whatever should happen. Somehow, being with my mother and hearing her words reassured me even with the deafening sounds of death looming so closely. We had gone through many practice drills: running to the bomb shelter, rescuing trapped people, and putting out fires. But so far, Hiroshima had been spared from serious air raids and its population was beginning to feel safe. When the sirens went off, some residents stopped getting out of bed to move to shelters. We had no idea that we were being lulled into a false sense of security. Cousin Hideyuki was fascinated by the B-29s that filled the sky. He would slip out of our concrete bomb shelter, tucked deep in the garden behind trees and rocks, before anyone noticed, and go to the rooftop with a pair of binoculars. He was trying to get a closer look at the shape and design of the flying enemy. His mother and the rest of the family would be frantic about his safety and scream for him to come back down. But his fascination with what he considered superb mechanical objects did not wane with any amount of chastising. When the air raid sirens sounded during the school day, students were sent home. We were studying less and less, and labels with our names and addresses had been sewn into our uniforms in case we were killed at school. Mama gave specific instructions for me to follow if

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World War II Tamura family portrait, 1942. This photograph was taken on the eve of Captain Tamura’s mission to Hong Kong. He was not expected to return (but miraculously, did make it back). Front row from left: Hideko’s mother Kimiko, Hideko, Hideko’s father Captain Jiro Tamura, Grandpa Hidetaro. Back row from left: Aunt Kiyoko, Aunt Yoshiko, Grandma Tamano, Cousin Hideyuki, Uncle Hisao. Not pictured is Aunt Fumiko, who was confined to bed with pregnancy complications while carrying Cousin Kumiko.

Hiroshima was bombed. Having survived the great Tokyo earthquake and fire in 1923, she said that the most important thing was to leave as quickly as possible, so the fire would not surround you. She gave me step-by-step instructions to follow in the event of a direct hit, telling me to first hang on to solid furniture, so that if the house was crushed there might be space created at the bottom. Then, I was to run toward the river as quickly as possible while protecting my head with a hood or cushion, since bombers often returned to kill off the fleeing. She repeated these instructions over and over until they were etched in my mind. I listened with a sense of disbelief, as I could not comprehend that tomorrow might not be just like today. We read in the newspaper about heroes flying Kamikaze missions, but the fuel for the planes was running out. The draft age was lowered to

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seventeen, and even middle-school children were being mobilized to do public labor. Despite this gloomy outlook, however, Cousins Hideyuki and Kiyotsune were looking forward to attending the prestigious First Hiroshima Middle School after passing its tough entrance examinations. In early 1945, Japanese schoolchildren in the sixth grade and below were ordered out of the cities in mass evacuations. Meetings were immediately convened for the parents of Seibi Academy students, and plans were formulated for a mass evacuation from Hiroshima. The date of departure was set for April 15, 1945.

5

“So You May be Saved, Children” april–august 1945

For weeks mama worked at her sewing machine, whipping up my clothes, zabuton cushion, and futon. The list of supplies needed for my life in the country was long and included a weight limit, so Mama kept checking the bundle’s weight right up until the day before I left. She was up most of that night carefully going over every item, making sure it was labeled, and fixing my obento lunch box for the train ride. Mama used up all her own rations and scrounged widely to find all the treats she packed for me; the sinking of military supply ships had depleted my father’s supplementary food channels. In my obento I would find such hard-to-find items as eggs, fishcakes, sweet beans, Shiitake mushrooms, and even white rice, all attractively packed. Before heading to the train station, we went over the contents of my bundle in detail. Mama had saved a little white pouch for last, which she placed in my hand. “This is part of us,” she said in a soft but serious tone. I was quite unprepared for her next words: “Papa’s nail clippings and my hair.” Mama explained that because this was a time of emergency, we must be prepared for anything to happen. In such a case, “You would have something of us, regardless of what happens. We shall be with you always.” 52

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Mementos of Hideko’s parents, 1945 (translation: “Father’s Nails,” “Mother’s Hair”)

I was stunned; for the first time, the war truly hit home for me. I had understood that we were going away because cities were being bombed and it was dangerous for the children to stay in those areas. But I hadn’t realized that my parents might actually be killed while I was gone. It was unthinkable. Sensing my fear, Mama reassured me that this scenario was most unlikely, and that they would be waiting for me to come home when the war ended. I asked her how long she thought it might be. Mom’s reply was hesitant; she didn’t know. But, she added jokingly, if she could survive the Tokyo earthquake, she was going to be around for a long time. The time for departure had finally come. On the morning of April 15, 1945, a sea of children and their parents, many weeping or fighting back tears, assembled in the Hiroshima Station Square in the predawn hours. Speeches were given, reassuring us that we must endure our hardships only until Victory, and that the children were to carry on as though the teachers were our parents now. The headmaster of each school took roll call, and Banzai hails to the Emperor were belted out in unison before the march into the station

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began. I was a drill mistress for the girls’ group from Seibi Academy. I could not have maintained my composure without such a task to perform. I did my best until I spotted Mama covering her face with a handkerchief in the dark. That sight destroyed my composure; tears welled up in my eyes and came streaming down. The station and its inhabitants became blurry, but I kept on marching, calling out the drill steps. The loudspeaker was instructing the parents not to enter the platforms or to come inside the station, so that the orderly procession of the children could continue without further delay or confusion. But the realization that they might never see their children again impelled the parents onto the track area for one last goodbye. And as it turned out, this was indeed the last time that many of the children saw their parents. The trains began to depart toward their many distant destinations, with choking smoke and crying children aboard. Ignoring the shouts of the railroad personnel, waving parents swarmed over the train tracks. At the first crossing there were more parents waving a final goodbye. Hiroshima was bidding farewell to its young children.

Schoolchildren leaving Hiroshima, 1945

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We were dazed and our eyes were puffy, but we still looked out at the passing panoramic mountain ranges, towns, villages, and rice fields. We ate our special obento lunches. It was much like a school outing before the war, when food was abundant and train trips were adventures, but this time we were not excited. Hours later, as I looked over to the younger girls in my group who were still crying, I was tired but felt duty-bound to somehow comfort them, without knowing what I could possibly say. I had no idea what life in Kimita Village would be like. The station master’s voice announced our station, Miyoshi, a small town about thirty-five miles from Hiroshima. The Seibi teachers hurried their students off the train. “This is where we get on buses that will take us to our village,” the head teacher called out. We followed him to the boarding location. When the buses arrived, we boarded them and, though the journey was only six miles on the map, the route took us over numerous high mountain passes—the highest in the prefecture. We drove for hours along narrow, winding roads as twilight set in over the mountain ranges and the thatched-roof houses. The waning light gave way to darkness as the bus caravan huffed and puffed its way up the last stretch over a steep mountain pass. It was pitch dark when we were awakened by a shrill voice, announcing that we had finally arrived at the foot of our destination, Zensho Temple. The buses were too large to negotiate the tiny path up to the temple, so the children walked slowly to the bottom of the stone staircase and climbed the forty-some steps to the temple gate, where the people of Kimita Village had prepared a welcome banquet for us. It had been an exhausting journey, and all we cared about at that point was laying down to rest. When, instead, we were led to rows of tables with the best-possible country spread, we simply stared at it. The farmers who knew about the food shortage in the cities had thought that the little children would devour the good food. But to sustain us on our excursion, all of our parents had worked miracles, gathering special treats like it was our last meal, and we had eaten more than enough already. Realizing the delicate situation, our teachers nudged us

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to eat and clean our plates as a show of gratitude, but this could not be done. Our group of forty-some children was simply too tired to eat and already filled from our obento. Numb and frightened, we sat in silence, motionless. When I saw the smiling faces of our hosts begin to stiffen, I sensed the awkwardness of the situation. I feebly attempted to thank them for the banquet and explain that we were really very tired since it had been such a long day, but this did not change the villagers’ obvious disappointment in our lackluster response to their generosity. Chaos followed after our unhappy hosts left us and the tables were cleared away. We dashed for our futons and bundles to save a spot next to our friends so we could sleep beside one another that night. My best friend Miyoshi (whose name was, by complete coincidence, the same as that of the nearest town) and I sent eye signals to each other to save a place for the other, and soon, the rest of the girls had managed to put their futons together. No one, including the teachers, knew which directions the futons should be laid in, or how many rows. In the end we simply did as we saw fit since, for the first time, there were no strict orders to obey. As soon as the talking subsided in the makeshift dormitory, the sound of sobbing started here and there. Miyoshi pulled her covers over her face, but before her face disappeared, I saw her red eyes. “I don’t want to cry. No, I’m not going to cry,” I repeated to myself while falling asleep on my first night away from home. The morning came sooner than anyone had expected, and with more surprises. The wake-up call from the teachers brought us back to the reality of our new temple home. Up here, there was no running water for washing, so we were told to go down the steps and find a small stream at the foot of the hill. With no prior experience in outdoor camping, we were out of our element; but turning to Miyoshi I said, “There’s a first time for everything. Let’s make an adventure out of this.” We ran down the steps to the water. Frogs were jumping and the minnows were swishing by as we tried to scoop up enough water to wash our faces. It was very cold, and the air was chilly, too, even for

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April. By the time we finished, we were shivering from head to toe. A morning sutra, led by a priestess whose husband had been taken to the battlefront, was the next order of business before breakfast. The priestess was a pretty, red-cheeked young woman with a religious robe and a powerful voice. Each morning before sunrise, the service began with resounding gongs. We sat on our knees, shivering in the chapel and, clutching the sutra texts in our hands, chanting our robust Buddhist prayer, Namuamidabutsu, in unison with the priestess. We had very little idea about what we were chanting, but we knew that our breakfast came afterward. At first the sutra chanting felt as if it were endless, but after we had memorized the lines, it didn’t seem so long. Amazingly, I still clearly recall the first sutra, and its meaning continues to unfold for me even eighty years later: Light and life are infinite As is the Buddha He and the transcendent souls Sit at the foot of the supreme truth. When the chanting finally concluded, we rushed to line up with our rice bowls for breakfast. The long rows of narrow tables were laid out on the open corridor of the chapel, exposed to the elements. Sitting down on the cold floor, with knees properly tucked under, was uncomfortable but compulsory, except for those excused for a physical disability. After our hurried first breakfast came our first trip to the village school, at the top of a big hill about a mile away from the temple. We had to ascend more than two hundred stone steps to get up the hill. The villagers along the way stared curiously as we went by. By the time we had climbed half of the two hundred steps, we were ready to give up and could not imagine how we were going to make it to the top every day. We wondered how anyone could have decided to put a school up so high. The sight of a few village children walking down the steps with cleaning rags and buckets scared us to death; we thought they were descending for more water, which we might have to help carry back up

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again. But on the mountaintop we saw an outdoor pool that was filled with muddy water used for washing and cleaning. The Kimita elementary school was a spacious, two-story building. There wasn’t much playground equipment. We didn’t see any factorybuilt jungle gyms, but we did see a large wooden jungle gym, held together by ropes through which the children climbed and moved about. It was quite popular, so I tried it out and found it to be fun. We stood around feeling even more lost than on the previous day, and the village children looked on with questioning stares. Luckily, the Seibi Academy children were kept together. But after a while, our schedule was changed: we worked outdoors most of the time and attended school only on rainy days. Nobody had told us or our parents about this arrangement, and the work we were assigned was too strenuous for small children. We were expected to dig up giant pine roots and build kilns for extracting the pine oil for airplane fuel. One group of children took the shovels, and the other group carried basket racks strapped on their backs, to be used for transporting the rocks for the kilns. I was in the second group, and my shoulders quickly became raw from rubbing against the straps weighed down by the heavy rocks. I requested a change of work to digging, but that turned out to be no easier. Despite weeks of toil, we never completed a single kiln and never obtained any pine oil. Only recently did I learn that the Japanese military did indeed launch a project to extract fuel from pine roots, and that project involved denuding entire hillsides of trees. But our own efforts were too feeble to produce anything usable. We were just little kids. We were also sent out onto the mountainside in small groups to collect edible plants, because food was becoming scarce and the villagers were unable to feed us all. We learned which grasses were edible and tasty, and which side of the mountain had more curly fern buds. One had to be careful not to get lost on the mountain, however. A number of children, myself included, strayed from the group and did get lost in the tall trees. It was an eerie feeling, both scary and tranquil, dangerous yet tempting.

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Cleanliness is very important in Japanese life; daily bathing is the norm for all ages. But bathing arrangements for the forty children took a little time to work out. At the end of a heavy, sweaty workday, we often had to go to bed without a proper washing. We soon found lice in our hair—a new experience for city children. The thought of bugs crawling on our heads was both repugnant and humiliating. The girls felt shabby and ashamed, and cried their hearts out. At first there was nasty gossip about who had head lice, but pretty soon everyone had them. No cures or rinses were provided. We behaved like a tribe of grooming monkeys, bending over a friend’s head picking lice eggs out of her hair, and she returned the favor. The incessant itching drove us to constant irritation and discomfort, which only deepened our homesickness. Our miseries fed on each other. Our days were spent in hard physical labor instead of in school learning new lessons. The food was bad, and our living conditions were primitive. Worst of all was the extended separation from our parents. Family lies at the core of the Japanese identity; and without our families, we felt lost and alone. Eventually the Seibi children were divided into groups of three and four that would go to neighboring farmhouses for bathing, once or twice a week, in return for drawing all the bath water and building the fires to heat it. Most farmhouses had no pumps for their wells; the water had to be pulled up by hand. We took turns dividing the chores. The hardest task was filling up the deep iron tub with buckets carried from outside. Still, we loved our bathing day, sitting down with friends, checking on the fire, and talking idly while we waited for the nice warm bath. For a few hours, we almost felt like we were back home again. My favorite exercise during break periods was working on the horizontal bar; but soon after my first try at it, the village children, mostly boys, began to taunt me everywhere I went. They were chanting my name and an address where their desired encounters could take place, expressions that made little sense to me at the time. I thought they would just tire of the teasing and give up, but they didn’t. In the schoolyard, in the field, during pine root digging, and elsewhere, the taunting was a never-ending ordeal that I tried to ignore, but it continued. I told

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the children that I didn’t understand their actions and asked them to stop. But they just looked at each other and giggled, and I realized that the content of the teasing had to do with a forbidden or embarrassing subject. I pretended they weren’t there, but the gibes never ceased. One morning, though, I was pleasantly surprised by a sympathetic village boy. I was collecting edible grasses on a rice-field patch, and something moved under my foot. It was a black snake. I gave a loud scream and jumped away, totally shaken. A friendly voice and reassuring face popped into my vision. He told me the snake was harmless and I didn’t need to be afraid. I hadn’t noticed him standing there before. Unlike the other children, his face was fair, without a dark tan, just like city children. He was the only village boy who didn’t taunt me. We encountered each other often after that day. His name was Takada, a young son from a large farmhouse. He was always wearing a red cap, so I could spot him from far away. We exchanged books and remained friends after the war. Back at the temple, daily conversation among the girls concerned food and hunger. “I’m so hungry” became our common greeting. We were expected to share our food with others, but it was not possible for the parents to send so large a quantity, so we usually kept the food to ourselves and exchanged it for favors. Ms. Kamio, a widowed teacher for our group, was said to be dispensing special treats to children who were fragile. This was supposed to be a secret, and just who might have been fragile Takada in 1948 was questionable since all of us had had to pass the physicals to be there. I could not believe it when my own turn for such special treatment came up. Ms. Kamio gave me a bowl of sweet cornstarch with a stern

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warning not to tell anyone about it. I learned later that the children whose parents gave her gifts received favored treatments. Ms. Kamio’s teaching partner was Mr. Masaki, whose wife remained in the city. They had separate rooms in the family quarters, on the back side of the temple. Mr. Masaki was a stern teacher and very shy with our parents, but he was quite talkative with the girls. He used to unroll the girdle over his khaki pants, complaining about his swollen calves and pinching to show us how far his fingers sank into his fair-skinned flesh. We really couldn’t see the difference as we pinched our own in comparison. Once I had a tooth cavity, and Miyoshi’s mother, who was visiting, took me to the dentist in town. I assumed mistakenly that I had the teacher’s permission to go. Mama had arranged it all with the dentist and Mr. Masaki, but for some reason my absence displeased him. Both he and Ms. Kamio criticized me for some time afterward, claiming that I had been overzealous in my leadership over our study group to which Ms. Kamio’s daughter also belonged. I had suggested to the group that we try to become role models for the rest of the girls by working harder than we had back home. To me it was one way to fulfill the wishes of our parents who Is got after us about studying; I thought that they would have wanted us to give our best effort. Ms. Kamio, however, felt that my suggestion of being a role model embarrassed her daughter. Being chewed out in front of the entire group by the two teachers, despite my best efforts to please them, left me with a feeling of despair; I cried bitter tears. I told Miyoshi I did not think I could bear these circumstances much longer. She agreed. Our letters home were censored by the teachers, who refused to mail any correspondence that even hinted of unhappiness. My first letter to my parents was rejected, and only the most flowery comments went through thereafter. A few children did manage to send for their parents to come get them, however. The first student who went home with her mother, after barely a month in the country, claimed her delicate health as the reason. The girls lined up waving their goodbyes. We all wished our health would fail too, so our parents might do the same for us.

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The hard work and poor nutrition did generate plenty of healthrelated problems. The biggest headache for the teachers was the problem of bedwetting. Each morning someone woke up crying from having wet her futon. Miyoshi and I almost got into a fight one morning when I woke up in a drenched futon after she had slept in my bedroll with me. My underwear was completely dry but hers wasn’t. I kept her out of my futon after this incident. Some girls developed chronic enuresis. It was frightening and embarrassing to lose bladder control during the night, but even more terrifying to watch the consequences. The chronic bedwetters were taken to a village acupuncturist who also administered okyu—the placing of burning bits of dried moss on certain parts of one’s body. I was taken with the girls who wet their beds. Previously, I had had pain in my knee joints on damp days, and the pain was now recurring. The teachers initially felt that okyu treatments might be beneficial, but they changed their minds and decided to use acupuncture after I vehemently protested that my parents would not allow any scarring of my knees. I nearly fainted, however, when the healer took out the long thin needles from his black case. They looked like they were long enough to easily go straight through my small knees—or any other part of my body. He saw my obvious terror and reassured me that it would not hurt. I didn’t believe him, and when my turn came I held my breath and body as tight as I could, preparing for the worst pain imaginable. Such preparation was not necessary. I felt like a hero watching the long thin needle disappear into my skin while I didn’t even have to flinch. We were given these acupuncture and okyu treatments one night each week, and I watched the other girls wailing and begging to be excused, but then sitting neatly on tatami mats while the moss pieces were heated up on their backs. I can’t recall a single time that this supposed cure for bedwetting actually worked, however. One afternoon, I managed to send my parents a real, uncensored letter by posting it at the village post office on my way back to the temple. The reaction was swift. Although Mama couldn’t make the trip herself at that point, she sent homemade cookies; and as the informa-

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tion I and others shared in our letters spread among the Seibi families, more parents began arriving at the temple to visit their children, saw and heard about our deprivations firsthand, and in many cases took their children back home. I learned then that Mama had just lost a baby girl—Toshiko, named after my maternal grandfather, Toshi—after seven months of pregnancy. I had had no idea that she was pregnant during her earlier trips to the temple to visit me. Riding the trains and shaky buses that brought her here probably did not help Mama, who had suffered other miscarriages before. Soon after this, I came down with the measles, and a message was sent to my mother for help. But because Mama was still convalescing herself, she sent her own health aide instead. As soon as my fever went down, I managed to knit a pair of booties for my deceased baby sister. I sent a note asking my parents to place the booties at her altar. Miyoshi and I were convinced that the hunger, lice, and filth of our situation was a greater danger to our health than being back in the city. Besides, we weren’t getting much of an education in the village. I was developing chronic stomach problems and was unable to chew due to frequent toothaches, but I did not dare return to the dentist because of the trouble it had caused before. We both wrote our parents in more detail about our plight, begging them to free us from our country captivity on the grounds of ill health. Eventually, both sets of parents consented to come get us. There could not have been a happier pair of children. The Seibi group had already thinned out, many of the children having already gone home or to other relatives in the country, but we were the envy of those who remained. On Saturday afternoon, August 4, 1945, Mama and Miyoshi’s mother climbed the long steps of Zensho Temple to retrieve us. We ran out to meet them and snuggled up to our liberators like a pair of kittens. The two mothers suggested that they might stay an extra day to rest up before heading home. We were so eager to leave, however, that we protested, begging not to be forced to stay here another moment. We desperately wanted to go home. Our mothers would have stayed on

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if we hadn’t protested so adamantly. It would have been so easy to have avoided the coming catastrophe. But instead, we left Kimita Village at dawn on Sunday, August 5, transported to the nearby town of Miyoshi in a horse cart as no bus was available at so early an hour. One of the Tamura clan members had moved his factory to Miyoshi and had a truck that commuted to Hiroshima every day, and this is how we traveled the rest of the way home. We arrived in Hiroshima by late afternoon, tired and sore after the long ride. When Cousin Hideyuki got home from middle school, he and I were reunited as brother and sister and played just like old times. I still looked up to him and he was my protector. We chattered away, catching up after months of separation, laughing and talking as if I had never left. I asked him about the meaning of the village boys’ taunts, but he couldn’t figure them out either. We expected our endless childhood to go on as before. Hideyuki’s school was meeting in shifts; he was in a group assigned to the center of Hiroshima the next day to assist with clearing torndown buildings and debris at the city center, so the fires from the incendiary bombings could be better contained. Mama was preparing a lunch for herself, as she had a similar assignment the next day with a volunteer group. After our months-long, unexpectedly harsh separation, I wanted so much to have more time with her right now; I did not understand why others in the household could not be made to go in her place. She thought I was taking it all too seriously and assured me that when she returned tomorrow afternoon, we would have all the time in the world to be together, and that this would be the beginning of a lovely “make-up” and stay-home time. We slept soundly that night, after our long journey home. No bombers overhead disturbed our slumber. With both my parents next to me again, I was safe, happy, and secure within this citadel of love and nurturing. All was now back to the way it had been before.

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The Death of Hiroshima august 6, 1945

I woke up on Monday morning, August 6, in my own bed in my own room in my house. I could hardly believe I was waking up to the sounds of a summer morning at home. A tranquil stretch in the privacy of my own room was a luxury I had forgotten about while in the country. A new sense of gratitude welled up in my body as I thought about the hardships left behind. No more mad dashes to the cold stream for wash-ups at dawn. No more heavy rocks to carry on my back, or lying in bed surrounded by muffled sounds of weeping after the lights were out. I felt a tinge of guilt from thinking about the homesick and hungry classmates who remained in the country, but I had no regrets about hurrying back home. The sun was shining in the garden; it was a beautiful day. I felt like a child again, with the protective arms of my parents around me and without the harsh regimen of the past few months. A breakfast of rice porridge with a soft, pickled sour plum had been set on a tray for me, so I didn’t have to chew. My ever-caring mother had remembered my continuing toothache. Mama was still feeling ambivalent about whether or not to go to her volunteer work that morning. But she knew that a single incen65

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diary bomb on those tightly packed wooden houses could generate a firestorm that killed more people than any conventional bomb, and that the best defense was to create firebreaks by tearing down unused structures; so she stuck with the choice to join her work crew. She could have avoided the decision altogether had we stayed one more day in Kimita Village instead of bowing to Miyoshi’s and my insistence on returning home immediately—an insistence that I was to regret for a lifetime. Still, Mama felt bad about not staying home and spending more time with me on my first day back. I watched Mama as she assembled a few sweet fried dumplings she had made for me to snack on; she asked me if it was all right to take some for herself. “Of course it is,” I replied. Mama said she would try to get excused early or even just slip away by her lunch break. I walked with her to the back door, seeing her off with a smile and a wave while grumbling inside about her “obligation” to leave me so soon. Mama waved a quick goodbye. “See you in just a short time.” The words faded away as she hurried off. Back in my room, I curled up with a paperback book Cousin Hideyuki had given me. It was a fun little story about a Samurai duel—just the thing to unwind with. I lay back on the futon, feeling weak from a lack of solid food. Wearing just my underpants in the privacy of my room, I relaxed with a gentle breeze on my face and bare back. The air raid warning siren went off around 7:15 a.m. It was a familiar sound by then, but I turned on the radio just to be safe, and to hear what was going on; I was a city child again. A casual warning was being issued, stating three enemy planes were en route toward our city. “Only three?” I shrugged. It was hardly worth being warned about. Hundreds maybe, but three? Still, I kept the radio on to hear the conclusion of the warning. A simple announcement that the planes had turned around came on a little later, around 7:30 a.m., and the warning signal was canceled, indicating it was entirely safe for people to return to their work outside. I went out in the corridor briefly and yelled, “The warning is off,

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everybody, the warning is off.” I heard Aunt Fumiko replying from a distance, “We didn’t pay much attention, Hideko, it’s so nice out.” Turning off the radio, I went back to reading my Samurai story. Two rival swordsmen were just about to launch an intense duel. I was completely absorbed in the story and looking down at the printed pages, in front of the open window to the garden. Outside, tree branches rustled in the gentle wind. A bird poured its song into the morning air. Cicadas buzzed. Suddenly, something flashed behind me. I jumped up, jerked my head to look out the window, and saw a huge band of white light plummeting past the trees and the stone lanterns to the ground, with a swift swishing sound like a massive gushing waterfall—an impossible, unreal, and incomprehensible sight. A thunderous, deafening explosion jolted the air and reverberated through my body, followed by a violent quake. The memory of Mama’s voice echoed in my head, “Find something strong to hold onto.” It was pitch dark all around me, as if the sun had disappeared. I could think of only one thing: this must be the end of the world. I was thrown to the wall; there I tried to brace myself between a large vertical beam and a sturdy cupboard, but staying vertical or keeping a steady grip was impossible, as the entire world was being jerked violently in so many directions. I was hurled back and forth, up and down. The space around me shrank with the frenzy of flying and breaking objects falling on my head and body. I lost my hold on the pillar and curled up, covering my head with my arms while the exploding earth raged in the thick black air and swirling wind. My only sensation was of wild tumult and terror. I expected to be broken into pieces and blown up along with my house. Death had me firmly in its grip as the earth continued to erupt all around me. I felt like a helpless doll in a violently shaking box. Underlying my paralyzing terror was a sense of resignation to my fate. So this is what dying in war is like, I thought. But Mama had always taught me to fight for life. Suddenly, just as unexpectedly as it had begun, everything stopped. The world became completely still. The thick, dusty air began to clear.

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I found myself covered with soot and debris, but alive. The vertical beam I had sought to grab onto had held in spite of the long and vicious pounding, creating a small safe space, so that I was protected from being crushed. I shifted around, pushing away the broken objects around me. Through a small opening, I could see the sun showering its soft rays over the green leaves and moss-covered rocks. The placid sight assuaged my suspicion that one of the three planes had sneaked back and dropped a bomb directly onto our garden—there were no signs of destruction outside the house. Then the memory of Mama’s voice returned: “Hideko-chan, leave immediately before the fires surround you.” Over and over, she had told me of the dangers of fire after bombing attacks, recounting stories of people who, having survived the bombing, couldn’t get away fast enough and were incinerated. A new surge of terror tore through my body like a sharp pain as I realized that still trapped in the debris, I was far from being safe. I tried to clear a larger space so I could get out from under the collapsed house. The tangled pieces of broken objects were harder to push away than I’d expected. I began to panic; Mama had not prepared me for this. In desperation I screamed out loud: “Help me someone, please help me.” To my relief, Aunt Fumiko heard the cry and her faint voice traveled back. “Where are you, Hideko?” She guided me to a space where I could slowly make my way out. She was pretty banged up herself, but her baby daughter Kumiko had not received a scratch. Aunt Fumiko had held her body over her daughter like a shield, she said. “What about Grandma Tamano and Auntie Kiyoko?” Aunt Fumiko and I called out their names. After several loud shouts, the two women emerged, covered with torn clothing and cuts and bruises. Grandma Tamano had bruises on her head and was bleeding. Her daughter Kiyoko was hurt on the back and shoulder. Both were in great pain and shock, moving about aimlessly. Suddenly, we heard an agonized voice from the direction of the rear entrance. It was Fumiko’s husband, Uncle Hisao, calling for help and looking for the family. “I’m back . . . Where are you . . . Isn’t anyone alive?”

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Aunt Fumiko rushed toward the weak voice, carrying Kumiko. Fumiko’s shrieking cry cut through the air shortly thereafter, “Oh, my God, oh no!” Uncle Hisao was sitting on the stone floor just inside the rear gate. His torn and blackened white shirt was stained in blood, and his hollow eyes stared out while blood streamed down from a gaping hole in the middle of his throat. His body was covered with countless pieces of broken glass stuck into his skin. Uncle Hisao had just made it out from under his collapsed building. He had been sitting at his desk going over the morning business, when the blast hit and the windows of his office were instantly transformed into a flying wave of razor-sharp shards. His body took the breaking glass in full force, and a nail propelled by the explosion tore into his throat. The entire building came crashing to the ground. Miraculously, he managed to crawl out of the wreckage and hobbled back to the house, thinking that only the factory had been hit by a bomb. Now, he was groaning, “The end has come.” Sitting dazed and speechless, with eyes wide open, my uncle repeated over and over, “Mo dame da, This is the end, we are finished, this is the end.” Aunt Fumiko, her limbs bruised and kimono torn, sobbed as she tried to cover his bleeding throat and pick out the pieces of glass stuck in his skin. I myself was covered with soot and bruises all over my body; but considering that I had been mostly naked and unprotected when the bomb fell, I was relatively unscathed save for a gushing cut from large broken pieces of glass in the sole of my right foot. The sight of that blood sent chills down my spine. Never having tended to my own injuries before, I was lost and helpless, despite the countless first-aid drills in school. Aunt Kiyoko and Grandma were in no shape to aid anyone else, so I called again to Aunt Fumiko and tried to show her my predicament. But she was so preoccupied by her husband’s dire state that she hardly looked, saying she was sorry but she could not help me because Uncle Hisao needed her attention right now. I was shocked. Until now, I could always count on my parents, or in their absence, my aunts and

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uncles, to help and care for me. I understood at that moment that I was no longer in a circle of family I could depend on, that there was no one but myself to look after my scary cuts. It was my very first taste of being alone with my own injuries; taking care of myself began for me on that day. I hopped over to a pump well at the far end of the house and washed my hands and feet before attempting to pick out the broken shards of glass stuck in my right sole. I flinched as I took them out, but to my surprise the pain was minimal. I found a pair of gym shoes and a few pieces of soft tissue, which I placed on my wound before putting the shoes on. I also found a pair of mompe (slacks with an elastic band at the ankle for daily wear instead of skirts or kimono), my mother’s long-sleeved shirt jacket with her initials, K.T., on the chest pocket, and—remembering her instructions to “cover yourself as you escape, in case the air attack resumes”—a hood and a cushion to protect my head. Most important after any bomb explosion, Mama had said repeatedly, is to “leave as quickly as possible to get away from the danger of being trapped by fire.” The point had been illustrated time and again in the massive incendiary bomb attacks over Tokyo and other major cities. People were incinerated because they were trapped in an encroaching fire, designed to kill a maximum number of civilians. The bombers came back to finish off those who escaped, we were told, flying so low that the fleeing victims could make eye contact with the shooters. Realizing we had no time to lose, I walked over to my relatives and told them we needed to flee immediately or we’d all be trapped in the fire. The dazed adults, still in shock, didn’t seem to hear me; with blank expressions, they continued to nurse their wounds. I repeated my plea more loudly, but still there was no reply. I wanted to cry. My Mama had forbidden me to wait around if there was time to run. But oblivious to my desperate warnings, all the adults just remained where they sat, staring blankly and fiddling with their clothes, unable to think or act. Just then, my greatest fear was realized. Just across the street, a factory exploded into flames with a terrifying sound. A huge ball of flame billowed up. Within seconds, adjoining structures were on fire.

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I knew that a change in the wind could turn the flames toward us at any moment, exactly what my mother had warned me about. My heart racing, I screamed in terror, shouting to my aunts and uncle several times, “Fire, fire, you’ve got to leave. You’ve got to get away!” No one responded. I could not wait. I yelled that I was leaving. Running down the steps to the street level, I kept on shouting, “Please leave!” Mama’s instructions guided me from there on. I did exactly what she had taught me to do in times of dire emergency, step by step. I remembered all the steps. I had no idea what awaited me outside of our house, which was shielded by the vast garden. I had assumed that a powerful bomb had hit our estate directly, or possibly, that our factory was also hit simultaneously, because I had heard only a single explosion. But the entire neighborhood’s appearance had changed. Buildings all around us had also collapsed, and there were people covered in torn clothing and blood just like Uncle Hisao. I now understood more fully my uncle’s words, that the world was coming to an end. My first sight of injured strangers was of two women crawling on the ground just beyond our estate’s main entrance gate. The young woman wore a bright-colored top and long skirt. The older woman had bloodstained white garb. They appeared to be Koreans. As soon as their eyes met my startled gaze, the younger woman raised her hand toward me, calling out in words I did not understand, while the older one remained silent, looking at me with pleading eyes. They were asking me to do something, but I couldn’t understand them. I stopped running momentarily and tried to make out what they were trying to say to me. Neither of the women seemed to be able to speak my language. I repeated in Japanese that someone might come along who could help, but I couldn’t. I was very sorry. In another situation, I might have run back inside to seek help for them from my relatives, but the family members inside the gate were just as incapacitated as these two women. Walking away, I passed neighbors, disheveled and dazed, coming out of their houses and leaving as well. They paid little attention to passersby.

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No one recognized me; it was as though I were invisible. Their attention was fixed on getting out and looking for their own families. The houses were caved in, crooked, or barely standing. Small flames from cookstoves were starting to spread, and the wind fanned them swiftly into fireballs, terrorizing the fleeing people. I thought I heard cries of people asking for help—perhaps to assist in pulling someone out of a crumbled house, someone who was still trapped. But there was no more time nor power in my body except to listen to Mama’s voice: “Go to the water, child, stay close to the river, save yourself from fire.” With heart racing, I headed toward the Ota River, limping and dragging my right foot. Soon, more injured people were moving together in a silent march in the general direction of the outer limits of the city. Their bloodstained clothes were torn or singed black. Some were even bare. I did not know where they were all coming from. I tried to look for people I recognized so I could flee with them, but there were no familiar faces. In the moving sea of horribly hurt people, no one seemed to notice a frightened, lost child. The once familiar call of “Ojo-san,” a greeting of endearment, never came. I was truly alone. Reaching the bank of the Ota River, I saw a small group of adults and children with their hands clasped in prayer. An older man, acting in the role of family head, was directing the group to pray for the safety of others left behind. Just then, deafening explosions began to go off across the river. There were no bombers in the sky, but the explosions continued from the direction of the army base. “They got the arsenals,” someone said in horror. I turned my face toward the city center, from which billowing smoke rose. Closing my eyes, I prayed for the safety of my family, especially my parents: “Please God, please keep them safe.” I had no idea where they could be. Papa was a transportation officer by the harbor, and Mama was with the mobilization force somewhere in the heart of town. As I prayed, tears rolled down my cheeks for the first time since the explosion. To console myself, I repeated over and over, “Mama, I’m doing just exactly what you told me to do; now, please be safe.” Torn by worry over my parents, I could not help but wonder about

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the three planes that had come and gone, and the single explosion I had heard. There must have been a huge direct hit, but how could it be that there was only one explosion? I did not understand, but the question was irrelevant right now. The task at hand was to escape and preserve my life. The people moving toward the river began to merge from all directions. More and more of the injured flowed in. Suddenly, someone called my name. It was Kikue, a next-door neighbor’s daughter. Her face and arms were very red. She had just made it out of the schoolyard of her elementary school and was escaping with her family. “Kiku-chan, what happened to you?” “There was this flash, and it burned me,” Kikue replied. “Yes, I saw the flash, it was like a white waterfall. Did your school get a direct hit?” I asked. “It must have,” she guessed. Kikue’s skin was very red when I first saw her. Later it turned into large blisters covering her forehead and one eye. Her face became so swollen I could hardly recognize it anymore. She said some of the children were in much worse shape than she was. Those children were too young to look after themselves like she did, and the injured teachers couldn’t take care of them, either. She didn’t know what had happened to them. I was very grateful that there was a family I could walk with, even though Kikue was in a great deal of pain and had stopped talking. Along the river, we saw a young schoolgirl slowly walking, with pieces of skin hanging from her arms. Someone said that she had been trying to cool her burned skin, but as she rubbed the water on, her skin came off. She was crying out in pain. A Catholic sister who ran a nursery school in the same area told me that some of the small children who were playing in the schoolyard had been so burned that it was difficult to tell which side of their faces was which. She said that the only way she could tell, finally, was to look down at their shoes and see which direction the shoes were pointing in. The little children were crying and wandering around, but we could not stop. We moved on like a herd with a will of its own.

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The cuts on my foot started to bleed as I walked. I tried to rinse them with river water, and after much searching I found a piece of cloth to tie around my foot. Once or twice someone yelled, “An enemy plane is coming back!” We ran down to the riverbed, waded into the water, and tried to hide under tall water weeds. I covered my head with the cushion Mama had told me to carry. Her voice resounded in my mind: “The assigned place for our refuge is Tomo Village.” I kept on walking, wondering where Tomo was. After a while, there were no more cries about planes coming. It was a relief, as I was almost out of strength. I could not have run down to the water one more time. I saw a large truck pulling up a few blocks away. It was picking up people from the roadside. The driver hollered and waved his hand, as he yelled, “Hurry, hurry, if you want a ride!” Kikue and her family made a dash, telling me to do the same. I didn’t think I had any remaining strength to push on, but made a last effort, hobbling toward the vehicle as though it was my last chance to live. The truck was already full when I got there. I begged the driver for one more space, pointing to my injured foot and pleading that I just couldn’t take another step. He shrugged and lifted me onto the packed truck. On the truck, I was the only person wearing unshredded outer clothing and with a clean appearance. I was also the only person without any obvious injuries. We all sat in dazed silence while the truck rattled and shook as it lurched down the bumpy road, away from the city. Eventually, a bloodstained and soot-covered woman holding a small, still child began to talk. Looking around wildly, she spoke in a loud voice repeating something about where and what had happened to her and her child, as if she couldn’t believe it. A man facing her nodded briefly, and again silence descended upon the group. We were all in shock, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible events of the last two hours. We neither knew nor cared where we were going, so long as it was away from that hell. About thirty minutes later, well away from the burning city, we were let out in front of a small country hospital. The sign on the modest building indicated that we were in Midorii, but I had never been there

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before. The courtyard was jammed with hundreds of people standing and sitting on the ground, waiting to be treated, with more arriving all the time. Only the most injured, mostly serious burn victims, were being given any attention. Kikue and her family waited in line for a long time, but when her face began to swell, her father lost his patience and stormed into the hospital demanding immediate medical attention for his daughter. They smeared a coat of white cream on her face and arm. She and her parents left after that, hoping to stay with a distant relative in the nearby countryside. They could not bring me along, as they were pushing their luck asking for refuge from so distant a relative, and I was not family. (I ran into Kikue some months later; she had recovered with some keloid scars. She died about twenty years later.) Even though I understood why I could not go with them, saying goodbye left me feeling desolate and profoundly lost. Now I was all alone. There was no room left to stay where I was, but I had no idea in which direction I should travel, or how far. A young male villager with an official-looking armband was directing the traffic of people, dispensing a few grains of dried soybeans to the crowd and urging them to go anywhere they might know someone, because they couldn’t stay in Midorii. There was no other food, so I clutched the beans he gave me in one hand. I asked him if I could have my foot bandaged. He looked at me in amazement that such a minor hurt should be taking up anyone’s time. I asked him if he knew where Tomo Village was. “Can’t you see how busy I am right now? Go down to those houses over there and ask them, ” he replied. This was a daunting prospect; I had never done anything like it before. But I had to get myself to Tomo Village where my family would be waiting for me, and had no idea where it was. So, gathering all my courage, I walked down the road and knocked on the door of a small house. I asked if anyone knew where Tomo was. There was a whispered conversation in the background, about whether the child should be given a cup of tea before she headed for a village so far away. A woman’s voice hushed the whisper, discouraging them from getting involved. I

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heard a remark, “There will be no end to it,” as I closed the door behind me. A somewhat embarrassed older man walked out with me, pointing in the general direction of Tomo Village, but I only saw a distant mountain range in that direction. I realized that he was doing his best, but it certainly wasn’t enough for a frightened, disoriented little girl. I walked away from the crowd of people and off the highway to a small, mud-caked path along rows of rice fields. I felt alone, hungry, exhausted, and very anxious. Finally, I said to myself “I can’t go on anymore.” Unable to take one more step, I sank down onto a cool patch of clover and wild grasses for a rest. The soybeans were too tough for my still-aching teeth, but they were the only food I had. I kept them in my mouth until they were softened, and swallowed them slowly. I was still hungry. I put my fingers in the grass, combing through the cool, thin blades as I looked up to the sky. It was a beautiful blue, and thick and thin white cotton clouds were moving gently across it, like any other summer day before. The bright blue sky and peaceful clouds were a familiar sight, associated with happy times, outings, running and laughing with friends and family—and contrasted so starkly with the black horrors of this day. Out of nowhere, something inside of me whispered, “You are on your own now. Get up Hideko, only you can save yourself.” I couldn’t give up. I was going to find Tomo Village no matter what it took, and I was going to be reunited with my mother there. I was certain. She would be so proud when she found out about the long journey I had made all by myself. I rose on my sore feet and began walking with strength I hadn’t thought I had. After about a mile, I came upon a small stone bridge at a fork in the road. A man with a tweed beret was walking toward me from the opposite direction, pushing a bicycle. I hesitated, but in desperate need of some direction, I mustered the courage to ask him which road I should be taking to get to Tomo. He was startled at being approached at first—Japanese children don’t talk to strangers—but listened with a concerned expression to

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my question. He thought to himself, and then said that he could show me the long road ahead but doubted that a child could get there before sundown. “But why do you have to go there?” he asked. I told him about my house being hit by a bomb and that though I didn’t know what was happening all over town, there were people everywhere hurt badly, burned and bleeding, and Tomo was where my mother had said our block was supposed to go. He was shocked. He said he had heard about something happening in Hiroshima but didn’t know it was that bad. I told him about the continuous explosions and that I was terribly worried about my family. He looked at me thoughtfully and suggested that I come with him and stay with his family for now. He was a stranger out of nowhere, but I thought that perhaps Mama would understand if I started for Tomo early tomorrow. I decided to trust my instincts that this was a genuinely kind person, willing to rescue me from the ordeal of endless walking at night. We walked another mile. I followed the gentleman, limping and hobbling from time to time. He stopped outside a large, white wall with a temple-style gate, surrounding a handsomely built farmhouse with a beautiful dark tile roof. Pointing to it with a smile, he invited me inside. His sister-in-law, the mistress of the house, greeted us as we entered the gate. She had a kind and round smiling face, with small eyes. He spoke in a low voice, putting his head close to her ears, explaining the situation. Nodding her head, she took me in immediately. She listened closely to my story, commenting on how difficult and scary all of this must have been for a mere child, and said that she had two young daughters, one assigned to military headquarters near Hiroshima Castle in the city, and the other, a student mobilized for emergency labor, working in a factory just outside the city. She hoped they’d make it home soon themselves. Her worry for her daughters corresponded with my anguish for my mother and the rest of my family. I joined the family table for a hot meal of white rice with soup and vegetables, a meal I had not expected at the end of this day. After a nice hot bath, the mistress helped to clean my cuts, and applied a fresh

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bandage. A soft cushy futon was laid out for me to sleep on, with a mosquito net for nightfall. The first daughter to return safely was the student factory worker. She was exhausted but uninjured, much to her mother’s delight. Her observations and the reports she’d picked up along the way dampened her mother’s hope for the other daughter’s safety. She tearfully announced that she would wait up for her. Late in the night, there was a stirring at the entrance, and the sound of excitement followed. The daughter from the military command post near Hiroshima Castle had finally reached home. Badly bruised and swollen across her forehead, she had walked all the way in her torn clothing to the outskirts of Hiroshima, and then hitched a ride as I had. She had lost consciousness when, in the underground command post of the Hiroshima Division of the Imperial Army, the horrendous explosion blew out the heavy steel blast door to the bunker. She did not know how long she had been unconscious, but when she regained consciousness, she staggered outside with a head injury. She saw the supreme commander of the group on the floor, pale and lifeless although with no obvious injuries. She talked about the soldiers and civilians being burned, their agony, and their melting, singed flesh. She was certain that she would not have come home alive if she had been working aboveground. Hobbling through the fires and dying people, she finally made it home. The mother was ecstatic to see her last missing daughter. As the girl pointed in the direction from which she had come and toward the horrible sights and sounds all three of us had left behind, everyone stood outside, solemnly facing the city where the sky was burning in bright orange and yellow against the dark night. How could anyone’s parents or children have survived such a fire? My heart was racing and sinking deeper at the same time, despite my bliss over being rescued by this kind family. Again I uttered a prayer for my mother and father. The next morning, the farmer who had brought me to his house offered to bicycle into Hiroshima to find my parents, and he urged me to hold off my trek to Tomo Village. I described in detail where our

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house stood. He said he was familiar with that location and thought he could find it. He wore a glove on one hand that never came off. I guessed that under the glove was a prosthesis and wondered if that was why he was not on the war front. If so, I was most grateful for it. He took off early on his bike. When he returned at the day’s end, he brought news of finding my father on the site of my home, but also that my mother had not come home. Papa had made it back just as the last section of the house—the family treasure room—was coming down in flames. He had walked for hours pushing his bike, and sometimes carrying it on his shoulders to get through the rubble and bodies. When he finally reached our home, he saw a sign listing three missing persons: Kimiko, Hideko, and young Hideyuki. Having witnessed the horrific condition of the people in the city, he feared that both his wife and his only child had perished. The farmer bringing the news of my rescue reached him just then. Papa was most relieved. I was grateful to know my father was safe and sound, but the uncertain fate of my mother left me feeling very heavy. I wondered if Mama had made it to Tomo ahead of me, and if I shouldn’t try to get there myself. I would have done so, had it not been for my father’s message that I was to join the rest of my relatives now taking temporary refuge on a mountaintop district called Uebara, in Kabe township, some eight miles away. My father sent a man to take me to Uebara to join my relatives. The man took me on the tiny back seat of his bicycle. My uncle, aunts, grandmother, and baby Kumiko had miraculously escaped the city in time and, with the help of one of Hisao’s former employees, had found a place to stay: in the small guest room of a wealthy farmer. They thought I had wandered off by mistake and was left behind, and were relieved to see me alive; but my reappearance meant there were now six people packed in the small guest room. Our home life was now confined to this tiny room, with a charcoal burner outside. No more long corridors lined with spacious rooms, and views of large tranquil gardens. No more domestic help and grand catered parties. There was not even the luxury of running water, which

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we had always had. Now, our water was drawn from a well beside the farmhouse, and our washing was done at a spring down the mountain path. Uncle Hisao was bandaged up and resting. He had been able to survive only because he had run into a surgeon friend, Dr. Ikeda, who patched him up and tried to take out more glass pieces from his body. A few more shards of glass that Dr. Ikeda could not remove were still left under his skin. Grandma Tamano and Aunt Kiyoko bore bruise marks over their faces and limbs, but they were recovering as well. Because they had all been inside at the time of the explosion, none had suffered severe burns. The very next day, Uncle Hisao, Aunt Fumiko with Cousin Kumiko strapped on her back, and I began tracing the two missing family members: my mother and Cousin Hideyuki. We went to schools, temples, and police headquarters in the surrounding area to which the injured had been brought. Failing to find our relatives at any of these places, we next went back into the city, riding in a truck from a country branch of Tamura Industries. The stories from others who had already gone back to look for their relatives were horrifying. The dead and the dying were still lying on the ground where they fell; rotting corpses were everywhere. Those who had severe burns on their faces were hard to identify, even when they somehow survived long enough to reach a rescue station. These stations were jam-packed with injured and lacked medicine or aid. Since the injured people had fled in all directions, and the city no longer existed, there were no clues even as to where to start looking for the missing, except for handwritten signs tacked to posts, or word-ofmouth information. No other information was available, except from a newspaper reporting that the horrific destruction had been accomplished by a single bomb. It said that this bomb was so lethal that Hiroshima would not be fit for habitation for the next seventy-five years. This news did not stop anyone from going back into Hiroshima, however, even on the day of the bomb explosion, to search for their children, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters.

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No one could stay away, knowing that their child or parent might be dying without their comfort or help. The few lucky people who did find their relatives grieved even more deeply, since they were unable to save or relieve the suffering of their dying family members. We searched for Mama and Hideyuki all over Hiroshima; almost all remaining buildings in the city had been pressed into service as rescue stations to which the injured made their way or were carried. I looked for my mother, and Uncle Hisao and Aunt Fumiko searched for their son. At the first rescue station I visited, I saw a naked young woman lying on the ground, scantily covered by a thin, transparent green cloth. “How embarrassing it must be for her,” I thought. Her petite body was curled up in the fetal position, and she was breathing with great difficulty but trying to speak. I saw an identification tag pinned to the green cloth. She was a kindergarten teacher from a nearby Oshiba school— not far from my house, but farther from where the bomb had dropped. I said something like, “Are you all right?” Breathing with great effort, she whispered in a barely audible moan, “Kurushii, kurushii,” meaning “pain too great for words.” Her body began to shake and convulse. Then the convulsions stopped, and she died before my eyes. It was as if she had been waiting for someone to be with her when she died. There were no marks on her body, no cuts or blood or burns. I was terrified; I had never seen anyone die in front of me, nor did I understand why she was naked, or what had killed her. The next rescue station housed sixty or more people inside the chapel of a Buddhist temple, which resembled the temporary living quarters where we had lived in Kimita Village. Most of the singed and blackened bodies were lying on the floor unattended, but a few had someone looking after them. Soft moans and blinking eyes were signs of life in the dark and desolate chapel. The chapel’s shutters had been removed and there were no enclosing screens, but the sunlight did not penetrate inside. The stench of rotting flesh filled the air. I had heard from other adults that maggots began feeding on the dead flesh of burn victims while they were still alive.

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I called out to the room, “Is Mrs. Kimiko Tamura here? Please answer me, please.” Thinking of Mama lying there, one of these disfigured, helpless bodies, was more than I could bear. But neither could I bear not knowing where she was. The only thought that pushed me on was that I could not leave her dying alone anywhere without me. I went from person to person, searching each burnt face and trying to discern my mother’s visage among them. The injured people begged me for help. “Please give me water,” they asked. I desperately wanted to help, but I had no water to give. It was not much to ask for, but I was afraid to be near them. A woman had just died in front of me, and I was in a kind of emotionless shock. Being in such painful places drenched in the smell of rotting flesh and death was horrifying, but I could not bear the thought of not being able to do anything for Mama or to even get to her at all. All I could do was to keep on walking to the next station. I decided to sing Mama’s favorite lullabies and melodies that we used to sing together, as if she could hear me before I could be there and comfort her in person. I prayed, “Please God, let the wind carry these songs to my Mama; if she is anywhere suffering, please give her comfort. Please don’t let her die alone suffering.” As I let the wind carry the melody of my soft humming, tears began to roll down my cheeks. I wept as quietly as possible so the wind would not also carry the sound of my sobbing, and walked on to the next rescue station. Uncle Hisao and Aunt Fumiko had no luck finding Hideyuki, either. But Kiyotsune, a second cousin and Hideyuki’s classmate, was found by his parents on the front yard of the Red Cross Hospital, and died a few days later. There was nothing anyone could do for him. Kiyotsune’s mother confided to Fumiko, “You may be lucky; you didn’t have to watch your son’s end . . . and you won’t keep on seeing how he had to die.” Tomoko, another of my second cousins and a playmate, a chubby, goodhearted girl of the clan, never came home and was never found. Her mother never came out of mourning and went into seclusion for the rest of her life.

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Most of Hideyuki’s friends from the Hiroshima First Middle School were either dead or missing, and no one had any information about their fate. Many were crushed under the collapsed classrooms, while others were scorched in the melting heat of the radiation. One day, the lament of Kiyotsune’s mother became a reality for Uncle Hisao and Aunt Fumiko, when one of their son’s classmates, Hara, told Aunt Fumiko that he had seen Hideyuki after the explosion, dying from burns. Hara had managed to crawl out from under the collapsed school building because his seat was by the window, which made it was easier for him to get outside. He looked around for others, but only a few had managed to escape from the building. Hara was following a crowd of people moving toward Mt. Hijiyama when he recognized the back of Hideyuki’s head; but the rest of the boy’s body, including his face, was burned beyond recognition. Hara called out, “Aren’t you Hideyuki Tamura?” Hideyuki nodded. Hara told Aunt Fumiko that Hideyuki was walking awkwardly in a ghost-like posture, with his hands raised before him. His burnt body was naked except for the army boots that he had worn with pride. Just then, they heard people shouting that “the planes are coming back,” so they started to run. Hideyuki told Hara he couldn’t continue anymore and to please go ahead without him. Hara saw Hideyuki collapse to the ground but had to keep running, leaving his friend behind. Hara was beginning to lose his eyesight by then, but he was able to take Hisao and Fumiko to the very spot where their only son fell to the ground. By then, the bodies had been cleared and no trace of him remained. They asked around if anyone might have noticed a body lying there, but no one knew about that specific one. People said there were too many bodies and the soldiers had hauled them away. No one knew where the bodies had been cremated; it could have been anywhere. This was an unbearable yet common story for many Hiroshima residents. But this twelve-year-old boy was the only son and heir, the pride and joy of Uncle Hisao and Aunt Fumiko. He was my cousin who had grown up with me like a brother; my friend and teacher who loved sports and watching airplanes, Japanese and American alike. The

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thought of him being burned alive, and suffering without his family’s help, was so difficult to accept that no one talked about it even after we found out what had happened. I knew, however, that my aunt suffered every day of her life after learning about her only son’s end. Tens of thousands of people mourned the same way. In early September, we finally found a neighbor who had been with Mama at the moment the bomb exploded. Mama and this woman were inside a concrete building near city center, where the others had left their lunchboxes. Because Mama had recently suffered a miscarriage and her neighbor had two small children with her, the two were excused from outside work and were chatting inside at an entrance way when the bomb exploded. The woman told us that Mama pulled her straw hat down over her ears and ran inside screaming, as the concrete building came crashing down on her. The neighbor woman stayed by the door, hovering over her two children. She lost consciousness for a short time but came to when she heard voices shouting for anyone alive. She called out in response and was dug out with her children. She called out for my mother several times before they had to leave because a fire was closing in. The woman thought there were others in the building as well, but she and her children were the only ones rescued. Though ailing and frail herself by this time, the neighbor took Papa to the site of the building. The burned-down ruin was untouched and small clusters of burnt bones were scattered about, but he could not tell which one may have been his wife. Then he stumbled on an army canteen he recognized as one he had loaned to Mama. Next to it were half-burnt and partially weathered remains. He felt Mama was calling him to notice her. He brought home Mama’s ashes in his army handkerchief. He also brought a little of others’ ashes, for their families had not known to come for them, and he wished them to rest in peace as well. I begged Papa to take me to the place where he had found the bones and collected the ashes, but he did not grant my wish until long after the building debris and the remains had been cleared. He said it was not a sight for me to remember, and perhaps he was right.

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I kept asking myself, “Was she crushed instantly? Did she suffer in the melting heat?” I thought time and again, “Mama, if only I had known where you were, I would have gone through hell to get to you, and would have died with you if I couldn’t get you out.” But I hadn’t known. I couldn’t. I was powerless. I could not accept the verdict. The most horrible indictment behind all my grief was the fact that I had insisted on returning immediately to Hiroshima from Kimita Village, in spite of my mother’s wish to stay one more day there so they could rest up. I could not face this awful thought or confess to anyone that my childish desire had brought her to her death. I waited for her to come home, for days, months, and years. I wonder if I have ever stopped waiting. Too bright a light blinds you; too loud a sound deafens you. On August 6, 1945, the complete and utter destruction of everything in my life blasted my emotions into pieces, some of which never came back. On the afternoon of August 15, 1945, Uebara’s residents and its refugees from Hiroshima listened together to a static-ridden, recorded radio announcement from the Emperor, their heads bowed to the tatami mats at the sound of his divine voice. I could not make out the words or understand them, but the adults who did understand told me that the war had ended. We had all been told to endure and keep our heads up, for our suffering would end upon our victory. The new suffering, however, had only just begun. In the city of Hiroshima and in the surrounding small towns, pillars of smoke waved in the wind from the banks of the Ota and her sister rivers for weeks on end. This smoke, from the pyres of the deceased, was ascending to the sky, leaving behind others who were still dying, both physically and mentally, because of what they saw and breathed. Those of us who went back into the city, either to look for our relatives or to return to the sites of our burned-down houses, also breathed plenty of the contaminated air. None of us worried about it at the time, not because we disbelieved the warnings about radiation exposure but because we were willing to risk the dangers. Our missing family mem-

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bers had to be found; they were our loved ones and the treasures of our hearts. We had no choice but to search for them. The first time my relatives and I returned to the ruin of our estate, we were speechless. A few trees still stood on the raised ground with the quarry-tiled driveway sloping down to the street level, but the piles of burned debris that also lay before our eyes took away what was left of our connection to the life that existed before the bomb exploded. We realized that the Tamura family had lost not just its home but its position in society. Gone were the happy Cherry Blossom Day picnics, when thousands of Tamura Industry employees had laughed and frolicked along the Ota River, enjoying our feast amid showers of falling cherry blossoms. Now these and other similar great moments were just memories. Now we were refugees without stature—nobody. The huge rocks in the garden lay just the same as before; and many of the evergreen trees remained, but they were disappearing quickly as returning neighbors in need of firewood helped themselves. A new, tall and straggly-looking plant that we had never seen before was growing all over in the garden as well as along the riverbank, roadside, and everywhere else. This plant was called “railway grass,” and it flourished in places where everything else died. Some people ate its leaves for sustenance, but we never tried them. No matter how hungry we became, we were not desperate enough to eat plants that grew out of the bombed soil. The place where our house had once stood was covered with thick layers of broken clay roof tiles. What had once been beautiful, dark gray tiles had transformed into baked reddish-brown pieces. Bending down and kneeling, we began to dig, looking for anything that might be saved. We kept removing tile after tile, only to find more tiles. Grandma found her rice china, mostly broken to pieces, but she retrieved a few tiny cups with cracks and brown marks. The only thing I found in the remains of my family’s living area was a melted sake bottle that Mama had used for refining brown rice; by pushing a wooden stick up and down in the bottle, she effectively milled the grain via friction.

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For a few seconds, I imagined her chatting with me as her hands kept busy with the up-and-down milling motion. The home that held so many memories of our past life was gone forever. We came back several times, but the shattered site made us long for what could never be restored. After a while, we felt little connection and stopped returning. I never again saw the beautiful insects and creeping creatures that Cousin Hideyuki and I used to stalk in the estate’s gardens.

7

Lost in the Country 1945–1947 Scattered in the ashes were ourselves, hollow eyes and emptied out like an air bag without air. How does one know where you begin and end in the vast space of things. Where no familiar objects peer out connecting you to feel alive. Where did it go? To nothingness with the perished, into a vacuum, never known before far beyond reach. Living, yet feeling lifeless. In our new crowded home in Uebara, ten miles outside of Hiroshima, we were not insulated from the city’s ongoing tragedies. On the way down to the stream for daily wash-ups, I usually passed a tiny shack. I seldom noticed anything different about it, but one day, there was quite a commotion and I heard loud voices wailing. The spoken words did not quite register any meaning, and I realized it was another language. 88

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Mr. Hashimoto, our landlord, explained that his Korean tenant had had a death in his family. The tenant’s brother had survived the A-bomb explosion but had been badly injured, and now he had died of his injuries. The family’s reaction to his death was striking. Unlike Japanese funerals, in which mourners grieved privately, the members of this family and their friends were very public in their grieving. Their wailing, “Aigo, aigo,” could be heard on the mountaintop long into the night. It made sense to me that one should cry out when circumstances were horribly sad. And for all the refugees in Uebara, circumstances were horribly sad. But Japanese people clung to their privacy; walling in our feelings was our last resort. Please, I prayed, let me keep this wall and let me hide inside. I didn’t want to cry. Not even one tear, lest countless wounds and sorrows gush up. No, we would not be able to tolerate living if we unleashed our feelings. This was a time to turn into stone, still and quiet. We had no energy to do anything else. People were hearing similar stories nearly every day about someone they knew who was dying. The oddest accounts were those of people with very minor injuries who suddenly began to vomit and bleed from their gums and other orifices until they died. This manner of suffering was like no other illness known before. The afflicted lost their strength very rapidly and died in extreme agony. To watch the process was terrifying to family members. They spoke of red spots that appeared on the body, marking the beginning of this mysterious cycle. People began checking their bodies for conspicuous marks every day, and even a mosquito bite evoked fear. The radiation sickness struck me as well. A week after the bombing, the lack of food and bathing facilities triggered a skin infection. My legs looked scaly like those of reptiles in our lost garden. I started to count the lesions on my legs, but lost count at seventy-five. By the end of August, my boils turned to dry scabs, and chronic malaise and fevers set in. Climbing the uphill path to our house with a fever was exhausting; a week later, I couldn’t even walk downhill. The fever kept rising until I

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became delirious and oblivious to my surroundings. I felt hot all over, as if my skull were engulfed in a brilliant white light. I lay on my futon feeling very ill, but not really caring if I lived or died. I had not cried for my mother; the most grievous tears must be dry, as if there is no place for them to flow. Deep within my heart was a gnawing feeling that I not only had left my mother behind but was also responsible for her death. It was as though my existence lost its value entirely because of wrongdoings for which there was no expiation. I felt so profoundly shaken by the thought that I could hardly speak of it with anyone as I lay in fever. Sometime at the height of this crisis, I heard the whispering voices of my family in the background. Papa had been called back to my bedside. His continuing military duties now had him clearing corpses and debris from the city. The extensive responsibilities kept him away for months before he could come home to his child. But now, the family told him I was gravely ill and he took a temporary leave to be with me, hoping to help turn my illness around. His youngest sister, Yoshiko, had just arrived from Kotohira on the island of Shikoku. She brought with her a special cure: a live snapping turtle. Papa was to sever its head while Aunt Yoshiko held a cup underneath to catch the fresh blood as it dripped. I heard a commotion, apparently caused by the turtle being not so willing to part with its head. Shortly after, however, a decanter full of red liquid was forced into my mouth. I was held up at a slanted angle, and Papa’s firm instruction that I must drink it to live kept me from spitting out the vile-tasting liquid. Aunt Yoshiko urged a second cup, but I shook my head knowing I couldn’t keep another sip down. The next morning found the fever going down, and I even had an appetite for the first time. A bowl of sweet wheat paste, mugikogashi, went down more easily than the turtle blood. I began to eat some more, and my father returned to the army the following day more confident of my recovery. There were several servings of turtle soup afterwards, made with the poor creature from Kotohira. A few weeks later I was up and about again, but the recovery seemed

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slow and temporary. I did not feel like my old self. Apparently, many people who survived the explosion relatively unscathed felt the same way. I heard them complain about feeling sluggish and tired all the time. People suspected that the A-bomb had something to do with it but had no idea that it was due to the bomb’s radiation. The Occupational Authority prohibited both radio and print reports of these maladies and the speculations about them. But my own listlessness had more to do with a feeling of “Nothingness.” My whole world had been ripped away from me. Without the center of my universe, my precious Mama, I felt almost nonexistent. Without my brother-cousin Hideyuki, there were no fun stories to exchange as we affirmed our bond of affection for one another, and I had lost my loyal protector from taunts. Refusing to accept what I had been told, I longed for Mama to come home and for Hideyuki to be found alive. Miyoshi, who had promised to stay in touch, was also gone. No, no, no, Mama, Hideyuki, Miyoshi, Kiyotsune, Cousin Tomoko, you can’t all be charred and lifeless. Our little one-room dwelling was so cramped that none of us had any safe, separate breathing space. I longed for our true home with its long corridors, luscious garden, and my own room, packed with memories of laughing and crying, sleeping and awakening—but it was a phantom that I could never go back to. Everything in it, all my books, my clothes, my cuddly futon, my little rice bowl and chopsticks—all was gone. The totality of this loss was beyond the reach of words. My entire universe had been obliterated. My adult relatives ate and slept, uttering no outward complaints. We subsisted physically and emotionally. But we were all numb, spiritually empty. In October I fell ill again. This time I was jaundiced: the whites of my eyes turned yellow. Again I suffered from chronic fatigue and fever. Walking down the mountain path to attend school, and then back up again, was no longer possible. About all that I could manage was to take a few steps outside sometimes to sit on a grass patch where Mr. Hashimoto’s cow was tied to a post; there was no one else to talk with about how lonely and weak I felt. I tried to whisper songs of my child-

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hood, just to reach out, maybe even to spirits in the air. From time to time, a sudden loud moo broke the monotony. Slowly, I became a silent child asking for nothing and expecting very little. The bonds that hold a community together buoy its members up. With the bombing of Hiroshima, those bonds were utterly destroyed. It wasn’t merely the loss of so many people; with the population scattered, their homes destroyed, their jobs gone, there was no way for us to re-establish the many bonds that had held us together. Each of us was alone and lost. Slowly, in one chance meeting after another, some small fraction of those bonds was recovered. “Oh, you survived! What a relief it is to know you’re still with us! Did you hear? So-and-so didn’t make it.” That was how the people of Hiroshima rebuilt their community, one old friendship at a time. I was still without my father, who could not yet return home. Before the Bomb, he had been responsible for arranging the military’s transport and logistics. After the Bomb, the greatest emergencies all centered on this specialty, and he was ordered by his superiors to take charge of the situation. He was given the authority and power to take emergency measures. When Papa was finally discharged from the army and returned home in November, I was still sickly. By this time, though, people were beginning to feel more relaxed about the Occupational Army based at the Atsugi airfield near Tokyo. Before this army’s arrival, Uncle Hisao had gathered all the women of our household to assure us that if those soldiers came to touch any of us, he would take charge of helping us die by our own hands first. We were prepared to commit suicide sooner than let any of the soldiers touch us. The dreadful plan proved quite unnecessary, as I came to know firsthand on my way home from school one day. I was making my usual turn onto a hillside when my heart almost stopped as I spotted a very strange-looking person in a khaki uniform approaching. There was no time for me to hide or run, so I just froze. The young, blue-eyed soldier smiled and waved at me as he went by, whistling a tune. I excitedly shared the harrowing tale of my first encounter with a live former

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enemy with everyone back at the house. Not all of our encounters ended as happily. Grandma Tamano’s widowed daughter from her first marriage, Aunt Tokuko, had three children, including a son in his early twenties. He was a sweet and gentle young man, with an almost effeminate quality about him. They lived in the town of Kure, where a U.S. Navy contingent was stationed. Aunt Tokuko’s son was delighted to find a job at the base to help support his mother and sisters. Jobs were hard to come by, then, and people were going hungry every day. He used to bring Grandma Tamano and his relatives rare treats, such as chocolates, and cigarettes for his uncles. They especially loved the canned army rations. One day Grandma was shocked with the news that her grandson had taken his own life in the middle of the night. Aunt Tokuko had noticed that her son had come home very troubled that night. Not his usual open self, he had difficulty talking about what had happened. He simply said something awful had happened at work, and that he could do nothing to prevent it from happening again. She concluded that something had been done to her son by some Americans, and he was powerless to protest. She said he was frightened and apologetic about his predicament, as he knew his mother depended on his income. That night he took an overdose of drugs and died. Aunt Tokuko wept as she told the story. She did not think that she ever wanted to see or touch any more goods from that base. Grandma’s heart must have ached in sadness as she spoke and remembered my young stepcousin, who had a deep love for his family and was so terrorized that he could not face himself again. After this incident, we never spoke of the Americans at the Kure base again. There were, however, benefits that came from the Occupational Army such as occasional food and health aids. We received a small amount of refined wheat flour from time to time, but we didn’t know what to do with it, because flour and bread are not part of the traditional Japanese diet. We just mixed it into our dumpling soup. Another bucketful of powder, called “DDT,” was for delousing. Almost all war refugees had limited washing and laundry facilities, and our clothes

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were infested with lice. The DDT was to be generously poured on our clothes and even on our bodies nightly. No one suspected then that what could kill an insect might also be harmful to humans. Papa, in the meantime, was fearful of being sought out as a war criminal because of his position coordinating military supplies through the Inland Sea port. He told the family that he might have to go into hiding, for he would not allow himself to be taken prisoner. Pointing to a shiny handgun, he indicated his resolve in the event of capture. To me, the chilling thought of being left alone with an extended family whose ways were so different from my parents’ was unthinkable. I thanked God the summons never came. And I understood more fully many years later the basis of his concern, though he had not spoken about it at the time. Although his unit was officially assigned to straightforward logistics tasks, he himself was not in the normal chain of command; he instead reported directly to the Central Headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army in Tokyo. He sent secret reports to Tokyo detailing the effects of the A-bomb on Hiroshima. The clandestine nature of his responsibilities made him a possible target for American retribution. Before he was officially discharged from his military duties, Papa was able to bring us a large supply of food: white rice, miso paste, shoyu, sugar, and salt, items that every household sought. In Uebara, we had been living on rationed food resembling caked vomit from cows. We usually looked at each other waiting for someone else to taste it first to see if it was safe to put in our mouths. Aunt Kiyoko took the first bite as we watched her swallow the brownish-green stuff. She remarked that the taste was not as foul as it appeared, and the rest of us followed her sampling, drinking a lot of hot tea to wash it down. After Papa’s return, we feasted on normal meals for a long while. Daily life was hard, but by then newspapers came out every day, bringing reports of the many changes under General MacArthur. Grandma called him Matsukasa-san, pronouncing his name like her favorite kind of mushroom. One of the general’s most dramatic changes was to eliminate the law that the first son inherited everything after a

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father’s death. MacArthur changed it so that all the children shared equally in the inheritance. Sadly, this mandate came too late to help my father, who under the new constitution would have stood to gain a share of my grandfather’s massive fortune. His older brother Hisao had inherited everything before the war ended. No one criticized MacArthur or his staff for their decisions. It was just as in the former days of the country’s military leadership, only in a different uniform. Japanese people were accustomed to obey authority without question. As soon as Papa came home for good, Uncle Hisao persuaded him to join him in his daily bicycle commute back to Hiroshima, to reconstruct the family business. They left before sunrise and returned to the country late after dark. Knowing how eagerly I waited for his return, Papa whistled a tune to me as he came around the corner just below the farmhouse, signaling that he was home. I usually ran out to greet him, like a faithful dog, and was just as happy. Papa tried to take care of me whenever he could. I remember that he treated my hair when lice were discovered. He even cooked gourmet dishes that Aunt Kiyoko and Grandma Tamano did not know how to prepare. He said that he had learned this skill in Tokyo, and in the army when he was stationed in China. I felt very safe whenever he was with me. Traveling many miles daily without adequate rest took its toll on Papa in different ways. Late one night we were awakened by cries of intense pain. My Papa was curled up and shrieking in agony. His older sister, Kiyoko, was sure it was caused by the half-spoiled sake she had warmed for his supper earlier. His pain seemed so extraordinary that Aunt Kiyoko believed he was dying. She clasped her hands together begging for his forgiveness. A doctor was sent for from the town of Kabe at the foot of the Uebara Mountain. It took an interminably long while for help to arrive because of the distance from downtown Kabe to the desolate mountaintop. After a long wait the doctor arrived, and a shot of morphine did its work immediately. Papa’s spells returned time and again, but they became less frightening to us, knowing he was not convulsing to

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death. The doctor thought it might be my father’s gallstones. He said there was not much that could be done about it, but that they might go away in time. After several years, they did. Another scary time came when I was called away from school and learned that Papa had had a bicycle accident and was unconscious. In the spring, a flood had washed out a bridge along the route to Hiroshima, forcing Uncle Hisao and Papa, who was riding ahead, to take a detour. Uncle Hisao was distracted momentarily, and the front wheel of his bicycle caught Papa’s back wheel, pushing Papa’s bicycle off the detour’s makeshift bridge and plunging him and the bicycle into a bed of hard rocks below. I knew everyone is human and makes mistakes, but I could not excuse Uncle Hisao from the responsibility for this one. Papa gained consciousness but suffered from nausea and a headache. However, he did not rest for long before he resumed his trips to the factory site in Hiroshima. They were reconstructing the plant, and his older brother needed him to be there. The news that my widowed maternal grandmother’s cancer of the stomach was now getting worse reached us in December. During the war, Grandma Tome and her children had evacuated to a village near her birthplace in Okayama. Aunt Kozue and Uncle I-chan, who were now in their late teens and still living at home, were barely keeping up with looking after themselves and now they had to care for their mother as well. Papa was deeply concerned, so he took me to see Grandma Tome a couple of times. I sang songs to her about mothers and how precious they are, like the sun, the moon, and our very lives. Grandma Tome was very quiet in her bed, but I saw her crying, without a sound. She was emaciated and bony during that first visit, but the next time we visited she was swollen as the cancer had spread. It must have been very difficult for my aunts and uncle to watch their only remaining parent wither away, as life was so stressful for them already. My father apparently provided their support, giving Mama’s entire savings to them for Grandma’s care and for their livelihood. Papa never discussed this with me, and I only learned about it from Uncle I-chan in his old age.

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Back in Uebara, my aging Grandma Tamano and Aunt Kiyoko were also struggling, having been reduced to leading a very modest life in cramped quarters. They had few changes of clothes and had to present themselves with nearly bald heads—an unspeakable humiliation. They had had to flee Hiroshima without their wigs, and such items were not sold immediately after the war. Life was very hard for my grandmother and aunt in those days. Their authority as head women of the household was lost with the disappearance of our Hiroshima estate. Here in Uebara, there was no domestic help, nor were there any daughters-in-law to wait on them as they had been so accustomed to in the past. Aunt Fumiko was no longer the mousy servant she had been in the old house. Now, she was the wife of the clan heir and chief. Her husband’s words were final, and she had become the mistress of our household. Our life in the tiny room in Uebara came to an abrupt ending after less than six months. Our landlord’s first son was getting married, and the ceremony was to be held in the room we were occupying (the best room in the house), so we had to vacate it. Uncle Hisao and his family moved to another house farther down the mountain road. Their new rented rooms belonged to an elderly woman with thick white hair, who had lived in America where she learned to speak English. She insisted tomato was pronounced “toh-MAY-toh.” She had one son but had not heard from him since he had been sent to the Pacific front and gone missing in action. She was waiting for her son’s return like thousands of other families. Aunt Fumiko was very tender toward her, and they seemed to share a very special sympathy for one another. The rest of us moved to Midorii, the same place the truck had deposited me on the day of the Bomb. I knew its one hospital and the rice-field path where I might have been left abandoned had I not been rescued by the kind farmer family. Grandma Tamano and Aunt Kiyoko asked Papa and me to remain with them, though I am not sure why they wanted the burden of living with a teenage granddaughter. Papa was their son and male protector, but I was much like his late wife, spirited and different from the people of their world. We had very little

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in common; it was as if we thought and spoke in different languages. I always identified with Mama’s urban and Western values, which my grandmother and aunt were more inclined to poke fun at than to take an interest in. We ate together and I did my chores, but they showed no interest in my activities or school events. It was like living in isolation without visible walls or barriers. And at this point, my father was so exhausted by the demands of the physical reconstruction of the family business that he had nothing left for his daughter. No one from the family came to my graduation from elementary school, or to the Arts Fest to see the plays I had labored many hours to put together for the parents after the ceremony. Singing our farewell song to our teachers and schoolmates that day, I remembered how my mother had wanted me to do my best and to always work harder. “Mama, I finally did it,” I said, but it was too late for her to see it. No one was there to appreciate the efforts I had exerted to survive in my changed world. My wish for someone to be there on that graduation day lingered; my achievements thereafter never mattered nearly so much to me. Uncle Hisao’s home was definitely more open to conversation and laughter than the one I was living in. Aunt Fumiko had to keep up with her chores, but she always listened to me. She would recall from time to time the vow she had exchanged with my mother: that if anything happened to either of them, they would take care of the other’s child. On the other hand, I always sensed that something kept us apart, that somehow I was a painful reminder of her son Hideyuki who had been taken away from her in such a cruel way. One day Papa bicycled all the way to Kimita Village to retrieve the things that I had left behind when I departed with Mama for “temporary” health leave. The journey over steep, twisting, and rutted mountain roads was long and tiring; it took him all day. The things he retrieved were my only remaining possessions from my life before the A-bomb: my futon bed roll, a jacket, a change of clothes, some books, and the glass marbles cousin Hideyuki had given me the night before my evacuation from Hiroshima.

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In the spring of 1946, I entered the Kabe Girls’ School, the equivalent of a U.S. middle school. The entrance examinations were easy for a girl who had attended the elite Seibi Academy. For example, one of the questions was, “How many flower petals are there in a cherry blossom?” The true answer, I knew, depended on the kind of cherry; the common Japanese species has five petals, but other equally beautiful kinds have more. But while the question’s ambiguity begged for clarification, I knew to choose the common-species number, for in Japanese culture, commonality was more acceptable than individual differences. My years at Seibi Academy had provided more than just a knowledge lead on my fellow students at Kabe Girls’ School; more important was the strict discipline that had been ingrained in all of us at Seibi. That discipline gave me a firm foundation, a sense of purpose during the hard years after the war. Deep inside, I knew that with hard work and concentration I could surmount my current trials. Our newly revised textbooks at the Kabe school were printed on the poorest-quality, easily torn paper, and stapled rather than bound. Nonetheless, they were a great improvement over the former textbooks, many of whose pages we had had to paint over with black ink after the war, leaving only a few pages that we were allowed to use. The teachers had explained that this practice had been ordered by General MacArthur and the Occupational Army, which disallowed most of the contents of our pre-war textbooks; we were not to see or read anything that had remotely to do with patriotism or warriors’ codes. Despite their flimsy construction, the new textbooks’ content was quite exciting. They reintroduced the history of Japan in place of mythical creation stories. I read about the earliest Japanese inhabitants and the evolution of their culture; diseases and epidemics; and why all the laws were being changed. In addition to these texts, Papa was willing to subscribe to children’s journals and books for me, just as my mother had done in Hiroshima. The door to the wonders of the world was being opened again before my eyes. I found a small bookstore on my way to the school. The area where patrons could stand around browsing was only about the size of a small

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bathroom, but the store was a gold mine for book lovers like me. The owner was a frail-looking, long-haired, middle-aged man who knew the exact location of every book in his huge collection. A large number of used books were on the shelves for rent at minimal daily charges. To stretch my tiny funds, I read each book as quickly as I could. One day at school we were treated to a narration of The Merchant of Venice in Japanese by a well-known Japanese playwright. Inspired by the experience, I stopped in the bookstore to browse through the Shakespeare collection. The owner was very pleased with my inquiry, offering his favorite Shakespeare plays. He took it upon himself from then on to tutor me in the great books of the East and the West. I read voraciously, like drinking from an oasis after being rescued from a scorching desert, with a book in hand everywhere I went. And I freely shared my newly acquired knowledge of literature with my classmates, who actually were more interested in the fashions of hair ribbons and gossip. Sometimes, during school lessons, I found teachers conveying incorrect information, and I could not help but question them in those situations. My questioning was a gesture not of ill-intention but rather of a burning desire for truth and facts. I learned, however, that encouragement to seek the truth or new knowledge was limited; rather, we were required to memorize what we were told. I wondered what Mama would have said about this kind of teaching. I had difficulty adjusting to the social environment at Kabe Girls’ School; it was quite different from what I had known at the Seibi Academy, and I couldn’t figure out what was expected of me. The students came from diverse backgrounds. I kept active in sports, art, and classroom activities, and was often elected to be an officer in the student council. For the Kabe School Culture Day, I suggested that we stage a play. None of the girls had any idea how to do this. I had no experience, either, but minor problems like that had never stopped me before, so I offered to write the script for the play. After I related several European fairy tales, the girls selected “The Princess and the Frog,” and I went to work preparing the script and stage directions. Other girls made the costumes, and the play was a great success.

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But I also attracted the ill will of a few of my classmates, who consequently subjected me to vicious rumors ranging from passing notes that I hadn’t written to rendezvousing with young boys I did not know. Interest in the opposite sex was the farthest thing from my mind, but a detailed account of such a rendezvous by a “witness” circulated, and no amount of protest could stop the generation of new sightings. All Japanese children are taught to careHideko as the frog in “The Princess and the Frog” fully guard their reputation. school play, 1948 “What would the neighbors say?” is taken far more seriously in Japan than it is in America. People conduct business based on trust, and one’s reputation helps determine one’s place in Japanese society. Even though the rumors about me were untrue, they constituted a serious threat to my future. During a kimono sewing class that was usually slow and unexciting, someone had passed a note with a drawing of a mouse. The teacher, Ms. Komatsu, discovered the note and considered the likely suspect to be a good drawer. All eyes turned in my direction, and Ms. Komatsu upbraided me for passing the note. One of the most painful and humiliating experiences for a Japanese student is to be reprimanded privately by her teacher. The only thing worse than that is to be reprimanded in front of her classmates. At first, I sat frozen in my seat. But then, mustering all the courage I could gather, I stood up and appealed to the teacher and the class to please put a stop to these false accusations, which I found very hurt-

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ful. My response startled Ms. Komatsu: she and everybody else had expected me to acknowledge my humiliation and offer profuse apologies. She turned red and told us she would confer with the rest of the faculty about my request. Swishing her navy blue hakama (a skirt worn over a kimono), she walked out briskly. I expected that the rumors would at long last be put to rest. An hour or so later, she returned much calmer and more composed. She informed us that the consensus of the faculty was that “where there is no fire there is no smoke,” and that from now on I was to conduct myself with greater circumspection. The old saying did not apply in this situation, but it didn’t matter; I was defenseless. There was no one to stand up on my behalf and defend my innocence or teach me how best to cope with such adversity. Not having a mother meant that I also had no advocate or a mentor. It meant going without the social protection I hadn’t even realized I had until I lost it. But I still had one parent, so I confided in him with great difficulty about being dishonored through misunderstanding. Papa took me seriously and made the unprecedented sacrifice of taking time off to come to the school to speak to my teacher. The result was devastating, however. He came home with a stern face, saying the teacher had assured him there was evidence for the accusations: students had attested to seeing a piece of paper with an obscene doodling. I protested that I was not the culprit, and I knew who did it. Papa was glum and said only that he could not take additional time off or go back to the school to clear my name. Nearly sixty years later, a former Kabe Girls’ School teacher wrote to me. She had been married to an engineer who did business with Tamura Industries and was very fond of my father. In responding to her letter, I shared my old grief associated with this incident, mentioning the name of the girl who was the culprit and that no one else seemed to have cared but me. To my delight, she was most sympathetic, remembering details about that girl and other troubles she had caused long after I transferred to the Hiroshima Jogakuin mission school in 1948. She added that my name had been mentioned frequently as “a gifted

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student with a great future.” This unexpected compliment was received with gratitude—but half a century too late. The experience of being unfairly accused and judged at school, for things I had not done, was just one more way the sense of abandonment swept through my already shattered self, causing me to feel there was no one left who believed in me. It might have been then that I stopped standing up for myself, resigned to the knowledge that without a motheradvocate, I could not win. When I had my own children, I was determined that what had happened to me would not be repeated. I always believed in my children and stood up for them on many occasions. But back then, I turned from a bubbly, curious, outgoing, and sturdy girl into a defenseless and easily bruised victim, prone to retreating. From time to time, I still enjoyed organizing and producing school plays with other students, or gabbing with the other girls. But a sense of joy did not accompany these activities. I was good at making girls laugh—but I knew that my own laughter was always just a flicker away from a sob. My calligraphy and watercolors won first prize each year, but no one came to see them. I gave up caring about academic achievements. Instead, my favorite activity became climbing a treacherous hill with a very sharp incline and no established path. I sometimes invited a few girls to join me. We giggled and screamed the entire time as we climbed, losing our grip sometimes when our footing gave way. I didn’t undertake this challenge just for fun; facing real danger and making it safely to the top reinforced my otherwise fading sense of worthiness. Swimming in a rapidly moving stream was another test I set for myself. I had no swimsuit, so I swam in my underwear. The challenge of not hitting the sharp rocks or getting sucked into the whirlpools was scary. The frigid water made my lips and fingertips shiver and shrivel in a short time. I enjoyed testing myself against nature’s dangers, for I knew that these challenges were fair. The rules were laid out, and I could meet them with skill, courage, and daring. In comparison, the challenges of the social world were unpredictable and more threatening. Without

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my mother’s support and guidance, my coping skills were unequal to the task. My entire universe had been destroyed by the A-bomb; how could I trust that the same experience would not happen again? How was I to find joy in living when there was no encouragement for trying, or praise for a job well done? How was I to defend myself against false accusations, when no one believed in me? How was I to know that there would be a better tomorrow, when today was so utterly unbearable, without any other soul who really cared? Looking back on that phase of my life, I realize that I was trying to regain the strengths and resources I had enjoyed before the A-bomb took everything away. I had been an athlete with physical stamina before the bomb fell, so I strove to be so again. I had enjoyed stories galore from children’s literature of the East and West, so I tried to share them now by staging fairy tales as plays and performing them with my classmates. I did all I could to overcome what had been lost and to reconnect with it again. But my efforts were futile; my old, happy self was gone forever, and now I had to find a new Hideko. I missed Mama more than ever. I knew she would have stood by me no matter what had happened. She would have tried to explain all the things I could not understand. A few times, she returned to me in my dreams, and I remember running to her and asking, “Mama, why haven’t you come home? I’ve been waiting for you so long. It’s been so hard, Mama!” But in those dreams she never explained to me why she had been away. I saw her, calm yet pensive, carrying a little bundle as if she were en route somewhere. I remember shouting in excitement that my mother was alive and well, and that she was coming home. In one dream she did come home with me, but when I awoke she was gone. In another dream, she could not come home with me. My recollection of her dream responses has become vague. I do not remember why she could not return. As my family grappled with our various postwar difficulties, I learned that some of my former classmates’ families had also been caught in a losing battle with the stressful times and circumstances. One day, walking on a downtown street in Hiroshima, I saw a news item posted on

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the corner bulletin and caught sight of the name “Oki.” This boy had been my classmate at the Seibi Academy. The news story reported that he and his younger sister, who had attended Hiroshima Jogakuin—a Methodist mission girls’ school—had been strangled to death by their father, who had become despondent over his business’s failure. I could not believe my eyes. The sweet little girl who had been with me in Kimita Village, and the sturdy young man who had made it through the war safe and sound, were gone just as suddenly as their beautiful mother who had been killed by the bomb. Many people walked around Hiroshima with keloid burns, but many more were walking around with invisible scars that were equally hurtful, if not worse. In later years, I would hear stories of other classmates who had stayed on in Kimita Village after I left. By the time they returned to Hiroshima with their teachers, a good number of them had lost at least one parent, and some could find no surviving family members. One such classmate, as I learned later, was an only son of a prominent antique dealer in Hiroshima. His family was well off—he had a complete electric train set that was the envy of all the other boys. But their home was destroyed, and his father was killed by the A-bomb. When he returned to Hiroshima after August 6, his mother met him at the train station. She brought his father’s ashes with her, saying, “This is your father.” She herself was sickly and was slowly dying. The boy struggled to find food and care for his mother and himself, but he was a mere child, a sixth grader, too young for these responsibilities. When his mother died, this only son of one of Hiroshima’s wealthiest families, who had never lacked anything before, had to find a wheelbarrow to carry his mother’s corpse to the riverbank so her body could be cremated along with the others piled there. This boy was never the same afterward. Apparently, cutting himself off from the pain of this experience also meant cutting his connections with Seibi Academy and his former classmates. Despite our repeated invitations, he never came to our reunions in all the years we gathered together. From time to time a classmate would call him, and they would exchange news about one another. He had moved to a neighboring

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prefecture and was married with four daughters. He owned a button shop and made a modest living. His parents’ vast wealth had been lost forever.

8

An Awakening of Hope 1948–1950

On December 7, 1947, our “living God,” the Emperor, visited Hiroshima. Before the reign of General MacArthur, we had been prohibited from making any direct eye contact with His Holiness or the Empress. Now, near the Gokoku Shrine—next to the ruins of the former military training ground and the Seibi Academy in the center of the leveled city—the human Emperor climbed a few steps to a small, hastily constructed wooden platform. After all the years that I had been taught to be willing to die for our Emperor, and after we had all suffered so much for him, I had to see him, as did thousands of others. Wearing a suit and tired woolen coat, and waving a crushed hat in his right hand, the former living God was surrounded by a sea of people. I don’t remember what he said or if there were words of consolation, but none were necessary. We understood that his very presence was his sincere expression of regret for our plight and the plight of the country. A groundswell of Banzai cheers emerged spontaneously, repeated by young and old who had never expected to see the former God in their lifetime. A profound and patriotic empathy was shared by thousands in the desolate city that day. The speculation that Hiroshima would be uninhabitable for the next seventy-five years was never taken very seriously by its citizens and 107

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went largely ignored. There were some residents who never even left the city after the bombing, either because—like my father—they felt it was their duty to aid the victims, or because their homes and businesses had not been destroyed. For example, our cousins the Nishikawas had been able to organize their employees to successfully defend their rubber factory and their home from the firestorm. Of course, it helped that there were large vacant fields around their factory buildings and estate; but it also helped that the employees were willing to die in the fire, if necessary, to save the structures. Our own heroic Tamura Industries employees also stayed and battled the fires as best they could without any proper firefighting equipment. But Uncle Hisao’s serious injuries prevented him from leading a successful defense, so most of the factory buildings, as well as our estate, were totally destroyed. The ruined factory machinery had to be dug out of the rubble and sent away to be refurbished. Rebuilding the plant took months, but eventually a smaller but fully operational facility for manufacturing sewing needles was completed on the original factory site. The biggest obstacle to restoring our family’s company, however, was the damage that had been done to the spirit of its current leadership. After the loss of his son, Uncle Hisao was never the same again. Papa gave all he could to support his older brother’s efforts to rebuild. But he, too, was a broken man, without the beloved wife for whose life-partnership he had willingly chosen disinheritance. Their efforts at rebuilding were primarily an expression of Japanese dutifulness: they owed it to their families and employees to try to bring back the business their father had founded decades before. But they lacked the fire and drive of men who truly believed in the future; the Bomb had destroyed not only their company’s physical structures, but also their passion for life. Early in the spring of 1948 and soon after the reconstructed Tamura Industries plant had resumed operations, Papa designed and built two modest homes. The home that he and I moved into with Uncle Hisao and Aunt Fumiko was on the banks of the Ota River; and the other home, for Grandma and Aunt Kiyoko, was on the original estate. At

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long last, our entire family was able to live together again in Hiroshima—and much more comfortably than when the six of us had been sharing a tiny abode. Other Hiroshima residents also returned to the sites of their former homes, but we were more fortunate than many. Some of the new “residences” were little more than piles of sheet metal. Building materials of all kinds were in short supply. There were many other scarcities in those days, too. We owned very few changes of clothing right after the war, so our light-colored clothes had to be washed over and over again, and all the fuzz came off our sweaters. But we managed to keep ourselves clean and our clothes mended—and because clothing was in such short supply, we all paid less attention to proper attire than would have been thinkable before the war. When the signing of the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri was first shown on film, I couldn’t help but wonder how the Honorable Mr. Shigemitsu, the Japanese foreign minister who signed the surrender, had managed to locate the appropriate clothing for the occasion—even a top hat. Slowly, however, the people and the city were beginning to return to life despite the material hardships and the bura-bura illness, the fatigue syndrome from which many survivors suffered. Papa worked long hours every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. He would leave early in the morning and return late at night. But he promised me that he would take one day off from work each month and spend that whole day with me. He kept that promise, and those days with him were my happiest moments during those years. One of the places Papa took me on our days together was a café he had discovered near Yokogawa Station. The café—called Shubo, meaning “The People’s Hope”—was run by my art teacher from Kabe Girls’ School, Mr. Yamasaki, and his wife. He had studied painting in Paris before the war. In the days in Midorii when I was most discouraged and without hope, Mr. Yamasaki would tell me I could become an artist. He liked my sketches and watercolors. I told him I would rather be a writer. He used to say that it was possible for even a woman to become

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both an artist and a writer. I was amazed that anyone could have said anything so optimistic at a time when the future seemed so bleak; his encouragement meant everything to a devastated child left with little reason to hope or live. Almost eighty years later, I can still see his gentle face and warm eyes and hear him speaking to me as I sketched sweet pea flowers in the school’s vegetable garden. My father and I would sit together in the Shubo café and savor our cups of fresh coffee and tea. Papa would order apple pie for both of us, the kind with flaky pastry layers like the ones we used to enjoy in pastry shops on Ginza in Tokyo. The mere presence of European coffee and tea, combined with fresh-baked pastries, brought us back to our happiest pre-war days with Mama. In those moments, we were not poor survivors but rich with memories of love and nourishment. We listened to the music of Beethoven and Mozart while enjoying the taste of fruit pie with a fine layered crust that melted in our mouths. The Shubo café was a place where we could dream again before stepping back out onto the city’s burned and bare soil. Papa also took me to the movies on his monthly days off. I still remember watching Gaslight, The Bicycle Thief, Casablanca, and Open City with him. We especially liked Italian movies. An unexpected pleasure in returning to Hiroshima was being close to the Ota River again. After we moved into our new house beside the river, my favorite activity became walking along its banks and watching the sunset. I would sit on the grass full of clover leaves and wait for the sun to set. One day, I noticed a four-leaf clover under my fingertip. To my astonishment I then found tens and hundreds of others as well. The riverbank, which so recently had been trodden on by the injured and the dying, was now filled with four-leaf clovers. I was ecstatic about finding the symbol of good fortune right in front of my home, and collected them all evening long. There were also five- and six-leaf clovers, but the thought of mutation caused by radiation never occurred to me at the time. In the meantime, the people of Hiroshima were being visited by a new kind of worry: the prospect of receiving a summons from the Atomic

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Bomb Casualty Commission, or ABCC for short. The word from those who had already been summoned was that the ABCC was interested in examining the bomb survivors but unwilling to dispense any medications for our healing. This information gave rise to the perception that bomb victims were being used for American medical research, but with no tangible benefits for the research subjects. This complaint was shared quietly, however, since no one wished to defy orders from the Occupational Army or anything remotely connected with it. The ABCC doctors, we were told, examined their patients in a drastically different manner than that followed by Japanese physicians. The female bomb survivors were horrified when they were asked to disrobe entirely and put on a gown. Being stark naked for a doctor violated our sense of decency and propriety; Japanese physicians allowed their patients to remain fully clothed during an examination, only unbuttoning their shirt or opening the front of their kimono slightly as needed. This reported indignity reinforced the common suspicion that Hiroshima’s citizens were serving as experimental lab animals. Fortunately, no one in our family received a summons until much later, when my father’s new wife received a summons. She, however, came from a village some distance away from Hiroshima and had therefore suffered no bomb-related anomalies. We wondered about the ABCC’s recordkeeping—but then, it was not our concern. The U.S. military was clearly worried about the effects of radiation; indeed, a standing order from the GHQ—MacArthur’s General Headquarters in Tokyo—forbade all Allied military personnel from entering Hiroshima without special permission.* Most Hiroshima citizens kept a wide distance from the few Occupational Army soldiers who did enter the city, though the soldiers were occasionally seen carousing * I learned about this sixty years later from Dr. John Montgomery, an emeritus Harvard professor who had been an attaché to General MacArthur. Dr. Montgomery had earned a city planning degree and wanted to support Japanese rebuilding efforts. He was allowed to enter Hiroshima to assist Mayor Hamai; and he was also instrumental in guiding a reporter from New York City, John Hersey, in finding and interviewing survivors for his now-famous 1946 New Yorker article, “Hiroshima.”

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with female Japanese escorts on weekends. Most people looked away in shame; traditional Japanese custom forbade men and women from touching each other in public, but the Americans ignored our customs. The sight was a forced reminder of our humiliating national defeat with horrific memories and ongoing suffering. At home, Papa tried to teach me about the peaceful use of nuclear power. I often heard him thinking out loud about the possibility of turning nuclear energy into a power source and thereby producing electricity or anything people desired. It would still take some time, he thought, but he believed it was the right way to use atomic power. He wanted me to separate my fear of the nuclear bomb that had killed my mother from the wisdom of using the same energy source for the betterment of humanity. He believed that it was a marvelous discovery that needed to be harnessed. I never once heard him blame nuclear radiation for the death of his wife or the destruction of his homeland. I could not fully understand this view, and other family members were even less enthusiastic about it, treating it as another one of his eccentric notions. They never wanted to hear anything about radiation or atomic power again; in their opinion, nothing good could ever come of the pika-don (flash-blast), as Grandma Tamano referred to the bomb that had taken away everything she had known or possessed. The notion of the bomb being “evil” was an alien concept to us, however; Buddhism taught us we can commit evil deeds, and we sometimes do such deeds, but evil itself comes from within our hearts. Some people did hold the slayers evil but not the bomb itself. The bomb was a gadget put together by people—just like the weapons we Japanese had constructed. Papa was in favor of tearing down the skeletal dome that still stood at the center of Hiroshima and was all that remained of the city’s former commerce promotion center. I was dismayed. The dome was a memorial to the dead and a reminder against a future nuclear holocaust. But Papa was adamant about the importance of directing people’s energy toward today’s needs; in his view, everyone must keep moving forward. He felt that too many people in Hiroshima were mentally trapped in

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death and destruction. This view seemed cold and unfeeling to me, as I was not ready so soon to leave the dead behind. On this issue, we never saw eye to eye. Most people saw it my way. In retrospect, Papa’s perspective and courage to move forward should have been much admired instead of dismissed. He was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had had to undergo the difficult physical and mental metamorphosis from being a dedicated commissioned officer of the Imperial Army, to spending months moving the mountains of bomb debris, to now reconstructing his life from scratch, looking after his and Mama’s relatives, and raising a traumatized teen daughter. He needed all his energy to carry on. For my schooling back in Hiroshima, Papa chose the Jogakuin consortium, a private Methodist mission school for girls that was founded in the late nineteenth century and included a junior and senior high school and a university. Supported by the American Southern Methodists, Hiroshima Jogakuin was the first school to be rebuilt on its original site. Many parents sought admission for their daughters here, as Hiroshima’s coed public schools were still struggling to restore their own burned-down buildings and to define their new roles and directions. The Christian value system, which was attacked during the war because of its importation from the West, had now become more acceptable, and in the public eye, the mission school was a safe haven for girls. Papa also believed that the new age we were now living in would require the ability to speak English, and that a spoken language could not be mastered without exposure to native speakers. For this purpose, he felt that a school in which American missionaries taught would be the best. I myself had lost interest in education by this time; as far as I was concerned, one school was as good as another. My first day of class at Hiroshima Jogakuin, however, was awkward and confusing. The day started with a morning chapel service that included singing hymns, reading the Bible, listening to a reflective talk, and praying; and it ended with a student-led mini-service that included more singing and prayer. Having never experienced such practices, I felt mentally overwhelmed.

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The exposure to the native speakers was just as intimidating, starting with the stern and demanding American missionary who spoke English much too quickly for me to understand. It was a nightmare. I prayed not to be called on by the missionary in my English classes, or to have to lead the closing prayer at the end of the day. I had never felt so incompetent. Bible study was taught each week by a young minister who was quite a deep thinker and welcomed students’ questions. His style of teaching was stimulating to the mind. The Bible itself, however, felt more foreign; it kept me busy keeping track of foreign names, from one clan to another. There were even more names for the disciples of the Son of God. It was also filled with teachings that seemed to directly contradict traditional Japanese beliefs. I remember asking the teacher why we ask to not be led “into temptation”; previously, I had been taught to welcome temptations, for overcoming them is a step toward strengthening ourselves. The teacher thought for a moment and then answered that if we understood the true meaning of “temptation,” we would fear it rather than welcome it. I did not fully understand that reply and probably do not understand it still, as I neither fear nor welcome temptation. The hymns, on the other hand, were easier to become familiar with, since I always liked singing. And dressed in the school uniform—a navy jumper over a white blouse, adorned with a small, shield-shaped pin bearing the Latin words Cum Deo Laboramus (“We work with God”)—I looked in every way like any other Jogakuin girl. I was elected class leader a month after I started there, even without knowing much of anything about the school. Sharing a home with Aunt Fumiko and Uncle Hisao was a welcome change from living with Grandma and Aunt Kiyoko. Aunt Fumiko was a warm, sympathetic woman devoted to her family; she was willing to share what little of herself she had left with Papa and me, and we were grateful for that. One day, though, I upset Aunt Fumiko by sketching her profile. She was sensitive about her uneven teeth, and my drawing angered and hurt her. She refused to speak to me for quite a while. I

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wondered how Mama might have reacted to such a drawing; I think that more than likely she would have smiled. I should have been more sensitive to my aunt’s feelings, but perhaps I was just testing her limits. Well, that was the limit. I found out. Reaching physical maturity in the summer before my first year of high school came as a total surprise. I noticed Uncle Hisao nudging Aunt Fumiko during dinner and nodding in my direction. Aunt Fumiko motioned me to leave the table with her. She took me to the bathroom with a supply of cotton. She told me that I was starting to have a monthly period like an adult woman. The next day, a celebratory dinner of red beans and rice was cooked in my honor. I had never before felt so embarrassed about my private development. I was fourteen and a half at the time. Following this episode, Papa began considering remarriage. Until now, he had seemed committed to staying a bachelor and had given no indication of matrimonial interests. But now he was looking through big piles of photographs and accepting omiai meetings with prospective wives, arranged by a matchmaker. Soon a young widow named Tetsuko, twelve years my senior, was chosen, and the matrimonial arrangements were confirmed. We were told she was a teacher in a sewing school from one of the villages outside Hiroshima. Papa was anxious for me to meet her and get acquainted. We met together once but spoke very little to each other. Nevertheless, Papa deemed our meeting to be successful, and the wedding date was set. It would be held in the grand zashiki of our Nishikawa cousins’ estate. I watched Papa and Tetsuko-san being wed by an exchange of wine with our relatives’ blessings. They took off on a honeymoon boat, sailing on the Inland Sea. I had very little part in these events, other than to try to be fair and pleasing. I made my best effort to ingratiate myself to my young stepmother by promising her that she could wear some of Mama’s kimonos that were saved in the country, if she would like to do so. But in reality, relationships are not formed so simply or comfortably between two personalities who have both previously suffered much travail. It was difficult for Tetsuko-san to understand a young teen without

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having already raised a child. (She had reportedly left a baby son with her in-laws when she was widowed by her first husband’s death in the war.) And it must have been very awkward to join a family where intimate bonding already existed between her husband and his daughter. It was an impossible situation for both of us. My presence reminded her that she was not the first wife whom Papa had loved so deeply. For my part she was not, and could not be, my mother. Tension rose between us, and she began to complain to Papa about me. I started to feel as defenseless and abandoned as I had felt when unfairly accused of misdeeds at the Kabe Girls’ School. But to keep the peace in the family, I made no protest, shrinking each day into a more and more carcass-like existence. I did not know how to handle the growing complications. Aunt Fumiko preferred to stay out of the conflict; she wanted to let the new family work out its own problems. Meanwhile, Tetsuko-san was expecting the arrival of a new baby, while her new husband and the proud father-to-be was away much of the time. As a consequence, I Papa, Hideko, and stepmother, Tetsuko, 1949 felt numb and as though I were shrinking out of existence, becoming a vapor instead of a person. I thought that perhaps by becoming invisible like the air around me, my pain would also go away, as my family and I went on about our daily business without being able to address, much less resolve, our worsening situation.

9

A Rainy Day in Hiroshima 1949–1951 Rain, rain, rain, Black rain. Gentle rain. Rain no more. A song was floating in my head as I idled in my chair at school, looking out at the wet sky and waiting for the bell to ring. Raindrops were bursting on the cold pavement outside. The next class was tenth-grade English Conversation, taught by Ms. Jones, a missionary from Odessa, New York. She was short with pretty blue eyes, and her hair was usually tied up in a ponytail with a striped ribbon. I really wasn’t interested in being exposed to the native speakers who taught English at this mission school. Instead, I dreaded them. Sitting second from the front just made matters worse. The top students from my freshman class had been placed in this conversation class for our sophomore year—a class designed for girls who wanted to specialize in English and that doubled the number of hours per week we spent studying the language. I was both surprised and happy to see that some of my old friends from the Seibi Academy were also in the class. That school—and all of the students and teachers who had been in it at the time—had been utterly destroyed by the A-bomb, and the dissolution of the Japanese military a few months later ensured that it would never be rebuilt. One of the former Seibi 117

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students, Teiko, was seated in front of me. She wore a permanent eyepatch and was losing her eyesight slowly. No one spoke about it, especially Teiko herself. I remembered her happy laughter, like the ringing of a bell, in the old days before the Bomb. The sound of her flowing, high-pitched laughter could be heard anywhere on the playground, in the classroom, and during breaks. We were both only-children given to our own ways, and we had clashed sometimes. Sometimes our wills had even collided over whose games to play. We had learned to avoid each other. Teiko, also from a wealthy family, had been sent to a relative’s home in the country before August 6. She used to be such a merry and playful little girl. But now she was not the same person anymore. I felt very close and identified with her plight and what she was going through, but she would not allow others to intrude. With a quiet smile, she remained silent while my interest did not abate. I missed her laughter that sounded so much like the ringing of a bell. Years later, on the seventieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, when I returned to the city as a Peace Ambassador, I learned more about what had happened to Teiko after our time together at Jogakuin. Her eyesight had continued to decline until she lost her vision altogether; but after many long years of struggle, she finally reached a measure of calm and comfort and was living with a son. For some reason, learning about her resilient life buoyed me. Knowing that my former chum had finally found peace and stability meant a lot to me. I also missed my dearest buddy, Miyoshi, from Seibi Academy days. Our mothers had retrieved the two of us from our evacuation “exile” in Kimita Village; and expecting to see her again shortly, I had bidden her a casual “sayonara” when we parted ways in Hiroshima on the late afternoon of August 5. She had then gone to stay with her grandparents, who were so eager to see her. None of the three survived the explosion, so our promise to get back together after our return was never fulfilled. During our secluded time at Kimita Village, we were inseparable. We lived and slept together, confided in each other everything that came up or mattered in our shared lives, and ate, studied, played, and laughed

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and cried together under unspeakably harsh conditions. She had been like a sister there; wherever she went, I’d be. I could not imagine my life ahead without her friendship, but she had been crushed and burned to death and I’d never see her again. How could that be possible? Another former schoolmate at Seibi Academy who might also have been here was Kimiko Nishimoto, who used to play Mozart on the piano so brilliantly that even our music teacher, as I’ve said, lost track of the time when listening. Kimiko and her widowed mother had lived near the A-bomb’s epicenter, just down river from the commerce promotion center whose burned-out dome now dominated the landscape. They never had a chance; the heat and the force of the explosion at the epicenter destroyed all human remains there. But hearing the crisp sound of Mozart piano concertos would take me back to the academy’s sunny music room with its grand piano, listening to Kimiko’s mesmerizing music. Back then, it seemed that nothing else mattered but the beautiful sounds in the air: that music, the children’s delighted laughter, the twittering of the birds outside. Like our beautiful garden, my heart refused to let go of those images and sounds; it was as if I could return to the long-gone Seibi building and touch the piano keys or just sit in that room again. No matter. Many times I returned to the room in my imagination. Pushing such thoughts away on a rainy day was neither hard nor easy since the wet gray mood was an anesthetic to me. My dulled spirit was watered by rain like a flower seed in dry soil. I didn’t bother much with homework anymore, nor did I care much about my grades; these things no longer concerned me. I did meet a few new girls in the class with whom I wished to be friends, needing to feel some sense of camaraderie. One of these girls, Sumiko, was an exceptionally bright and tall student whose family had just been released by the Russians in Manchuria to return to Japan. The family had enjoyed a comfortable existence in Manchuria until the Russian invasion and occupation, when their house was confiscated by the Russians for use as officers’ quarters. That experience, Sumiko said, had taught them an unexpected lesson in civility. The Russian officers were cordial and apologetic about occu-

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pying their beautiful residence. She came to realize that these were not uneducated, cruel people as she had been led to believe, but rather civilized individuals deserving respect. Sumiko had read extensively and her critical mind was sharp and interesting. She won my respect immediately. She confided that she felt open to foreigners because of her positive experience with the Russian officers. I was amazed to hear her praise of foreigners—and especially of our English Conversation teacher, Ms. Jones. On my first day in her class, Ms. Jones entered the classroom wearing a green corduroy jacket. She looked around the classroom and asked how the girls liked the rain. I pulled my head in like a turtle, and soft groans were heard across the room. Ms. Jones chuckled. “I see you don’t like rain. Isn’t there anyone who does?” she asked. I didn’t realize that my hand had gone up until she repeated the question, “Why do you like a rainy day? Tamura-san?” The sound of my name being called startled me as I realized too late that I had raised my hand unconsciously. I hated being put on the spot, especially in the English Conversation class, because it always made me feel like a fool. I couldn’t make the mental crossover necessary to think or speak in an unfamiliar language. My mind was already too strained by the turmoil in my personal life; I was depressed and just felt like hiding in a hole like a mole. I tried to stammer out a few words about how I thought better on a rainy day, but soon gave up, feeling foolish and awkward. Instead, I blurted out that I couldn’t possibly tell her the reasons in English, for they were too deep and complicated. Unfazed by my reply, Ms. Jones suggested that I go ahead and respond in Japanese, even though she could not understand Japanese. I was trying to stonewall her with my responses, but she clearly had the upper hand. When I muttered that such an exercise would be unfair to the teacher and the rest of the class during English hour, Ms. Jones answered decisively that she would have someone translate, which would be good practice. Our exchange made me feel like I was disrobing in public, which was grossly embarrassing. I made one more try at being excused

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by saying that I still would have a problem because my thoughts could only be adequately expressed in poetry. But this declaration only encouraged Ms. Jones to ask for more. The missionary from Odessa, New York, closed the discussion by asking me to bring a poem to the next English Conversation class. I went home that day with the burden of a homework assignment that I had no choice but to produce, as I knew my teacher would ask for it tomorrow. Before the Bomb, Mama had followed my academic achievements closely, showing interest in my homework projects and going over them with me before I handed them in. I knew she eagerly hoped for me to be on the list of academic achievers whose names would be read out at the closing ceremony at the end of each quarter. Sadly, I didn’t accomplish this during her life, though I would make the list many times in years ahead. Now, however, with no one interested in or caring about my schoolwork, my motivation had evaporated. I’d just as soon go to a movie or stop at a noodle house and chat about nothing as do homework, and in fact I hadn’t done any for a long time. All that was required of me now academically was that I pass the courses. No one worried about my report card anymore; somebody always signed it without a glance. I did continue to read voraciously. I adored European, American, Russian, and Japanese classics as well as contemporary works. I listed the books I read in my diary, which I still have after nearly seventy years: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gide’s Straight is the Gate, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Turgenev’s First Love, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, Tanizaki’s Fine Snow, Nagai’s Leaving These Children, and many others. I sat at my desk in my little room by the banks of the Ota River, looking at the rain again. Misty gray air was filling the empty space between the raindrops outside the window. A poem? No sweat. But why would anyone care what I thought? I had been uncomfortable with all the attention that was focused on my responses during the class, but now, as words began to emerge from the rainy mist of my mind, I felt an inkling of pleasure. The words I jotted down were more about

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my own quest than reasons why I liked the rain. I was thinking about seeking truth. Truth Where can the Truth be? Could it be in my heart So worn and dirtied Like an old apron? Or could it be found In a little flower by the road Wet and frozen from the icy rain? Surely, Truth can be found Everywhere and yet nowhere. Much to my surprise, the poem I wrote sparked a lively discussion in the class, after a Nisei (American-born Japanese) student translated it into English for Ms. Jones. There were a few Christians in my class, and they were certain that they knew what the truth was. This made them intolerant of any other perception, including the Buddhist teachings I had learned at home and had come to believe: that nothing could be known with absolute certainty; that all things were in a state of flux; that life itself seemed to be defined by change. The Christian students put forth their convictions vehemently, defending their God and the place of Christ. I envied their enthusiasm even though their narrow-mindedness offended me. I also envied their unshakable faith in a religion that they could hang onto in the midst of such frightening change in the aftermath of the war. My friend Sumiko was on my side, but she kept silent during the debate. Her family was planning to move to Yokohama, her banker father having been assigned to a new job there; so her participation in the mission school classes was decreasing. Ms. Jones listened to all of our arguments with amusement, and without commenting, which was refreshing. The homework assignment had accomplished her purpose in the end, by creating a heated and stimulating discourse. My respect for this teacher from Odessa, New York, rose immeasurably.

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In contrast, I had had a very different kind of experience in another English class where we were assigned to write a series of essays telling our life stories. My essays were well received until I wrote one about my father getting intoxicated and coming home late, toward the end of the war. When that paper was returned, there were red ink marks all over it along with remarks that such things about one’s father should never be revealed. The teacher’s criticisms surprised me; I had only been following her explicit instructions to be open and honest. Years later, in my professional studies in the United States, I learned that families who struggle with alcohol addictions often refuse to admit the dysfunction even exists. My English teacher’s disapproval had continued to bother me until this discovery, which perhaps helped me to understand the reason behind it more clearly. Ms. Jones was different from the traditional missionaries at Jogakuin. She didn’t push her Christianity on us. She wasn’t afraid to talk or share her feelings on any subject with the students. Her teaching was not found in printed words, but rather in her heart. Soon all the girls flocked around her and laughed with her about anything, mostly little things from their own hearts. I began to look forward to being called on by Ms. Jones. Between my poor English and her poor Japanese, our conversations were limited and awkward at first. Slowly, though, there were more and more words in our exchanges, and the communication began to flow. I forgot how I had hated making a fool of myself. I was learning to trust someone again, without even realizing it. A special chemistry developed between us, and a close bond. One day I asked her if she had anything for an empty heart, and she responded by inviting me to her home for supper. Later she began inviting me home for supper and an overnight stay. We slept in the same bed like a mother and child in a Japanese home. I learned that Ms. Jones, growing up in America thousands of miles away and many years before, had also experienced the agony of a broken heart early in life. Her father had died in the flu epidemic of 1918 when she was only seven. Her widowed mother—who herself had been

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orphaned early—was forced to work to support the family, and the siblings looked after one another. Her mother was lonely at heart but loved flowers and reciting poetry, traits passed along to Ms. Jones. I felt a strong connection with my teacher; we were like one soul in two bodies. I began to write in my journal about my growing affection for Ms. Jones, calling her “Mama.” I kept my journal in my drawer and assumed that it was private, but a few days later, my angry stepmother ridiculed me for that journal entry. This violation of my privacy and her insulting words about my revered teacher tore my heart to shreds. In this episode as in many others, Papa remained passive. He had his own problems. He was still working long hours trying to bring the family business back into operation, a touch-and-go effort for years. He was in a chronic state of exhaustion and wanted nothing more than to come home at night to a happy family. His new wife had presented him with a plump and healthy son, Hideo, who filled Papa’s heart with pride and joy. A son to carry on the family name is the most important goal of every Japanese man. I knitted Hideo a top to welcome him into our family. At times, parents can tolerate their teenage children only by recalling how adorable they had been infants. Without that opportunity with me, Tetsuko found my behavior insufferable. In her eyes, I could do nothing right, and she criticized me constantly to Papa behind my back. When Papa intervened on my behalf, she accused him of having an unhealthy bond with me. He could not bear this familial strife and retreated into his work, leaving me undefended and seeming to hold me responsible for his wife’s displeasure, even in her invasion of my journal. The irony of this invasion and its repercussions was cruel: just as I was finally beginning to feel loved and supported by another human being again, that one good development in my life was creating more problems at home. In retrospect, a similar irony existed for my father. His joy in having a son and heir, the most desired fruit of traditional Japanese marriages,

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raised barriers between him and his daughter that neither she nor he could remove. I came to appreciate this dilemma only later in life, with the birth of my own son. I had been unaware of how deeply ingrained within Japanese people this valuing of a male offspring is. The joy and the confidence it instilled in me were beyond words, and I realize now that I owe my half-brother a debt of gratitude for the joy he brought my father. I cannot imagine how my father could have carried on with his endless labors without Hideo’s motivating presence in his life. As much as I still resent Tetsuko’s treatment of me, I am grateful to her for that big contribution to the quality of my father’s life. When I was alone in my room, I would sit and watch the passersby through the windows, take my mother’s picture out of its drawer, and hold it in my hands. Papa preferred that I put reminders of Mama, especially her picture, out of sight for his new wife’s comfort. He was a kind and gentle man, but he did not realize how important those few precious reminders of my mother were to me. I did make a protest of sorts against his demands that I put them away: I sent my monthly allowance of 1000 yen (worth about $10 in today’s currency) to a shoeshine boy named Santa-kun, via a local newspaper. The paper had featured this boy as a guardian of homeless orphans sleeping around Hiroshima Station, reporting that he was trying to raise money to build housing for them but having a difficult time obtaining sufficient funds. I wrote to say that I wanted to donate the money that I had been saving to purchase a locket for my mother’s picture. When an article later appeared in the paper praising my sacrifice of the locket for the shoeshine boy, Papa was quite displeased. My stepmother’s constant assaults on my self-respect eroded my soul. I started to think of ending it all so that everyone, including myself, would have some peace. I was exhausted and depressed by everyone’s demands on me and felt unable to please anyone. Differing views of life around me were equally confusing. I was reading European existentialism, and the cynical depictions of an uncertain world in which one may be turned into a giant insect or wrongly accused of crimes struck a deep chord. Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, describing the struggle and

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descent of a young man just as he aspired to climb upward, matched my own sentiments exactly. I could not bring myself to believe, as my Christian friends did, that one could be saved. Christ had not saved me or my loved ones from the A-bomb, or from the loss of my mother, or from my antagonistic stepmother or my painfully passive father. I felt as though it all had to be my fault. According to the Bible, I was precisely the kind of person Christ would save, but that did not ring true for me. I also hated the foreign name “Christ.” Why couldn’t he be called “Taro” or “Ichiro” or even “Hanako” or something else that seemed familiar? To love characters from great foreign literature was not quite the same as accepting them to be one’s personal God and Savior. I prayed in vain—there was no relief. I remained miserable. My new schoolfriend Sumiko had left Hiroshima by this time, but she wrote to me from her new home in Yokohama, wanting to keep up a long-distance friendship as she sensed that her “philosophy buddy” was struggling without her. I thought about the quickest and the surest way to end my life. I loved the dusk and my evening walks beside the riverbank, so I wanted it to happen in that timing and location. I chose the railway bridge two blocks from my home for my final demise. I timed the passing trains for a couple of nights and decided that the right time would be immediately after supper, when everyone would be relaxing and not notice me slipping away. On the night I decided to carry it out, I burned all of my intimate letters from friends to prevent any more ridiculing of my relationships. I bathed and combed my long hair, and put on a clean blue cotton blouse and a tan A-line skirt. My heart raced as I headed toward the railroad bridge. So it will all come to an end now, I thought. For a brief few seconds, I recalled the terrifying sensation of imminent death from the moment of the A-bomb explosion, but this time I was resigned to accept it. I was choosing to die since no other options seemed possible. By now I was almost at the crossing, walking very swiftly, with my face tightening and my heart rate quickening. I started to run so that I wouldn’t change

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my mind or miss the train at the last minute. Then, suddenly, there was a loud thump, and the train that I had chosen for my deliverance screeched to a halt. People were shouting and running to the front of the train. I joined the rush. There was a pair of men’s geta sandals (traditional Japanese wooden open-toed clogs) neatly placed next to the track. Whispering voices from the crowd of passersby told me that an old man had jumped in front of the train. Another soul in misery had claimed my train! I walked home disappointed and shaken, telling no one of the incident and still without any solution to my emotional torment. I imagined that I heard the old man’s voice saying, “But you are still so young.” Yes, sweet sixteen, sir. I gave up on the idea of getting run over by a train once the reality of such a grisly end became clearer. I thought instead about overdosing with a stimulant called Adorumu, which was becoming popular among students for its ability to help them stay awake. It was sold over the counter, and a famous writer named Osamu Dazai had used it to end both his own life and that of his mistress. I bought several packets of Adorumu and kept them in my pockets, for I now knew that I had no privacy at home. The timing of this suicide approach was altogether up to me, unlike the plan that had relied on the train schedule. I spent a few days thinking about sharing my feelings with my schoolfriend Etsuko, who sensed my distress. When I told her of my plan, she was quite upset. Like Sumiko, Etsuko’s family had lived in Manchuria before and during the war, and became refugees at the end of the war. She knew what it was to have one’s universe collapse and to lose everything. On the grass beside the pond in a public garden, and in the noodle shops, we had talked for hours about the despair that existed both within ourselves and out in the world. We were the closest of sisters. Shortly after our discussion, Etsuko came over to my house and gave me an envelope with a long letter. In it she said that I gave her hope because I was a decisive young woman, free of spirit, clear of mind, and a remarkable creature. “If you have to go, what justification do I have for remaining?” she wrote. Etsuko expressed confidence

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and support for all that I had tried to be and told me she valued me for who I was. Then one day Ms. Jones discovered the Adorumu tablets in my pocket. She grabbed them away from me. I defiantly pouted that I could procure more from where those had come from. Ms. Jones became very quiet, looking at me with tears in her eyes. Later, she came to see my father, accompanied by Etsuko’s brother’s tutor, and spoke with Papa about my plight. After they left, he called me Hideko and best friend, Etsuko, 1950 to the living room. Pale and shaken, and wiping away tears with his handkerchief, he told me he was trying his best to care for me, and the memory of Mama was precious to him as well, but I was being selfish and petulant and no new bride would stay in the household with me behaving this way. He said that I had to change my ways and reform. Seeing Papa so grieved broke my heart. It was all I could do to hold back my own sobs, but I managed to listen to him without showing any trace of tears. Mystified as to what behavior he was talking about, I begged for a more specific explanation of the negatives so that I might see a way of reforming, but he had no clear answer. He just said I should show in more ways that I was attempting to be in harmony with my stepmother, whatever forms those efforts might take. The conversation left me feeling defenseless and with the renewed idea that I was the cause of everyone’s unhappiness, including my own. My father’s tears

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became an indictment of my unlovability and worthlessness instead of demonstrating sympathy for my sense of helplessness. When I think back now on that dark rainy afternoon in our living room, I wonder why I didn’t break down and just tell my father exactly how I felt. I know he would have understood. We could at least have been authentic in accepting the tragedy of our situation. Now he has long since passed away, and I regret that in that moment I did not share my true feelings. This conversation marked the beginning of my awareness that the home I had called my own was now gone, along with the support I had relied on from my father. It was just like the moment after the Bomb fell and my relatives would not heed my pleadings to flee the oncoming fire—I had realized then that I was going to have to rely on myself if I wished to survive. But now, as then, I had no idea what to do next. In the privacy of my room, I felt as hollow inside as ever before. Without even being conscious of my action, I found myself putting a razor to my fingers. I was making blood stains on my notebook. It didn’t hurt, no, it didn’t hurt. It was like I was testing myself to see if I had any feelings left. I later showed the stains to Etsuko, who looked at me without too much reaction and said there was no point in hurting oneself just for kicks. My friend’s calm response washed away that destructive impulse. I took solace in Etsuko’s friendship; we shared our views and supported one another’s interests, working together on school newspapers, joining discussion groups, and spending time together at Etsuko’s parents’ villa on Miyajima Island. That villa was a perfect haven for the two of us. Taking a bagful of rice with us for food, we cooked, swam, walked, and sunned by the ocean with the sound of breaking waves roaring in our ears. We talked for hours, far into the night. We searched for our true worth and identities, which were somehow lost in the changing post-war world. But we never spoke of the holocausts we had each seen and lived through. Having only heard her speak of clutching a baby girl cousin as she fled fires caused by air raids, I thought at the time that Etsuko’s family, like Sumiko’s, had escaped from Manchuria when the Russians overran the terri-

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tory at the close of World War II. Later I learned that she, her mother, and her two brothers had actually returned to Japan from Manchuria before the end of the war, only to be caught in the fire bombings on Shikoku Island. She never spoke of the terror of her experience, and I never spoke of my suffering from the Bomb—I would not have known how to describe the source of my utter despair. But we were both avid readers of contemporary and classical literature, so there was no shortage of material for our long conversations. We seldom talked about our personal troubles at home except indirectly; sharing such private matters with others was not considered becoming of a high-minded young person, and anyway I did not know how to discuss them with Etsuko. I was afraid that doing so would only shame myself, as I must be the cause of everyone’s unhappiness. But the exchange of warm feeling with Etsuko, along with the support from Ms. Jones, did provide the haven I had lost at home, and kept both my spirit and body alive. Eventually, I abandoned the decision to end my life. This did not mean that everything went swimmingly afterward, though. For example, one day in the school hallway I was stopped by my homeroom teacher, a Japanese-American English teacher named Ms. Tanahashi. I was stunned by what came out of her mouth next. “I want you out of my homeroom, Tamura.” “What? Why, Tanahashi-sensei? What did I do?” “I saw you standing close to Ms. K. (a new and popular English teacher), laughing hard. I bet you were badmouthing me.” I protested, “Oh, no, Tanahashi-sensei, I did no such thing, I didn’t, honestly.” Her accusation was weird and without merit, but I later learned that she was also badmouthing me to the parents of my friends. Her attacks cut through my heart like a razor. I mentioned the incident many years later to a school administrator I had become close with, and learned that Ms. Tanahashi had wrongly accused a number of other students as well and had become a serious cause for concern at the school, a situation I had been unaware of at the time. After abandoning the idea of terminating my short life, my earlier interest in helping homeless orphans became more serious. The

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Hiroshima orphanage, located behind the railway station, was called Shudo-In, a name commonly used to refer to a monastery or a cloister. The director of the Shudo-In nursery was a health education teacher at our school, and she agreed to let me come and work for her as part of a summer internship program that Ms. Jones had helped establish. The nursery held twenty or more infants and toddlers; my job was feeding them and keeping them clean. Compared to my chubby baby stepbrother, who was growing by leaps and bounds, these were frail babies for whom there were never enough loving arms to go around. All who worked there shared a passion for extending all the love and help we could give. My supervisor never seemed to tire. She held and spoke to each baby as though she or he were her very own child. She knew their personalities and their cries. She grew furious one day when one of the junior assistants propped a milk bottle in a baby’s crib. This feeding method was to be avoided at all costs, she explained. The babies were to be held and talked to, most especially when they were being fed. She was truly an excellent model for mothering. The most unforgettable image of the orphanage that comes back to me today, however, is that of a little two-and-a-half-year-old Eurasian boy named Henry. His features were completely Caucasian—he had an angular nose, wavy blond hair, and beautiful blue eyes—though his birth mother was Japanese. He only spoke English. I heard the child’s long wailing cries when I arrived at work one day, and I learned that his American adoptive parents, who had cared for him since his birth, had had to leave him behind because the U.S. government would not permit Henry to enter the country. Henry’s stuffed animals, and other toys that had been left with him, were wet from his tears. As a mission school student, I was relied on to help speak English to Henry. He missed his family and cried inconsolably for days. I don’t remember when he stopped, or if I ever saw or heard him run and laugh like other children. There were more than a few toddlers at the orphanage for the same reason; they had been left behind by American parents who could not take their adopted children home with them.

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In addition to working at the orphanage, I also started visiting young women in the tuberculosis wing of the Hiroshima Memorial Hospital. Ms. Jones was lending her active support to that facility as well. I brought the patients copies of my teen magazine called Himewari (Sunflower), along with whatever cakes and candies I could buy with my allowance. I was an awkward visitor, unsure of what I should say to comfort them. I just wanted them to know that their disease did not drive me away. And that I felt sad and cared about their isolation. This experience in the tuberculosis wing planted a seed that later blossomed into my career choice: helping people in hospitals.

Visiting TB patients at Hiroshima Memorial Hospital, 1952

The young women in this ward were a few years older than me and were very kind and generous in accepting my intrusion in their lives. We mostly talked about girlish concerns like how to give facial massages to promote smooth and pimple-free skin, my school experiences, and their families. Some of the women were eventually able to leave and go

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home; others became more ill and died. In our so-called contaminated city, there was a reverence for even what little life remained in this ward, which most people, fearful for their own health, stayed away from. My friend Etsuko and I began discussing plans for our futures, which at this point seemed so uncertain and vague. Etsuko’s parents were facing financial difficulties, as were mine. Fortunately for Etsuko, she had kept up her studies more tenaciously than I had and so was able to win a scholarship to Doshisha University in Kyoto. I longed to join my friend, but Papa informed me his expenses were mounting with the new family, and he could not afford to send me to a college outside of Hiroshima. Gone were the days of telling me that he would send me to Keio, his alma mater in Tokyo. When I reminded him of that promise, he simply said that times had changed, making a slurring sound with his mouth. I noticed that he had developed this habit of slurring when he was under stress or annoyed. My teacher-ally, Ms. Jones, was preparing to leave Japan on a furlough, and she had begun spending less and less time with me. An unthinkably intimate relationship had developed quickly between us, and I had come to look forward to being held with a kiss, her voice assuring me that “I love you.” But this was changing now, just as quickly as it had begun. Although the increasing distance between us was painful, I accepted it, trusting that it was a rehearsal separation to prepare for the real one. I understood that this was how Ms. Jones wanted it, but that understanding did not take away my feelings of loss. Still, I did not speak to her of my sorrow, as I was too appreciative of what she had already done for me. Instead, I tried to think of ways to repay her in some form that would be meaningful to her as a teacher. I decided that the very best gift would be to honor her mission— and informed Ms. Jones that I was willing to be baptized as a Christian. So, in the summer before my teacher left the country, I accepted the sprinkling of water over my head and heard a minister pronounce me a disciple of Christ, the foreign-named son of God. This baptism was an act of giving rather than a true conversion of my soul, for I did not

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know any better way of showing love for someone who was leaving me. My teacher was just as pleased and gratified as I had anticipated. On the day of Ms. Jones’s departure, I did not go inside the train station to see her off; instead, I stayed outside and watched the send-off party go in with her. No one saw me standing there, but I was satisfied that at the end of her mission and a long “rainy day,” my teacher was taking with her the story I had given her as my farewell gift. My friend Etsuko and my pen pal Sumiko were essential pillars in upholding my self-respect as a growing youngster, while Ms. Jones was an adult nurturer who tried to do the same. I most definitely would not have gotten through my high school years without their love and faith in my worth as a human being. I, in turn, offered them the same. In post-war Japan, when everything was in flux and the old social bonds had been dissolved, these were lifesaving bonds that we formed, bonds that would endure through our lifetimes in spite of the vast distances that later separated us. Sumiko, a brilliant young woman, was not permitted to gain the education she deserved; after graduating from a two-year college, her parents arranged her marriage to a young man who later became Prime Minister Ikeda’s finance assistant and then a banking executive in Yokohama, catapulting Sumiko into the high society of the financial elite. She adapted well to these dramatic changes in her life. Years after we met as schoolgirls, she was the person I chose to have a goodbye meal with before I left Tokyo for America. After graduating from Doshisha University, Etsuko found work at the Hiroshima YMCA, fell in love with her boss, married him, and followed her spouse as he climbed his career ladder to become regional head of the Kobe district Y. She also worked as a journalist, becoming the first female editor of a women’s column for the Kobe Press. Our friendship kept us in touch with deep affection, and we regularly updated each other on our progressions in thoughts, events, and beliefs. She became a valued sponsor and supporter of any and all projects I undertook in later years to bring American and Japanese people together. We became partners in bringing about healing connections

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between the two countries as, in the old days, we had offered healing connections to each other. Whenever I met with either or both of these dear friends, time melted away and we were back in the days of our youth in our defeated nation, when we had had so little in the way of material provisions but our hearts had known so much caring. That apparently was abundance enough.

10

Road without Turning 1951–1952

An unexpected opportunity to run for student council leadership came up during my senior year of high school at Hiroshima Jogakuin, when the girl holding the president’s position resigned due to her family’s move out of town. Thanks to the outreach from my classmate Etsuko, pen pal Sumiko, teacher Ms. Jones, and other friends, I had emerged from the labyrinth of darkest shadows, despite heartbreaking incidents at home and in school that did not abate, and was beginning to thirst for some new challenges. I put my name on the candidates’ list and campaigned with much energy and enthusiasm. My writings in the school newspaper had earned me the respect of many students, and the Christian students were especially impressed by the fact that I had just been baptized. During the debates among the candidates, I decried the gloomy listlessness of our community and its inability to come to grips with the challenges of our new world. Critical thinking about the new Japan and our future role in it was imperative, I declared. The student body of over seven hundred responded enthusiastically; I won the election. Achieving my declared goal, however, was a good deal more difficult than I had imagined. We were young girls imbued with traditional val136

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ues: nonassertiveness, subordination, and harmony-seeking. We were all excited about the potential of the New Japanese Woman, but translating these ideas into action was beyond us. I looked for guidance from Ms. Johnson, a special assistant to the newly installed Jogakuin president, Dr. Hirose, who had earned a PhD in Education in the United States. Ms. Johnson was also an advisor to the student council. She was delighted to give an orientation after listening to my plea that we simply didn’t know how to persuade others to become seriously interested in what we thought were important goals. It turned out, however, that Ms. Johnson didn’t know how to teach young Japanese girls how to achieve the goal of being leaders. Her weekly seminars focused on parliamentary procedure in microscopic detail. The girls were eager to learn the “how to” of leading and had expected to tackle new concepts, but they were greatly disappointed. Instructions in Western parliamentary procedure missed the target entirely. Instead, we learned a different lesson from this experience: if we wanted to get anything done, we had to find a way to do it ourselves. Whatever we needed to learn about leadership had to come from our own efforts. The student council organized a number of major events. The Culture Day we held in the fall featured magnificent displays, performances, and guest speakers who included a former cabinet member and minister of Culture and Education, who agreed to deliver the opening speech. The day was exhilarating and exhausting, filled with fun and adventure beyond our dreams. In late November, during the second term of my senior year, I attended a lecture that changed my life. The student body was assembled in the chapel auditorium, waiting to hear from an “outstanding student leader” by the name of Dr. James H. Robinson of New York. He was representing the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. I craned my neck to see if the man on the poster had taken his seat on the stage. “An outstanding student leader,” I repeated in my mind. “Yes, I need to hear him.” As student council president, I was a natu-

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ral at spotting issues that affected the students, but leading the other council members in encouraging classmate participation was proving difficult; Japanese students were still imbued with a profoundly passive attitude about the direction of their education. They worked hard at their assignments, but never went beyond them. The poster for the speaker showed a very different sort of individual from the usual evangelists. We were used to seeing fair-haired, sharp-featured individuals. Dr. Robinson, we were told, was a “Negro” gentleman. Only a few of us had been introduced to anything or anyone remotely connected with Black people. This connection was made through Ms. Tarr, who taught English and sometimes used Black spirituals in our lessons. She described the originators of these poetic and hauntingly beautiful songs as people who had had very difficult times, which made them more spiritual. We learned to sing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and many other songs, clapping hands and harmonizing, soon forgetting all about the songs’ origins. We had not digested the reality of slavery in America, or who “Negroes” were, even though we had read about the war between the North and the South. Even those of us who had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin thought of it as a fable, not reality. Then I saw a man of stocky build fast approaching from the side entrance. He was wearing a dark suit over a clerical collar and shirt and was hurrying toward the stage to take his seat. All eyes followed the gentleman visitor to take in every detail, for we had never seen a speaker of his appearance. In front of us was a man with darker skin than anyone had seen before, with short curly hair and glasses. There was a powerful personal presence about him before he even uttered a word. His nose was broad, and his lips were thick, but it was his eyes that stood out even through his glasses. They were the most piercing and serious pair of eyes, conveying that someone extraordinary was behind them. I remembered distinguished guests coming through my town before, like Helen Keller, and even the Emperor of Japan. The man before us appeared to rank among the most memorable. Ms. Wilson, a tall, slender, and frail-looking missionary who taught

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music, opened the program by giving a brief introduction. Dr. James H. Robinson had a distinguished career as a community leader who inspired hundreds of Ivy League college students to help build summer camps in New Hampshire for children from Harlem in New York City. He was a graduate of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Union Theological Seminary in New York. Coming from rural Tennessee, and without any support from his family, he had single-handedly established a church and the thriving Morningside Community Center in Harlem. All of this information did not hold much meaning for me at the time, as I had very little knowledge of American society or of community service centers and what it took to make such things come into being. After the customary salutations, Dr. Robinson started his talk by addressing the suffering of the people of Hiroshima. He conjectured that we must be feeling very discouraged, and he acknowledged that there were many good reasons to feel that way. He was truly sorry for what we had gone through. But then he pointed out that in the history of the human race, victimization has existed through the ages, and that one has the choice of either remaining a victim or going beyond it. He suggested that to go beyond victimization we should identify with something greater than ourselves, and to illustrate that point he drew parallels between our current pain and suffering and his own life experiences. Dr. Robinson’s dirt-poor family had lived in a shanty town in Knoxville, Tennessee. They often went hungry. His father, a hard-working, scripture-quoting man of faith, could not always find work. Cynical about white society, he refused to permit his son to attend school; in his view, it was a waste of time for a Black child to get an education. But the boy’s curiosity was insatiable; at every opportunity, he snuck over to school and listened from outside, absorbing every scrap of learning. A teacher found him doing that one day and, after learning of his situation, secretly arranged for him to attend classes whenever he could. His mother believed in his talent and gave him the full measure of her support, but she was sickly and passed away when she was only thirty-one.

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For most of his early life, Robinson was filled with anger and despair at the unfairness of his lot in life—including the fact that while traveling between his home and work or school, he was often beaten and robbed. However, his talent and energy slowly won him the aid of powerful people, and he mastered each new challenge with such aplomb that new opportunities continued to open up before him. He won a scholarship to college, and another to one of America’s top theological seminaries. In the process, his anger gradually gave way to a new path that led him to a deep faith in the love of Christ. For Robinson, the past hurts and grief remained at his core—but as scars, not as fresh wounds. He would rather not have lived through those experiences, but he doubted that he would have accomplished so much without them. His account was impressive and profoundly moving. I was mesmerized, tears streaming down my face. After all of that personal struggle, Dr. Robinson genuinely believed in the brotherhood of man and had inspired hundreds of privileged white students to join his efforts. Something in my heart understood his pain and struggle even before his remarks were translated. He invited us to join the communion of souls who had fallen countless times but kept on rising, never giving up. He said his life was a journey on the “Road without Turning.” The spellbinding speech had a most astonishing effect on me. The belief that we were always and forever victims was being seriously challenged by somebody who had overcome his own victimization. Dr. Robinson invited those in Hiroshima who were oppressed by their experiences to rise above their suffering, as he had. He spoke of the Christian God, but with no self-righteous arrogance or repetitious invitations to salvation. A warm and humble man was inviting us to take a “Road without Turning” along with him, away from the vast empty hole of self-pity in which victims can so often find themselves engulfed. He was singling out only one name, “Christ,” and one power, “Love.” Listening to him was like being carried along on an ocean wave with the infinite possibility of going beyond the horizon. God and Christ were not spoken of as theological principles exported by devout believ-

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ers from another land. The binding agent was love, love that never died throughout the millenniums of our history. A mystic core of my personal relationship with my universe and its Maker was now echoing in my soul. Perhaps it was because Dr. Robinson had come from a humble origin, or perhaps it was simply because he so obviously knew the language of personal pain and suffering that was not of our own making. Whatever else he might have come here to share, we understood the message about rising above victimization and moving forward for our own sakes, so that we could dance again and sing praises to a life that, since the Bomb, we had come to detest. It was then that I remembered again the times in late December when my mother used to sing to me a Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.” I remembered her tale of how, out of curiosity, she had followed a friend to a Christian Sunday School in Tokyo. There she had learned songs from a Catholic priest, a foreigner who was gentle and kind to the children. That was all she had said about her experience. Every Christmas, however, gifts from Santa Claus arrived for me, even during the war, and we sang our favorite carol with enthusiasm. I had not thought of this since 1944; we stopped celebrating Christmas after my mother was gone. After the program, a small group of students gathered around Dr. Robinson for a question-and-answer session in the back of the auditorium. Taking a seat in the circle, I thanked him on behalf of the student body for his inspiring message. His genial ways with young people were apparent, and I decided to ask him something that had been on my mind. I asked, “If a student was interested in working with social problems and studying Christianity, should she attend college and study social problems, or should she study theology?” Listening carefully, his warm eyes transformed into a piercing stare as he replied, “If I were you, I would come to the United States and study there.” I laughed and told him that it would be out of the question to go so far away, and that it was not a realistic solution. He suggested that I not dismiss the idea too quickly and think it over.

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We continued to question him about his student work and ideas on leadership training. He spoke in more detail about his community center in Harlem and about the children’s summer camps in New Hampshire and Africa, all of which were built by student volunteers from American colleges. He so clearly was able to reach out to others and convince them to dream with him. His appeal came from his strong belief that we are all connected in the brotherhood of the human race, beyond any divisions of race, creed, or social status. His actions came across as truly genuine. He appeared to be entirely comfortable now with a group of foreign students who barely spoke English. Being in such a man’s presence was an awesome and inspiring experience. My head was spinning as I headed home. The content of Dr. Robinson’s speech and his totally unworkable but still provocative suggestions persisted. The theme of a beaten-down group rising above their ruin stayed in my mind. I wondered if this kind of spirituality was unique to him or something that Black people collectively cultivated. Regardless, I thought I could really benefit from learning more about it. In my subsequent contacts with Dr. Robinson, who stayed in the city for more engagements, I learned that there were Black colleges that were considered outstanding and that he would be pleased to introduce me to a few of them. We exchanged correspondence in the months that followed and, based on his recommendation, Hideko and Dr. Robinson, 1954

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I subsequently applied to Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina. I kept Papa updated on the situation, and he presented my interest in studying abroad to the family for their approval. He never once objected or questioned the wisdom of my plan, though no one from our family had studied abroad before. The only family member who had ever left for a foreign land was Grandma Tamano’s brother, who had emigrated to Brazil earlier in the century. But they had not heard much from him and had no idea how things had worked out for him. None of us had any idea what it might be like for a young woman of my age to live in America, within a Black community. The college bulletin from Bennett, which contained pictures of a stunningly beautiful campus, was the sole source of information for my nervous relatives. The number of United States–bound students at Jogakuin was increasing. A classmate of mine, Yoshino, planned to study in America. She was headed for Ohio where her maternal aunt resided. Several Nisei students were also returning to the their birth-country for college. An alarmed young missionary teacher at Jogakuin, knowing the level of her students’ English ability, came to warn us that we would not be able to handle an American college education. She urged that our plans be postponed until after we finished college in Japan first; and Dr. Hirose, the president of the Jogakuin consortium, also urged me not to apply to a Black college. She told me that this advice was based on her knowledge of American society and its educational institutions, but I sensed she had a hidden agenda for discouraging my school choice. They might as well have saved their breath, for the determination of the U.S.-bound students was not about to be changed. Our English may have been grossly deficient, but we were well informed in our own language, and we were determined and hard-working youngsters—a point seldom appreciated by foreigners. Deficiencies in English did not mean that we were intellectually lacking. However, once I actually started college in America, I understood her concerns. The academic work turned out to be more challenging than I had imagined.

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For me, the last obstacle to achieving my goal of an American college education was figuring out how to fund it, including the cost of my transportation to the United States. Papa’s work, aiding Uncle Hisao in the family business, was far from lucrative, and the Japanese government was disallowing American-dollar transactions. Anyone heading to the United States—as a student or any other visitor—needed a visa; and Hideko at the A-bomb dome, 1952 that usually required finding a sponsor who could underwrite the project. With all of these complications, the planning came to a halt, but I continued to hope for a last-minute miracle and obtained my visa for entering the United States during the summer of 1952. In the meantime, however, I did take the Jogakuin College entrance exam; and in the spring of 1952, with the cherry blossoms in full season, the college welcomed me as one of its new freshmen. I entered as an English Literature major because there were no other choices and I knew I needed to improve my English before leaving the country, whenever that might happen. I kept to myself my still-high hopes of going to America. My courses in English, philosophy, French, Latin, and music started out smoothly. The philosophy course should have been challenging, but it consisted mostly of note-taking, as the teacher read from his own

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notes without a pause. It was an exercise in shorthand rather than in the critical thinking that I craved. The English class required the Oxford English Dictionary (abridged version), along with the text of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Although I enjoyed that novel’s literary flavor, its prospective value in daily life abroad was questionable. In late spring, my classmate Yoshino secured her cross-Pacific boat ticket through the sponsorship of a Methodist women’s group, and went happily on her way to her Ohio relatives. These boat tickets were hard to come by, and they had to be reserved months in advance. I had no funds by July or even early August for such an expense. Then in late August came a cable from Dr. Robinson, stating that money in the amount of $350 (more than $3000 in today’s money) had been cabled to a Presbyterian representative in Tokyo to be applied toward my boat fare. I later learned that this money was collected from the congregation of his Harlem parish. At this late date, however, a regular ticket reservation was not available until the following year. In desperation, I contacted a former president of the Jogakuin consortium, Rev. Dr. Takuo Matsumoto—who (like Dr. Robinson) had also graduated from Union Theological Seminary—and asked if he might have any connections to help me. He spoke with the party to whom the money had been cabled; and together they were able to book me a passage to America, due to another passenger’s last-minute cancellation, on a freighter named the President McKinley scheduled to set sail on September 6, 1952. There was hardly time to bid farewell to anyone at the end of the summer vacation, and barely enough time to collect my belongings together to pack. Papa and I rushed to a luggage store downtown and he bought me three small shiny suitcases that would hold my small supply of winter and summer clothes, plus books and a nearly threadbare blanket I had taken to Kimita Village and was an irreplaceable token of the life I had lost so soon afterward. We sewed dollar bills totaling about $30 inside my suit jacket, as the Japanese were prohibited from taking dollar currency outside the country but I had to have some to

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travel with. My relatives, who had not believed this feat of rapid travel planning and organization could be seriously attempted, much less accomplished, were stunned. Before departing, I had to see one friend, Hiroko, who shared my passion for helping those most affected by the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing. She was majoring in Deaf Education at Hiroshima University. As a special project, she was assisting Dr. Tatsuo Morito, the university president, in searching out Hiroshima orphans who were living with their relatives. They both felt that these children needed special assistance; in the current harsh times it was all too common for a distantly related child to receive only cursory care. I found Hiroko in the hospital recovering from a broken ankle. I rushed through a quick explanation of my rapidly changing situation. Years later, she told me that my departure had literally taken all the color out of her life: everything in her sight had been colorless for weeks afterward. Like Sumiko and Etsuko, Hiroko remained a lifelong friend. Her work with the Hiroshima orphans was hugely successful; she helped set up special monthly support groups for them, an individual mentor for each child along with a “foster family” that provided limited monthly financial aid, and networking opportunities for the orphans—who came from over a hundred difHiroko, a friend of Hiroshima’s orphans, with an ferent schools. All of these older aquaintance, 1952

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services were funded by private individuals whose support she helped obtain. On September 4, 1952, the Hiroshima Station platform saw a large crowd of Tamura clanspeople bidding farewell to a young student, the likes of whom they had seen just once before: her mother. Grandma Tamano held onto my hand, saying she just didn’t want to let it go because she might never see me again if she did. It may be that she was remembering the time of farewell to her younger brother, who left Japan for Brazil so long ago. One story was that he had returned broken-hearted and died; the other was that he had never returned and they never heard about him. My stepmother Tetsuko-san was holding my half-brother in her arms and crying as she waved her goodbye. I realized that, after all was said and done, she had done the best she could for me. An excellent seamstress, my stepmother had made all of my clothes for the trip. She could draw a pattern based on seeing a photograph in a fashion magazine and sew a finished product that looked exactly like the picture. She had made me a couple of dresses based on photos found in the American magazine Seventeen. The clothes I obtained from the missionaries’ clothes pantry were always oversized, and she altered them to fit me. The brown suit I was wearing on my journey to America was just such an altered outfit. I waved my farewell to Tetsuko with a new appreciation for all of her efforts on my behalf. When the whistle blew, Papa and I bowed deeply to the twenty-or-so Tamura relations lining the platforms. After this last goodbye, we rode on the train to Tokyo together. Unlike Mama, Papa had seldom spoken at length with me, though I knew from his actions that he cared very much. He was always better at responding to my questions and requests than at initiating conversations. I had thought that was how all Japanese fathers acted. But on this trip, Papa stayed busy initiating conversations and giving instructions. He gave me a list of the addresses of all Tamura family members, close and distant, to whom expressions of appreciation should be sent after I arrived at my destination. He even worried about how I might care for a cold or a stomachache while in the States.

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Papa also made sure I had a watch, picking up a little Seiko with a green band; and he emptied his own black leather wallet and a small notebook-sized zip-case for me to take. Arriving in Tokyo after the overnight train ride, we spent the last night before my departure at a small inn, the stay arranged by his old pal Ryo-chan, who was an executive at Takashimaya by that time. The President McKinley was due to set sail exactly at 1:00 p.m. the following day. Rev. Dr. Matsumoto (the former Jogakuin president who had helped secure the boat ticket) and my father took me to the pier in Yokohama where the ship was docked. Many years later in the United States, I saw Dr. Matsumoto on TV with then-ex-President Truman, and I remembered him seeing me off on my first journey to America. I was awed by the ship that was about to take me away from my country. Dr. Matsumoto accompanied me to my cabin and introduced me to the ship’s captain, Mr. Robertson, a tall, friendly gentleman in a blue-and-white uniform with a handsome captain’s hat. Dr. Matsumoto explained my young age and the purpose of my trip and asked the man to kindly look after me. “Of course,” the captain replied, happy to accommodate the young student. As the ship’s heavy resounding whistle cried out hauntingly into the Yokohama sky, the moment I so eagerly had waited for arrived, yet it was achingly painful as well. I remembered thinking to myself, I may never return—and if I ever do, it will never be the same. Dr. Matsumoto and Papa stood on the pier waving, while the ship slowly gained distance from the shore until their figures faded into a dim spot in the horizon. Papa remained there waving. I heard a man behind me nudging his wife as he whispered, “Give her the binoculars, it’s her father, let her see him one more time.” It was the first time I saw my country’s island shores from outside, and an unexpected sense of deep sadness swept over me. Even though leaving Japan was the right decision for me, the reality of doing so no longer seemed so clear-cut or simple. Tears welling in my eyes, I felt the full weight of my decision as the two men on shore became small pinpoint shadows and my silent farewell echoed back to them: Goodbye, Papa, Goodbye, Japan . . .

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The President McKinley’s passenger accommodations were first class—the only class the freighter had. I was grateful we were not at the bottom of the ship, as in that case we would have been the last to get out if the ship started to sink. The usual sailing time from Japan to America was four weeks or longer and included a stop at Hawaii, but this ship was making a direct crossing to San Francisco in less time. Classes at Bennett College had already started, and I hoped the ship would stay on its accelerated schedule. My two cabinmates were the wives of American servicemen, returning home. Janet was heading back to visit her folks in the South, and Sally’s husband, a military doctor, was waiting for her somewhere on the East Coast. Our small room contained a bed and a bunkbed; the wives slept on the bottom beds and I took the upper bunk. The two women were as different as night and day. Blond-haired Sally was gregarious and loved visiting Captain Robertson—or, when he was occupied, she visited with the ship’s first mate, John. Each night she came back to the cabin quite late. Janet, a brunette, did not approve of her roommate’s conduct and socializing and made frequent remarks about it, intimating that she could do the same but was choosing not to because her husband would not want her to. I just listened, but I doubt Sally cared. To my great surprise, Sally came to see me at Bennett several months later with her doctor husband. I had fallen sick and felt rather low, and her visit cheered me greatly. The lady whom I had thought rather flirtatious turned out to be most caring and kind. She said she was worried about me and had persuaded her husband to drive up to check on me. I remember how nice it was to have their visit. My first ordeal on the ship came shortly after the call for the first meal in the dining room. Unlike my earlier ventures to Japanese noodle houses and cafés, most of which had wax samples of the dishes they served, here there were no hints about the type of food or drink each menu item referred to. I was therefore tongue-tied when a smiling uniformed waiter with chocolate-brown skin came to take my order. Scanning the menu quickly up and down, the only words of English that I recognized were

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peas, carrots, and potatoes, from The Tale of Peter Rabbit that we had read in Ms. Anderson’s English class. Nothing from Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was of use for deciphering the mystery in front of me. The waiter was a bit puzzled by my order of only vegetables, but he soon returned with the requested peas, carrots, and potatoes, all rather bland compared to the Japanese method of cooking vegetables in soup stocks and sauces. I had to drink a lot of water to wash them down, while other guests dined on an assortment of savory, aromatic, and delicious foods. This was an experience not to be repeated, I decided. Before the next dinner bell, I took my pocket dictionary to the empty dining room and carefully studied the menu content. I still didn’t know what most of the food looked or tasted like, however, so the simplest solution was just to look around at meals that had already been served to others and discreetly request the same dish. Soon I was eating like a connoisseur. During the long voyage, the freighter’s nine or ten passengers became well acquainted. I spent a lot of time with a sixteen-year-old Filipino girl traveling to America with her family. They were moving to the United States for a new life. We talked about our lives, hopes, and dreams. The older couple with the binoculars were White Russians who had lived in Japan for some time but were now retiring to the United States. My favorite activity was to go up on deck, walk to the rear of the ship, and watch the turbulent and surging waters it was leaving behind in its wake. They were a beautiful sight to behold, knowing the ship was moving farther and farther toward my new destination. There was nothing else to see but the vast blue sky and the ocean itself—no islands, no shores—but the character of the scenery changed with the wind and the changing clouds. Three times it changed drastically when we encountered big storms. The last of these storms was the worst. We were awakened late one night by sudden movements of the ship, going up and down and side to side. Sally had not yet returned to the cabin, but Janet was thrown out of her bed to the floor. My body was stopped from doing the same

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by a wooden rail placed on the side of the bunk for just that purpose. The captain informed us that we were in a typhoon. It raged for days. In the dining room, dishes were breaking, and fewer and fewer people showed up for their meals. My Filipino friend and the other passengers were sick during the entire storm. Even the thought of food made them nauseous. So long as the ship kept afloat, however, its motion did not bother me, and I was one of the very few passengers who didn’t miss a single meal. Happy that the ship was sailing even faster because of the wind behind it, I hummed the song of the divine wind that had saved the port of Hakata from Mongol invaders many centuries ago. I was filled with great joy and relief at having left behind the horrific experiences that had devastated my universe. Now, the chance to create a new universe was approaching—and if the typhoon hastened the journey, I was happy. I had told myself that this journey was a grand adventure and that I was courageously embarking on a completely new chapter in my life. But I knew deep down that the journey had not been driven by a desire for adventure; rather, I was fleeing my old life. I had told myself that I wanted to leave Japan, but in truth I would have happily gone to a university in Tokyo if that had been possible financially. The truth I couldn’t admit to myself at the time was that I needed to escape from Hiroshima. It wasn’t so much my overworked father who never had time for me that I was fleeing from, but certainly the baleful influence of my stepmother had driven me away—I knew that. What I didn’t realize then was that I was also fleeing from the death of my mother. I was fleeing from the Bomb. After the typhoon winds subsided, the ship continued to sail uneventfully until one morning when I was greeted by the most moving sight of my life: the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. All of my dreams, all of my pain, and all of my searching were about to converge with the reality of an uncertain future in this new land.

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America, America 1952–1956

A Wild Leap into the Unknown An intense anticipation and rush of energy filled my body from head to toe. There was nothing tangible that I had touched or seen in America as of yet. My books about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, my mother’s Gone with the Wind, and Lincoln’s humble beginning in my illustrated books, were far from the scenic view of the city beside the bay the ship was now entering. The modern buildings clustered like an island mound, coming closer and closer as we finally neared the dock in San Francisco. In my excitement, I assumed that we would be getting off the ship right away. As it turned out, we had to wait for many hours before disembarking, but I glimpsed my first U.S. resident while standing on deck in the early morning to watch the shore. A middle-aged, short, disheveled-looking lady wearing bright lipstick was leaning over a wire fence, looking out at the ship as if waking up with a big hangover. She wore a mismatched pair of socks, a red one on one foot and a yellow one on the other. My introduction to America was beginning. It took hours for the customs officials to inspect our papers and belongings. I was dressed in my best clothes for the occasion: a black 152

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felt hat with an elastic chin band to keep the wind from blowing it away; the brown suit from the Methodist missionaries’ used-clothing chest that my stepmother had altered to make it fit; my best socks with yellow and brown stripes; and a pair of brown shoes to match. The shoes were a bit tight on my feet, but I hoped they would eventually stretch to fit. I walked down the swerving steps as proudly as could be, believing my appearance was near perfection. The customs inspector was less impressed and a bit gruff. He had set up a few plain tables and a chair on the concrete pavement of the pier. The contents of my suitcases were emptied and shuffled around, coming apart after my very careful repacking from the night before. Before I could warn him to stop shaking one of the suitcases, the sound of falling and rolling objects caught everyone’s ears. “Wait sir, I am losing my marbles,” I cried out, running after the little glass balls that Cousin Hideyuki had given me a long time ago. They had been left in the Kimita Village temple to which my Seibi classmates and I had been evacuated in the summer of 1945. Papa had retrieved them for me after the war ended; they were the only keepsakes I had of my cousin. “You are losing your what?” The inspector could not believe what he was seeing and hearing, and the people around him were trying very hard not to laugh. I explained to him in great embarrassment, still running in every direction to collect the pieces, that these were irreplaceable keepsakes from someone dear who had died. His gruff demeanor softened and relaxed somewhat, as he allowed me and my marbles to come into the country. Thus, my own journey on the road without turning began. My diary notes the date was October 3, 1952; it also records the parting words of the immigration officer as I lugged my suitcase away: “Don’t get married!” My first steps on American soil were wobbly. It was not like walking on the deck of a moving freighter; maybe it was my body sensing how strange the entry into an entirely new world was going to be. As a child born in Tokyo, I knew the feel of a bustling cosmopolitan city. But here, the vibrant streets were filled with foreign

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faces. Even Asian faces looked different—they were Americans with an entirely different mien. America was a grand mystery for a young girl without the faintest notion of what awaited her. A burning desire to seek my own path away from Hiroshima had propelled me into this alien new country. My first day in America, aside from the debacle of the marbles incident, was smoothed by the appearance of a former Presbyterian missionary to China, Dr. White, who came at the request of Dr. Robinson in New York City. This strikingly tall, white-haired gentleman met me at the pier and shepherded me through my first day in San Francisco before putting me on the train early the next morning. Dr. Robinson had wired him the train fare for me to travel to Bennett College; the money had been raised by his congregation. Ms. Merrill of the Methodist Mission Board, a small, blue-eyed, blond lady with a friendly smile, also appeared to welcome me, having received a letter from Ms. Jones about my arrival. Ms. Merrill offered some travel advice for my first train layover in Los Angeles: “Be sure to visit the Mexican Block, you have enough time before the next train. Don’t miss it.” Dr. White first led me to a “drug store.” His long legs and rapid stride had me following in little running steps. He told me that every town had drug stores, which along with their pharmacy window, also stocked almost everything else one might need. Inside, the crowd of customers stared at me, wide-eyed and whispering; the children pointed at me inquisitively. This attention, too, was a new experience for me. Perhaps my odd combination of second-hand clothing was not in accord with American fashion. Certainly we were an odd couple: Dr. White, tall and distinguished-looking, explaining to a “justoff-the-boat” young woman the usage of everyday products on the shelves. Our next stop was a YMCA cafeteria for our evening meal. The buffet offered a colorful assortment of American dishes. Noting my obvious confusion, Dr. White helpfully observed that his Chinese students’ favorites were Jell-O and buns with butter. I put these items on my tray, accepting his kind example.

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That night, I tried to sleep while in a state of shock at the end of a day of strange experiences. I felt the way a hayseed in downtown Manhattan at the height of rush hour must feel. In Japan, men had always handled travel arrangements, and we women simply followed along without thinking. Back home, I had felt alone so often that I had taken to calming my fears by talking to myself, but alone in a strange hotel room in a strange country, talking to myself didn’t help; I was completely disoriented. The next day I boarded the train for Los Angeles, arriving there at dusk, my favorite time of day. I headed out of the station hastily, thinking I could be back before dark. I was trying to make out the streets ahead when a shadowy figure suddenly materialized at my side. “Hey, Lady, where you headed to? Can I help you?” “Thank you, but no, I’m headed to the Mexican Block,” I said nervously. He was a lean young man of golden complexion, black wavy hair, and an open smile. My negative reply did not stop him from walking alongside me. I didn’t even know where I was when he grabbed my arm and began to lead me toward the busy streets ahead. I was too petrified to scream or run, but judging from the non-English sounds I began to hear and the Latin features of the crowd, we apparently had arrived at the specified destination. The young man continued to walk right beside me, a situation that left me speechless. As the age-old expression puts it, I could not believe this was happening to me. Having just arrived in the U.S., I already seemed to be in some sort of captivity. I couldn’t think of any similar previous encounter in my own or anyone else’s experience. Where I came from, men and women never mixed without a formal introduction. Terrified, but trying to look unafraid, I decided to pay closer attention to the shop displays. I had no idea what Mama might have done or Papa might have said, but they most surely would not have liked it if I disappeared into thin air. Now we were in the middle of a crowded market, and I had no way of knowing how this “captivity” was going to end. Ahead, I saw a portrait artist working on a pad. As I leaned over to look at the sketch, my young “captor” whispered

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something to him. I became the artist’s instant subject. In a few minutes a caricature portrait was ready, complete with my black hat and a Cupid in the upper corner. The Mexican Block came to an end abruptly as we reached a stone building with a blinking rooftop neon sign, “Bar.” The young man pointed to the stone steps leading down to a cellar, the whole setting looking like a Casbah scene from French movies I used to see back home. That was it—my instinct for self-preservation suddenly kicked in and I turned and fled into the dark with the rolled-up portrait under my arm. I had no idea if I was running in the right direction; I just knew that I had to get away from there. Miraculously, the lights of the train station came into my view, and I made a beeline for them. I took refuge in the ladies’ room, cowering there for the rest of the evening until my train’s departure time. In retrospect, the whole ordeal may have been an innocent encounter with a young Latino lad who was being hospitable to a foreign visitor as she wandered into his territory at dusk. But the enduring image of the old stone stairway leading down to a basement bar still evokes a shudder after all these years. I slept soundly on the train, waking up somewhere in west Texas. The flat, dry terrain inviting the eye to reach out for miles and miles was another shock; back home there were always mountains in view. The train sped along for hours and hours across endless territory. In New Orleans, the Mississippi River I had read about in Tom Sawyer was astoundingly wide, and it was also muddy and yellowish, unlike Hiroshima’s pristine Ota River, so clear—at least when I left—that one could see shrimps darting from under the rocks. My most astounding discovery, however, went beyond the geographical novelties. It came soon after the train pulled into New Orleans, while I was running around looking for a postal box. (I had been looking for a red one, the color they are in Japan, but eventually realized American postal boxes came in a different color.) During that search, I encountered puzzling signs for restrooms, which I also needed to use. These signs, larger than life so no one could miss them, made no sense

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to me. They read whites only and colored. The first association from my limited vocabulary was white paint, but “colored” drew a blank. No one was coated with paint. Watching the people going in and out, it occurred to me eventually that colored apparently referred to one’s skin coloring, and that white meant Caucasian. I had grown up with the notion that being fair was a coveted quality for women, but other than using powders and a sun umbrella I had not known there were specific consequences to a person’s “color” status. No one had prepared me for the shocking discovery of racial segregation. It had never occurred to me that America’s public facilities would be separated according to skin color or race. But now that I was aware of the signs, my immediate concern was deciding which of the two designations applied to me. Despite my name, which means “fair maiden,” I had never considered myself fair—but was I “colored”? So I stood outside wondering which door to use until the call of nature no longer could be resisted. Though I continued to see these signs everywhere along the train route (and beyond), I didn’t seem to belong to either group, so I alternated between the two designations, feeling self-conscious and worried that I might be stopped and questioned at any moment. This notion was not conducive to a relaxed daily plumbing routine. No one ever did stop me, but I soon discovered the whites only facilities were nicer and better-kept. Back aboard the train, I realized that all the passenger seating was also divided; the brown-skinned and fair-skinned passengers sat separately and remained apart at all times. This proved to be true on every train all the way to Greensboro. I thought about my past experiences in class-conscious Japan. Back home, even in the difficult post-war society, I sensed that my Tamura relations tended to mingle only among themselves, and that more generally, who you knew counted in a big way toward gaining favors at every level, in education, in job seeking, or even in being seen by the best medical specialists. But nothing was written down and these transactions were conducted discretely, by “gentlemen’s agreement.”

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A vague connection then began to form in my mind about a group of Japanese who were treated differently. There were no signs in Hiroshima to designate where one should sit or eat, but there was a section of town that no one I knew lived in or went near. It had not occurred to me until I saw the whites only and colored signs that perhaps a similar sort of segregation had existed close to my home, with a group of Japanese called Buraku-min (tribal people). Japanese children and adults alike used a hushed tone of voice when speaking of the Buraku, as if referring to a secret threat or intimidation—or avoided mentioning them altogether as if they did not exist. Neither of my parents had ever behaved in this fashion, however, and I knew nothing about the Buraku until I was in my teens. I remember asking one of my aunts one day what was so bad about coming into contact with them. She paused, looking almost afraid, and then whispered that I probably should say as little about the Buraku as possible. The description given to this outcaste group’s origin was that they had been animal handlers for many centuries—they took care of horses for warlords, ate meat, and became butchers—and were therefore considered impure among the non-animal-eating population. Even after meat became a common and desirable part of the Japanese diet, the connotation of “uncleanliness” ascribed to the Buraku did not disappear. Another description I found in a magazine was that the Buraku were descendants of the Heike clan, which perished after losing battles against the Genji in the late twelfth century. The clan descendants had no means of economic survival except to kill animals and live a wayfarers’ life. One person who took exception to the discrimination against the Buraku population was Ms. Jones, I began to recall. She was deeply interested in their plight and was seriously seeking a way to help them. Many years later she would fulfill this commitment by raising scholarship funds for Buraku youth and obtaining enough backing to rebuild a Christian Social Center that the American Methodist Church had funded before the war. Her compassion for the needy of Hiroshima and her determination to serve them tirelessly did bring about many

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miracles in the lives of many people like the Buraku who were “doubly victimized” by both discrimination and the effects of the A-bomb.* In occupied Japan, I had regarded American soldiers with a mixture of fear and dread. When the occupation began, Uncle Hisao had warned the women of our family to take our own lives before letting the conquering American soldiers harm us. Coming into direct contact with the uniformed men on the train was therefore a bit scary; but to my astonishment, they often helped carry my suitcases and hoisted my luggage in and out of the overhead compartments when the redcaps were nowhere to be found. I was charmed to discover that the readiness to lend a hand without expecting a favor in return seemed to be a common American practice. My world opened a little wider when I realized that the yesteryear’s feared enemies were also generous people who readily helped those in need. Except for the racial segregation aspect, public behavior was everywhere civil and friendly. People returned smiles and readily gave up their seats to elderly folks. Then there was Mr. Redman, an elderly gentleman and fellow train passenger who liked to talk. He said he was blind in one eye and beginning to lose sight in the other. This disability did not seem to slow him down, however; he moved about freely with surprising ease. As soon as he learned I was a foreign student, he insisted on treating me to lunch in the dining car. He offered a lively description of typical American favorites. “This is a hamburger. You put the ketchup on and eat it like this.” After the meal, he grabbed a handful of sugar packets on the table and placed them in my hand. “Here, take them, they’re free.” “What if others after us need them?” “Oh, they have plenty of it left.” He was not concerned. I protested, “I never took anything before.” * It must be noted that Japan has changed a great deal since I left; the discriminatory practices against the Buraku and other minorities have been outlawed and safeguards have been established to protect minority members’ civil rights in housing, employment, and education.

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“You didn’t take them, I gave them to you,” he assured me. I was speechless. Shortly after my arrival on the Bennett campus, I wrote a thank you note to Mr. and Mrs. Redman at the address on his business card. The unexpected reply included a box of candy and a note from Mrs. Redman saying that her husband had passed away, but that he had told her about a student he had met on the train home on his last trip. Between the encounter with Mr. Redman and my other eyeopening railway experiences, by the time the train finally reached Greensboro I had gotten to know things about America that no travel guide could have prepared me for. Bennett College A sprawling tranquility masking history of disquiet My new world, awaits. Will I find it Again? living here Who I ought to be to be Truly Human. “Greensboro, Greensboro,” the loudspeaker announced my destination. My heart pounded in excitement as I stepped down to the platform. I saw two girls, one brown and the other Asian, laughing cheerfully, so I approached them. “Are you Hideko Tamura?” one of them asked. “Oh, yes, I am. Are you students from Bennett?” The school had received a telegram from Dr. Robinson informing them of the time of my arrival. Soon we were on the stunningly beautiful campus with lush green grass and red brick buildings lining an expansive acreage; it was like out of a storybook. I was taken to my dorm, Jones Hall, where the dorm matron, Ms. Grier, introduced me to my roommate Della Thomas who helped bring my luggage to our

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room. Girls of all different features, complexions, and bearings immediately converged in our room, showering me with welcoming curiosity. In the days that followed I met the faculty and slowly learned the campus layout. Dr. David Jones, the Bennett College president, was a distinguished-looking middle-aged man of very fair complexion who I thought resembled the Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion. His gracious and caring wife played mother hen to all the students. Shortly after my arrival, I encountered Dr. Jones in an open area; drowning in a huge coat too large for me, I had to pull back the sleeve to shake his hand. A day or two later, a bundle of elegant, small-sized used clothes arrived with a note from Dr. Jones’s wife. Dr. Wilma B. Player, the college dean, was a handsome, bespectacled young woman of superior intellect and grace, a tall slender build, and a soft, small speaking voice that belied the subtle but firm resolve behind her glasses. I will never forget a lesson she taught me in understanding the complexity of the society we lived in; at the time, my personal awareness of the delicate and dangerous climate in which we were enmeshed was very limited. A reporter had written a news story about me as a Hiroshima survivor coming to Bennett College. This story in turn led to an invitation to speak at the annual NAACP meeting in Atlanta. I asked Dean Player for her advice. Speaking with her usual calm demeanor, she assured me that I was free to accept the invitation but that she was also concerned that the Hideko at Bennett College, 1952 distraction might interfere with

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my studies, especially because I had started the semester late. She also wondered if the situation might be manipulated politically. After thinking it over, I decided to decline the invitation and focus on my schoolwork. There was finesse in her not implicating anyone in particular and not detailing past victimization in similar situations, and I gained some perspective without being intimidated by social paranoia. Still, I sometimes wonder what might have been gained had I been able to adequately communicate to an NAACP audience the inspiration I’d received from Dr. Robinson. What synergies could we have found between two peoples on opposite sides of the planet who shared the same basic troubles? The memories of my first teachers in the new land—their voices and mannerisms—still come back vividly. Mr. McComb in Sociology, for example, was a jovial young instructor from whom I learned the basics of group dynamics. Dr. Korfield in Poli Sci was (I was told) a Holocaust survivor. I learned dignity and resilience simply from her presence. A small woman with a heavy European accent, she was a demanding but fair teacher, always willing to listen to her students’ perceptions. She and I never discussed our wartime experiences; it was only seven years since World War II ended, and perhaps neither of us wished to dredge up the kinds of awful memories that had driven me to such depths of despair in its immediate aftermath. I did not yet want to confront those demons; it would take a lifetime of effort to gather the courage to face them in my later years. Ms. Armantine Douglas was the dancing instructor; she had trained under Martha Graham and Ted Shawn in New York City. She was a magnificent teacher of modern dance; following the beat of her drum was magnetic and enthralling. I delighted in the beauty of the campus, whose handsome buildings were widely separated by lush lawns punctuated by noble trees. Walking between the student union, the chapel, the dorms, and the library provided a spiritually refreshing break. In my letters back home, I regaled my friends and family with tales of the beautiful setting I found myself in.

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Some years later, the president of the Hiroshima Jogakuin mission school I had attended, who had attempted to talk me out of going to Bennett College, visited me during one of her trips to the U.S. and agreed with my glowing assessment of the school. By far my greatest challenge as a foreign student was gaining proficiency in spoken and written English. I had not realized that the English used in an academic setting is a precise and demanding language that even the American students struggled to master. My conversational English was completely inadequate in my current circumstances; I felt as if I were learning a completely new language. I kept a dictionary open while reading my textbooks, consulting it many times while perusing a single page. This slowed the pace of my studies to a crawl. At times I despaired of passing my courses. For the first time in my life, I was faced with more reading material than I could handle. It took me hours to get through a few pages in English, whereas I could glance across a page written in Japanese and immediately absorb almost all of the content. There were also term papers to write for every class. Writing used to be a breeze for me. I loved literature, and words came easily in my own language, but thinking in one language and then expressing those thoughts in another was an entirely different matter. I would sit and stare into space Hideko in Bennett Library, 1953 searching for English

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words but only draw a blank. I also realized I was failing to understand more than half of the course lectures. Working in the library twenty hours a week left me even less time for my studies. I was clearly not up to the task before me but loathe to accept defeat, so I decided to give it a last-ditch effort. I needed a place to study after the mandatory 10:00 p.m. lights-out, but the only lighted place during the night was the bathroom on each floor, so I began sneaking out to sit on a toilet seat to read the assigned pages and compose my papers. From the bathroom window I would watch the dark hours of night turn to the light of dawn; often my schoolwork was still unfinished. Eventually, a worried dormmate snitched on my nightly toils. The dorm matron, Ms. Grier, swung open the bathroom door one night to find me crouched in the tub with a pillow behind my back and a book on my lap. The look on Ms. Grier’s face made me want to shrink to a pinpoint. She ordered me back to my bed immediately. “For heaven’s sake, Decco” (my nickname at the time), she addressed me in semi-disbelief, “what in the world are you doing here at this time of the night? ’You’ll make yourself sick, child. Go back to your room right now.” “But Ms. Grier, I still haven’t finished my homework.” “Well, you’ll just have to do it tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get someone to help you.” Ms. Grier gave me a desk in the drawing room next to her quarters. She even asked another student—a sturdily built woman nearly six feet tall—to help me with the class notes. I protested that I did not want to deprive another student of her sleep; Ms. Grier chuckled, “Honey, she’s plenty healthy already.” After my nightly forays to study in the bathroom were discovered, I was able to discuss my problems with the Bennett faculty. They were fully sympathetic and did not question my efforts or intellectual ability, understanding that the language switch was a serious mechanical barrier to my academic progress and therefore granting me extra time to finish papers and exams. Being able to keep my dignity as a studious thinking

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human being was all I needed, and I was grateful. At the end of that semester, my report card listed A’s in all subjects except for a PE class that featured folk dancing and line dancing (though I did learn to polka). As it turned out, the misery of “language shock” was a shared experience with the other Japanese student at Bennett, Shoko Yoshikane from Yamaguchi Prefecture (which adjoins Hiroshima Prefecture). She was even farther behind in her work than I was, which did not ease my own problems, but we commiserated about our general sense of isolation. Shoko came from a longstanding Christian family, and her poised and mature demeanor contrasted with my open and restless bearing. Back in Japan, she would have been deemed a “perfect” young woman of “faultless” disposition with whom I probably would have avoided associating, hating to be compared with someone so well behaved. But here in the lostness of a foreign-student world, we were the best of friends, comparing notes, sharing letters and goodies from Japan, singing heartily together. We missed our native food, so sometimes we cooked it together for ourselves. We even sang old-time war songs, never anticipating how hollow the lyrics would sound in a short time, though their melodies evoked eternal love for who we once were. We sang our hearts out together. Shoko’s roommate Aurelia was a pastor’s daughter with a very fair skin color, wavy hair, and hazel brown eyes. She was a soft-spoken and friendly young woman. My own roommate, Della, was a dark-skinned, beautiful, bright-eyed young woman from Baltimore, Maryland. She came closest to my vision of an all-American girl—bright, decent, and energetic. She was open and friendly without being intrusive, and her quick smiles brightened our room even on cloudy days. Although she knew little of my background or culture, she was guided by an unshakeable belief in the goodness of every individual. Della took me in like an old chum, called me “Roomie,” and gave me as much space or help as I needed. I don’t know if I could have been so flexible were our situations reversed. Her ready attention and cheerful outlook were just what any newcomer needed, regardless of origin; I always felt better when Della was around. In the entire two years I

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roomed with her, only twice did I see her rattled. The first time was when the dorm matron gave us a black mark during room inspection because I had forgotten to clear the stuff off of my bed before running to my early class. When I next caught up with Della, she announced with clarity so there would be no second occurrence: “Roommate, you’ve got to hang up your coat and get your stuff off your bed.” “Yes, Della, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that was going to count against us,” I apologized. “Honey, just remember it the next time.” The other episode was not of my doing but rattled us both. One morning before dawn, Della and I were awakened by a thunderous noise. It sounded as if the ceiling had come down. In a flash my old wartime mindset came to life. I screamed out to Della that the roof was falling. She did not believe me until we turned the lights on to see what had happened. On the floor between our beds was indeed a pile of large pieces of white plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. The release of my wartime-mindset tension caused me to burst out laughing. Della did not understand my laughter. “Roommate, this isn’t funny at all, honey. We coulda been killed. Why, they just missed us by just this much.” Della had never been bombed. Later that day I heard her speaking very sternly to the dorm matron about our near-miss ordeal. She was upset. The difference between us, however, was that Della slept soundly from then on, but I didn’t. I kept on waking up, fearing the next cave-in, even after the ceiling was adequately repaired. The girls in the dorm answered my endless questions about the norms of the Black lifestyle with good humor. I quizzed them on the degree of blackness that made one a “Negro,” curious as to why even the blue-eyed, blond Bennett student was counted as such. I struggled to understand why their hair was considered “bad” if short and tightly curled, and why they used a hot-iron comb to straighten it. One particularly kind and perceptive classmate named Charlie Rea

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tried to explain her own feelings about the racial divide. I sensed in her an openness not only to me but also to others outside of her race. She said she could totally understand how everyone else felt, but that she had had experiences that somehow opened her mind to allow individual differences. She talked about a time she had been playing with a little white boy, and he had rubbed her hands to see if her skin color would come off. They both laughed heartily; it was his first lesson that skin color has nothing to do with being good or bad or with having fun. Charlie was truly a comfortable person to be with; and if I had trouble understanding anything, I headed for her room. We would talk just like Etsuko and I had talked back in Hiroshima, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible world around us. Sometimes I overheard my classmates quietly fretting over reports of ugly racist incidents in the newspapers. I was seldom included in such conversations. The hurt and anger was buried so deeply that it was not easily shared with outsiders. The young women in my dorm went on about their daily business without complaining or lamenting openly. For all of us, life was more manageable if you hid these feelings under layers of nullification. Only years later did I realize how deeply they had taken me into their confidence. Yet they were just as averse to unveiling their true feelings about racism as I was to revealing my feelings about my experiences in the war. We were all hurting, but we held our tongues because there was no remedy for our respective plights. Warm memories of many other Bennett students also come back, including those of two Chinese students from Formosa: the plump, sweet, soft-spoken Pei Lee Ho; and Lillian Chang, a tall and slender young woman who spoke her mind more readily than Pei Lee. Both of these girls were highly offended by the occasional comment that the slits on their Chinese attire were “too sexy.” Eventually, though, they caved in and lowered the slits by sewing them to a shorter length, which they said was never done back home. Della’s close friend was the class president, Christine Oliver, whose room was just across the hallway from us. Christine was from Orange,

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South Carolina, and I spent my first Easter holiday with her family. Her dad owned a barbershop and her mom was a schoolteacher. They were kind and gentle middle-class citizens, with high hopes that a college education would give their daughter a wider range of choices in life. Seeing the world from which Christine came was an enriching experience. I remember her quick action when found me sobbing in my room after losing the wallet that Papa had given me: she collected $8 to replace my lost money. I think that was the only time I cried during my student life. The racist attitudes of the time forced upon us a strict regimen when going off campus. The “Bennett Women” were to wear hat, gloves, handbag, nylon stockings, and dress shoes. The freshmen traveled in groups, accompanied by a chaperone, usually a junior. The rules were cumbersome but they were necessary to protect the girls and the reputation of the college. One Sunday, in an effort to gain an understanding of the attitudes of the whites, I attended a Quaker meeting and asked the minister why Black people were invited to attend services on only one day—“Brotherhood Sunday”—each year. He paused, clearing his throat and struggling to find the right words. Then he explained that the Black people liked to keep to themselves. In a most un-Japanese response, I countered that the Blacks’ feelings were likely hurt by being shut out of the mainstreams of social life. The minister was a kind and good person, but it was obvious that I had stepped into uncomfortable territory for him. How these Quakers’ religious beliefs could accommodate their racial prejudices was perplexing. What most disturbed me was their unwillingness to see how hurtful racial discrimination and exclusion could be—and actually were. In any case, the constraints of the segregation experienced at Bennett were limiting my opportunities to learn about American culture. The other foreign students and I worried that we would not be able to gain the most from our education under such restrictions, a situation that could have serious repercussions for my long-term goals. I had wanted to get away from Hiroshima and its horrific memories,

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but I had also always intended to return to help the struggling young people back home; and to do so, I needed more exposure to the general American culture than was possible, at that time, to experience at a Black college. Shoko and I brought our concerns to the attention of our respective sponsors. Dr. Robinson then advised me to transfer either to an all-women’s Methodist college in Maryland or to the co-ed College of Wooster in Ohio; both, he said, had excellent academic programs, and he had received an honorary doctorate from Wooster. Shoko and I both decided that it was our duty to obtain the best possible education by transferring to one of these other colleges after our second year at Bennett; I chose the College of Wooster. In retrospect, however, the disadvantages of living in the segregated South were far outweighed by the intimacy of our relationships with the students at Bennett. These victims of segregation were more open to us than other Americans were; they welcomed us enthusiastically and respected our differences and our dignity. Never again was I to experience the kind of open-armed kinship that I received during my two years at Bennett; this school was my unforgettable Ellis Island.

The College of Wooster Tradition, White, transparent, crystal walls Kindness, warmth, smiles, decency… Please, let me feel I, touch you...

Invisible me. In contrast to the protected haven of Bennett College, where the code of behavior was clearly stated with explicit dos and don’ts, fewer such restrictions existed at the College of Wooster in Ohio, where I first

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experienced a co-ed environment. The president of Wooster, Howard Lowry, was a good friend of Dr. Robinson’s. His genial leadership and easy accessibility made him quite popular with the students, and he made us all feel very welcome on our arrival. Whenever he encountered me on one of his frequent walks around campus, Dr. Lowry would ask: “Hi Friend, how are you doing?” “Fine, sir.” “Have you heard from Robinson?” And so we would chat. The subject didn’t matter. Dr. Lowry knew how to tap into a young mind. He was ageless and quietly championed the causes of reconciliation and justice. He told me that his recommendations for minority recipients of honorary awards had been met with strong resistance by other award-committee members. These candidates included not only Jim Robinson but also a Japanese woman named Miki Sawada, who in 1948 founded the Elizabeth Saunders Home, an orphanage in Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture, initially devoted to housing the biracial children of occupying American servicemen and Japanese women, many of whom were subsequently abandoned by their parents. I had been raised in the Japanese tradition that unmarried men and women were to remain separate at all times other than at properly chaperoned events. Back then, Japanese girls were discouraged from socializing with men who were not known to the family. The post-war fear of the occupying American soldiers had reinforced this tradition. I was therefore ill-prepared to cope with my first experiences in a co-ed dining room. I had learned all the proper behaviors during a formal meal, but sitting next to strange men unsettled me and I could not pick up my water glass without my hand shaking. I had no idea of the protocols used in conversing with complete strangers at a meal—and a Japanese person without guiding protocols for social behavior is like a fish out of water. Here was yet another culture shock that shook my assumptions, broadened my worldview, and terrified me all at once. By this time I had been in the country for two years, but my mastery of academic English was still far from sufficient. Working with the Wooster faculty and gaining their confidence, and meeting the chal-

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lenges of independent study, research, and writing, were uphill tasks given my language limitations. Fortunately, Wooster did not impose the kinds of constraints on study hours, such as lights out at night, that Bennett had, but my speed in reading and writing was still at a crawling pace. Not realizing that many other Asian students also faced these problems because of the need to overcome vast linguistic differences, I held myself responsible and deficient—and I suspect that at least some of the Wooster faculty did as well. My frustrations and embarrassment over the language and cultural divides I was experiencing came to a head one afternoon during a meeting with my academic advisor. I was sitting in his office when I suddenly developed a runny nose. I had not brought a handkerchief or tissue with me, but on his desk was a box of tissues. Too shy to ask if I might have one, I sniffled continuously, trying to keep my nose from dripping, as my advisor looked on undisturbed. Finally, the liquid from my nostrils gave in to gravity and I grabbed the only thing I had—a pair of woolen gloves—and wiped my nose with them. Today I shake my head in dismay at my ineptitude in articulating a basic need. On the other hand, though, the experience became an invaluable reminder during my later clinical training about perceiving clients’ unstated needs. Sometimes even the smallest gesture, such as offering tissues, coffee, or perhaps a gentle word of empathy, helped in penetrating a tormented client’s defensive walls and opening a door to closer and more genuine communication. In retrospect, my advisor at Wooster was probably focused exclusively on offering academic guidance and therefore distanced himself from his student’s non-academic needs. An especially confusing culture collision occurred during a social psychology course taught by a PhD psychologist and theologian from the University of Chicago. The popular course attracted many students, and the professor had us complete a survey on our feelings about ethnicity in which we were asked to rate our willingness to associate, work, or play with, and to date or marry, members of different ethnic groups.

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I personally felt that everything else being equal and if the individual was a decent person, I could reply to all of the survey questions in the affirmative. In discussing the results, however, the professor disclosed that he had had to throw out one survey because it contained indiscriminately positive answers for all ethnic groups. Having eliminated that one problematic survey, he declared his thesis that most students did not reach outside their own ethnic group substantiated by the survey results. In so doing, however, he confirmed an additional form of exclusion: the rejection of a perspective that did not fit with the norm. The socio-cultural barrier that the psychology professor had deemed so insurmountable was nonetheless readily crossed by a fellow student who invited me to a dance. Perhaps this student’s “natural aversion to other ethnic groups” had been overcome by his father’s experiences as a missionary in Japan. My father had taught me how to dance many years before, and now for the first time I put those lessons to good use. I loved the experience, and this time my hands didn’t tremble despite the lack of defined protocols. Sadly, my dancing partner’s name appeared in the obituary column of the alumni magazine some years back. Sally from San Francisco, another resident of the transfer students’ house in which I lived at Wooster, was kind and generous. One Christmas, we all gathered to sing Christmas carols and eat popcorn, and Sally asked me to sing “Silent Night” in Japanese for them. As I began singing the Japanese words, my eyes grew teary. I realized that this was Sally’s way of helping me bring back a hometown Christmas. The smell of popcorn and the smiling faces of the student carolers comes back to me now just as vividly as if it were yesterday. Sometime during my first year at Wooster, a newspaper article about me appeared in the town’s paper, prompting approaches from strangers. One such person was Peter, a young man from the Netherlands. He, his older sister, and his parents were war refugees resettling in America. Our common language was English but neither of us knew much about the other’s background, although Peter spoke passionately about classical music as if his life were centered around it. The sense of disconnection I felt with everybody else was replaced in Peter with warmth and

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comfortable familiarity. There was a twinkle in his eyes when we spoke to each other; I could tell he saw and knew me as a living, breathing human being. The sense of numbness I had felt for so long, and the constant effort to keep smiling, gave way to the same genial familiarity I used to share with my Cousin Hideyuki. Some may call my connection with Peter a romance; I certainly felt as if I had been reincarnated from a living death. My senses came alive: the sky became blue and the air seemed so fresh when we picnicked together under the shade of a tree. I relaxed my tense wariness and allowed myself to feel joy. This connection evaporated into thin air after I graduated from Wooster and went on to graduate school. My “romance” was like a balloon floating away because I had chosen to cut its string. One day a philosophy professor told me that he greatly appreciated my smiling visage sitting in front of the room. He said he was prone to depression and my smiles always cheered him up. In truth, however, these smiles were practiced—Japanese women are taught to smile on all occasions—and deep down inside, I was just as depressed as he was. Once he invited me to speak at his church about my experiences during the war. I accepted his invitation despite my intense aversion to anything recalling those times, but I still cannot remember what I said to the congregation. My most upsetting experience at the College of Wooster came one day when we gathered in the auditorium to hear a lecture by a “distinguished alumnus of the College.” I was shocked and horrified when the speaker was introduced as Dr. Arthur Compton, the brilliant physicist who had led the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. His commanding mien and eloquence awed everyone, but one trembling victim of his genius sat mute in the audience. I didn’t have the courage to ask, “Dr. Compton, do you know how we died, and that we are still dying from your creation, sir?” The distance between Dr. Compton’s genius as a physicist and my suffering as a victim seemed too great to be bridged. Nothing in his talk betrayed the slightest sensitivity to the suffering the atomic bomb had inflicted. I receded ever farther behind thick layers of Japanese

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reticence as the despair and grief I had struggled so hard to bury insisted on seeping out. Many times since graduating I have been invited back to speak at the College of Wooster, and each time I have visited the Dr. Compton’s grave on campus, to contemplate the gap between us. As a student there, I also continued to receive invitations to speak about my wartime experiences. Although I was too polite to reject them, I was also too scarred at that time to speak my heart. It wasn’t long before I found myself feeling numb and mechanical, going through my speeches robotically and describing my experiences as if I were a bystander or third person. I presented detached lists of facts about the Bomb: how many people died, how much of the city was destroyed, and so on. In the process, I buried my pain ever deeper. In rare moments of solitude, memories of the days and years after the bombing paralyzed my thoughts. Eventually I grew weary of discussing the subject; when asked where I was from, I would reply that I was born in Tokyo, and I came from Japan. Even around friends, authentic discussion of my war experiences was difficult. How does one describe terror and grief to those who have never lived through such horrific losses? It was burdensome to think about these losses, much less discuss them. At times, humming the melodies of Mama’s favorite songs was about the only way that I could bring back any feelings. Fortunately, I did find a few friends in the midst of feeling invisible. I had very little in common with my first roommate, Mary Lou; but like Della at Bennett, she was kind and gentle and I could speak freely with her. Over the years, we exchanged holiday greetings. She and her husband came to hear my 2005 lecture at Wooster, sponsored by the Academy of Religion, on “The Role of Hope in the Post Hiroshima World.” Dot from Queens was very smart, but she dressed like a boy, including wearing a cap. I was fascinated with this unconventional woman, and she was stunned by my pessimistic assessment of the human race and the lack of trust I placed in relationships. She tried hard to change

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my mind and to offer a brighter view of the human condition. She too is long gone. For my senior-year Independent Study research project, I chose to study human relations and productivity, thinking that perhaps I could aid the struggling Tamura family enterprises with some new ideas when I returned to Japan. I didn’t yet realize that the huge cultural differences between Japan and America would render all of my American-based research findings useless at home. Worse, my continuing efforts to forget everything from my past succeeded only in further distancing me from reality. By the end of my time at Wooster, I was losing my mental focus and growing numb; near despair, I began to seek salvation in some higher power. Instead of returning to Hiroshima after graduation as I had been planning, the dark hole in my soul led me to stay in the United States and pursue graduate studies in theology.

Between Semesters Leaving behind my sheltered campus environment during school breaks at Bennett and Wooster provided other valuable experiences that extended my “leap into the unknown.” Some of these experiences were awesome; some were perplexing; some were scary; all expanded my mental horizons. I became a different person even while retaining a solid Japanese core. My first Christmas in America was spent in New York City, where I met other foreign students through Dr. Robinson. We were from all over the world; but despite our many differences, we all shared a thirst for freedom and independence. These encounters with the future leaders of their countries were awesome opportunities to witness history in the making. Njuri Karioki, for example, was a son of a Kikuyu chieftain, studying at Lincoln University. Upon returning to his homeland, Njuri became an influential Nairobi assemblyman, or so I was told. A sizable Japanese contingent included talented musicians studying at Juilliard, some of whom went on to achieve international fame. Yoko Ono, a banker’s daughter, was married to a soft-spoken Japanese

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composer. They had married against her parents’ wishes but she was allowed back into the family after becoming ill. I remember her being forthright, outspoken, and articulate, unlike any young women I had known back in Japan. Many years later, when I read that she had stirred up a social storm by marrying John Lennon, I couldn’t resist a smile— this was certainly the Yoko Ono I had known. A few years later, at a New Year’s party, I met young Tatsuro Toyota, studying marketing at New York University. A humble young man with a passion for making excellent vehicles even then, he startled us with his promises that he and his group were going to manufacture autos that were just as good as Volkswagens or Cadillacs. We all teased him that he had taken too much sake, to talk such nonsense. How could a small Japanese company compete with those auto giants? We assumed he’d be an heir to his father’s company—or at least second-in-command after his older brother Shoichiro—but he vehemently rejected that hypothesis, saying that the company policy was to bring in the best people rather than family members. Twenty years later when I was back in Japan, I dined with him and his lovely wife in a Nagoya French restaurant and acknowledged that his prediction had come true. The elite team that Toyota assembled was fired with grand dreams; they developed a world-changing innovation called “just-in-time manufacturing.” By carefully coordinating with their suppliers, they were able to reduce the size of the parts inventory they kept on hand, saving capital for investment in better tooling. Their work revolutionized manufacturing and eventually became the standard all over the world. During summer breaks I worked as a camp counselor for children from Harlem in a program sponsored by Dr. Robinson’s community center. The camp had been built on the shore of a small lake in New Hampshire by student volunteers from Ivy League colleges and bore witness to what could be accomplished by a courageous Black minister’s dream that inspired the hearts of sympathizers. At camp I would braid the children’s short and tight curly hair, sometimes working on six or seven of them before breakfast. I grew accustomed to sleepily walking children back and forth to the bath-

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room a few times a night. I even learned about religious prejudices from the children. One night I discovered Joanna, a little Jewish girl with long brown hair, crying. Lettricia, a quick-tempered tot, had just accused Joanna’s people of having “killed Jesus.” “What’s that got to do with you and Joanna, Lettricia?” I intervened. “But it’s not true, it’s not true anyway,” Joanna cried out in protest. Even after I reiterated that “We mustn’t go around saying things that hurt other people’s feelings,” I had the distinct feeling I was missing the whole point somewhere. The intensity of the charge and of Joanna’s protest obviously had more to do with something rooted in the culture. I wish I had understood it better then; I can still picture the sobbing, angry faces of the two girls. After the campers had been put to bed, the counselors would gather in the dining room to relax and socialize. The group of us represented a dizzying array of cultures. There I learned my first American song: “On Top of Old Smokey.” My natural Japanese love of singing predisposed me to love the song; its lyrics resonated in their commonsense take on the affairs of bonding and trusting. The song let me pour out feelings that I was loathe to explain to anyone; I knew through and through that “meeting is a beginning of parting.” The camaraderie and idealism of this disparate group of people from all over the world softened the edges of my war-hardened experiences of death and destruction at the hands of other humans. There was a brilliant young conscientious objector, Lou Henshaw from Amherst College, and a blue-eyed Mt. Holyoke student with the last name of Remington who worked alongside me and generously donated her personal belongings to help with some of the children’s immediate financial difficulties. And my Israeli friend Connie Comora was like Charlie Rea at Bennett or Etsuko in Hiroshima: she understood my reservations, grief, and joy beyond the language barrier as if she and I shared a common heritage despite our different lands of origin. Connie was a Mt. Holyoke College sophomore and a tall, stunning beauty. We took a camp holiday together and hitchhiked to adjoining states; cars on any highway stopped imme-

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diately whenever she put out her thumb. Those were simpler times, when hitchhiking was both safer and more common than it is today. The young people working as summer-camp counselors were genuine believers in the brotherhood of Man, standing together like a tall sturdy tree that could withstand the test of time. We knew that what people believe in does make a difference in how we impact others and the world, and that the work we were doing would surely make this world a better place. For those of us on student visas, the rules about employment were strict and limited our work opportunities, which were mostly available either at school or in a nonprofit organization. One summer job I was fortunate enough to find was assisting in the front-office operations of the Harlem community center run by Dr. Robinson. With no experience whatsoever as a receptionist or with a switchboard, I approached the job at Morningside Community Center with considerable trepidation, but quickly figured it out. The phone cords on the top row of the switchboard received incoming calls, and the connections were made by pulling the plug with its cable out of the top row and inserting it into the correct extension socket underneath. There were so many offices and extensions that I had to consult the typewritten directory for the first few weeks, but soon I was nimbly handling several callers at once, zipping plugs into sockets with alacrity. Between school semesters I stayed with a Pennsylvania family, Bill and Anna Larson and their little son, Eric. Anna had befriended the young Dr. Robinson through her church, and he had recommended me to them. The Larsons lived in a modest home just outside of the town of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles south of Pittsburgh. Bill was a machine shop foreman for Westinghouse, and Anna was a housewife. This seemingly very ordinary and unassuming couple was extraordinary in their willingness to share their home with visitors from other lands such as China, India, and Africa. They became very involved in the life of every student they hosted, much like parents away from home. Bill would tease me about my “L” and “R” confusion, as I offered to

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Operating the community center switchboard, 1955

“fly the rice.” Anna became my foster mother in every way, even though our only shared interest was our hobby of painting. I received many food packages from Anna Larson’s kitchen throughout my student years. On holidays and birthdays, she never let me forget I had a family. A little room in a house on a Pennsylvania hill was always waiting for me to come home to during school breaks. Bill and Anna were my proud family when I received my College of Wooster diploma. At every point along my American-education journey, they were there to celebrate, observe, and encourage me. For years afterward, including when I had my own children, Anna continued her practice of sending remembrances of the special days. Her ongoing care for me and my children was an uncommon gift of kindness and love. Anna Larson showed me how a person could live a good life without fancy trimmings of high society or opulence in a peaceful time, something my mother had not been given the chance to model for her daughter. Taking everything in stride without wailing or complain-

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Hideko with the Larson family, Christmas 1954

ing, she created her own bridge across the cultural divide between us, held me in her arms tightly, and never let me go. I cried profusely in the Pennsylvania funeral home where I said goodbye to my American mother for the last time. She and Mama dwell side by side in my heart today. After graduating from the College of Wooster, I spent the summer of 1956 working for the Inner City Protestant Parish in the poorest Cleveland neighborhood. My coworkers and I were housed in a building that had recently been converted into a dormitory. Sometimes in the middle of the night, strange men pounded on our door, calling the names of women from whom the men had previously received pleasure. Apparently, those women had moved on, and the men had not realized that a Protestant mission had taken over the place. We sometimes had to step over men sleeping on the stairs outside the building entrance, perhaps homeless and seemingly lost in the task of simply surviving.

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Hideko’s children with Anna and Bill Larson, 1980

In Cleveland I began to see an America that neither Bennett nor Wooster had shown me. While stepping over the sleeping men on the stairway, I remembered the people who had lain dying in Hiroshima and in the surrounding towns to which they had been carried. I remembered the orphaned children and the men without work and shelter who slept outdoors. When I traveled with my father, I saw their faces and broken spirits. I did not know how the homeless Americans had gotten to where they were, but I did know that the homeless Japanese had been driven to where they were by the Bomb. Broken dreams and lost lives were also apparent in the bodies we were stepping over on Woodland Avenue. At the end of that summer, I headed for McCormick Theological Seminary, a quiet little haven on the north side of Chicago. The city’s reputation as the home of Al Capone and gangsters had reached my relatives back in Japan, who had watched the gangsters’ nemesis Elliot Ness speaking in Japanese on a black and white television.

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Cloudy Vision for Spiritual Quest: A spiritual quest . . . what was it, I asked, as if a long-ago homework I never handed in. It had lain on my mind without a clear answer or a question for that matter, except something of a flight from a long ago base into a nowhere clarity. I knew I was lost in the fog, unlike my Mission School classmates or my contemporaries at Wooster. Had I a blind faith and “righteous” conviction, I sighed, it would have been so much simpler. “Believe” and “follow” the footprints of the Son of God; so I was prompted. Where are those footprints, where are they? They vanished in the Fire, fire? yes, in the Hell fire? oh, yes, the Hell, again. The fire of Hiroshima had been smoldering, could not be put out, it seemed. The internal dialogue like this went on endlessly but I knew that the question of faith and spiritual quest yearned for greater clarity before I headed home.

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Shadow of Hiroshima 1956–1962 Poem for the Seminary Life (Thoughts on Seeds of Reckoning vs. Shadows): In search of truth, I’ve come a long way, thousands and thousands of sea and land miles. Like a hide and seek, Now I see and now I don’t. Scholars’ renderings, archives and narratives. They float in my head, in my heart And float out to the air leaving tiny road signs, barely visible: “Creation, Fall, Cross, Grace” and far off, “Rebirth.” Help me God, help me.

Chalmer’s Place At McCormick Seminary, I lived in Ewing Hall, a four-story building, connected to the chapel, that contained classrooms and offices on the two lower floors and dorm rooms for women students on the two upper ones. The only time I had to step outside was to walk over to the 183

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dining hall, where I’d pass a quaint little inner garden sanctuary called Chalmer’s Place. Faculty homes lined this garden, starting with a larger and separate house for the seminary president. From my dorm window, I looked directly out onto tranquil Chalmer’s Place. It was particularly serene during or after a rain. Leaves sparkled with raindrops much like the trees in my old garden in Hiroshima. I had come to the seminary after a long, unrewarding quest for answers that might help me to regain steady energy and experience a joy in living. I thought to myself that if my life had been spared when so many were not, it must have been for a reason more worthwhile than the way I was currently spending it, which consisted of barely making it from one day to the next. My roommate Mary, from Omaha, Nebraska, was gracious and beautiful like a well-raised traditional Japanese woman. Her movements were soft and light. Her belongings were neatly kept in the small space we shared. She made all of her clothes, which were stylish and versatile with small changes in the accessories. I continued to learn the nuances of American culture when the subject of racial differences came up. Mary said that in Omaha more than a few white people shared the sentiment of a man who said, “I hate prejudice, and I hate niggers.” “Hatred” sounded like a very strong word. It was a chilling thought. I wondered about how Nebraskans felt toward the Japanese then. Mary told me that she had gone to school with Japanese American girls, and there they associated with one another without any barriers. But she would not have greeted them on the streets, and the Japanese girls would not have expected her to acknowledge them. The explanation for this discrepancy was not very clear to me until a faint memory from my childhood in Hiroshima came back. Long before our city was destroyed, I met a neighbor girl one day on the street near our house, and we played games of ball and ojami (a game that involves tossing a beanbag in the air and catching it). We promised to play together again soon. She came to see me a few days later, but when I started to show her where to leave her geta sandals, Mama called me away. It turned out that Kikue was not allowed in the house. I asked Mama why I couldn’t play with my playmates inside just

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as I did outside, like we used to in our little house in Tokyo. She said that the family preferred that children’s play be kept outside. Kikue returned a few more times and kept asking, “I know our family is different from your family, that’s the reason I can’t come in, isn’t it?” I told her the same thing Mama had told me. On Kikue’s last visit, our garden was full of cousins playing cops and robbers swinging from the trees, jumping from the rocks. She wanted to be a part of the fun, and watched us play for a long time. No one paid much attention. After that she stopped coming over. At the end of my first semester at McCormick, my roommate became engaged to a young farm manager back home and decided to leave the seminary. I was invited to her wedding, but the trip was more than I could afford at the time. I sent her a Japanese lacquer box for a wedding gift, and she sent me back an audiotape of their ceremony, expressing the wish that I had been there. I pictured her in an elegant white gown of her own creation. Her children would be well cared for, with God-fearing, decent parents. I wondered if they would be playing with children of other “colors” as they grew up. Many years later, I was to reconnect with Mary in my retirement years through the office of the Oregonian newspaper, which published a major article on the Rogue Valley Peace Choir’s journey to Japan that I had helped organize. We spoke on the phone and exchanged e-mails, and I subsequently stayed in their home a couple of times while attending Jungian workshops in Portland. My first-term seminarian roommate had grown into a loving wife and mother of five children, even adopting a son with a profound developmental disability and teaching the family to help nurture his needs. A few years after we reconnected, she passed away from ovarian cancer. The letters from home became fewer and farther-between as Papa and Uncle Hisao continued in their struggle to bring the Tamura name back to its former glory. But this was not to be achieved, despite the brothers’ passion for and loyalty to the company my grandfather had founded. The factory had burned down twice—once by the bombing and the second time by a fire suspected of having been set

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by a disgruntled former employee—destroying all the machinery; and the market for sewing needles was shriveling while debts were accumulating. Finally, Papa decided to diversify and to export the company technology to underdeveloped countries. He began to specialize in building and teaching needle manufacturing technology in other Asian countries. His letters were written in neat handwriting. He told me how much he regretted his inability to help me. Under the old constitution, his father’s estate had gone solely to the oldest brother, Hisao, who in turn was required to provide for the rest of the family. Under the new constitution imposed by General MacArthur, Uncle Hisao was relieved of any financial responsibility to the rest of the family, so Papa was left with nothing. Papa would write about how he wanted to pass on to me a part of the proceeds, should he succeed in getting a small share back from his brother. He could not fathom how a young girl without assistance from her family could possibly make it on her own in a foreign land even with a scholarship. Years later, after both Papa and my uncle had passed away, Cousin Kumiko gifted Papa’s share back to my stepmother, but she did not pass any of it on to me when she died. Ironically, even when Papa’s dream finally came true, a share portion of the gift never reached me. While Papa toiled away in faraway countries like India and Indonesia, teaching technologies his father had introduced in Hiroshima long ago, I was hitting books about ancient oracles and the spiritual world. Aside from the routine survey courses, there was wide latitude for specialization in which one could pursue pathways other than the ministry. I, of course, was there for my own salvation, and a combination of theological education and social work appealed to me most. I struggled through heaps of materials defining the power and the presence of God, hoping in vain that I might be touched by a magic wand of blessing and enlightenment through which my fragmented sense of life would come together. But I found no relief from the atomic demon haunting my soul. The lack of spiritual energy I had begun to notice at Wooster gradually increased.

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The only realization that I did come to was that the search for religious enlightenment was endless. The Christian concepts of the “Creation” and the “Fall of Man” followed by “salvation through Christ” ran circles around me without touching my soul. None of these concepts seemed relevant to the horrors I had seen. My mother and Cousin Hideyuki had done nothing to deserve to die as they did. The heat that burned into Hideyuki’s flesh and the concrete that fell on Mama and the maggots that wriggled in the living charred bodies before my eyes could not be explained by the theology I was studying. Remembering the post–nuclear bombing scenes even for a fraction of a second took away my own dignity and terrified me to my core. The blinding light that had flashed through us and turned our homes and families to ashes, and the survivors into the living dead, was made by men but was surely within God’s knowledge and power, yet my theology books could not provide the answers I was seeking. Nothing in my books seemed relevant to me at that point. Whether or not the Fall of Man or the demand for salvation and reconciliation came into the picture made little difference to me at that time. I could not have related or responded to these concepts no matter how hard I tried to personalize them. Whether God’s love surpassed all human love, I didn’t know or care; I just wanted to find the human love that had been blasted away from me in a blinding flash. I craved peace of mind and a rest from my endless running. I could not envisage burning and crushed people or the ailing hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) as being messengers or symbols of anything other than death itself. The hardest thing to endure was the “living dead” element within me—a perpetual internal dying process because I could not forget what I had seen. Any prayer of praise and gratitude felt hollow to me. How could I sing “Joyful, joyful we adore thee . . .” when my soul was empty of any kind of joy, trembling with a fear that would not cease. News of the residual harm from radiation was slowly getting out after the Allied occupation of Japan ended with the San Francisco Treaty. The silence was lifting, and the lasting harm from radiation that

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people were suffering from was becoming unveiled. I tried to minimize my own fears by consciously denying any experience of ill effects and trying to convince myself that if I did not give any credence to the residual-radiation reports, I would be safe. The label hibakusha, I therefore concluded, did not apply to me. My denial was so strong that it is curious to me that I remained fearful at all. But the free-floating sense of fear steadily increased. The sound of firearms, any kind of fire, or a sudden loud noise could send my heart racing. Gradually, my fears became the wardens of my own personal prison that lacked both entrance and exit. Pretending that these fears were baseless only made them greater. I often wondered what Americans truly thought about the moral consequences of their government’s use of the A-bomb. It wasn’t that they actively evaded discussing the question—they simply seemed uninterested. Were they sweeping it under the rug because of feelings of guilt? Did they dismiss all those horrific deaths as “collateral damage”? Some Americans seemed to take a perverse pride in the bombing. Did they think “heathens be damned,” so the deaths simply didn’t matter? My grandfather, a “heathen,” had shown extreme kindness to a foreign cleric in distress when it was uncommon to do so. To him, any servant of God was to be respected regardless of his religion. Grandpa used to teach us by reading from the holy text about the ills of selfish demands and interests and about the Grace that we would be granted when we abandoned our selfish deeds and thoughts. How could such gentle teachings be damned as heathen? All around me were serious men and women dedicated to preparing themselves for the ministry. Had I screamed out loud for help, they would have instantly come to my aid. But I couldn’t put into words exactly what it was that I was looking for. Perhaps a touch of human frailty or authentic interest in another human being was all that I sought. In the midst of these pious folk was one agonized soul, wanting more than anything to feel the warmth of an authentic friendship. A few women sensed my malaise and tried to help. Maggie, a widow from Dubuque, Iowa, was so open with her ups and downs that she

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helped others forget their downs. Joann from Boise, Idaho, was an earthy country girl with the sharpest wit and an amazing storytelling talent; people were magnetized by her charm. Arlene, the daughter of a missionary to Japan, was particularly caring and a very willing listener. Her courage in speaking up for her convictions was impressive. Winifred from Oberlin, a woman twice my size, was shy and reserved but also steadfast and trustworthy. Barbara from the near west side of Chicago dispensed wisdom; I could always go to her when I needed a balanced opinion. Arlene from Chicago’s southern suburbs accorded me great respect for my intellectual prowess. In the finest traditions of college dorm life, we would exchange our ideas into the night’s wee hours after our work and studies. I could count on any of these women to be there for me during my stay at the seminary; their caring was an immeasurable gift of spiritual sustenance. My contact with these friends has continued into the present, though Margaret from Iowa passed away long ago after a career in Iowa’s Department of Public Welfare. Arlene, the missionary’s daughter, returned to the San Francisco Bay area, and her three adult children appear to have emulated their mother in marrying spouses of international origin and contributing to the common good. Arlene herself became a leading activist for the Sanctuary movement, aiding political refugees from Honduras and taking American study groups to Central America for many years. Winny from Oberlin became a minister in rural Minnesota and then retired in North Carolina with her son after her husband passed away. Arlene, from the south Chicago suburbs, fell in love with a young ministerial student from Indonesia who stayed in the country and ministered in New York state. Arlene has remained a lifelong activist on behalf of peace and justice. Seminarians from other dorms soon began to find their way to ours. I became particularly friendly with a young man from Wisconsin whose father had died of Parkinson’s disease while my friend was still in his teens. His grief so early in life sparked a commonality between us, though I had not said much about my own experiences.

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Our friendship, however, seemed to engender in him an internal conflict. One evening he blurted out that he could not commit himself to a “Canaanite woman.” I was quite taken aback, both at being perceived as an outsider and by the idea that a commitment was being entertained without my participation. The other students in the small lounge where we sat looked up, startled. I had not been taught how to respond in situations like this. A normal Japanese woman would have been obliged to feel very embarrassed and remain silent. But I found myself actually speaking to his point, and that may have been the moment when I started my therapist’s career: I recall mirroring his statement and guessing that he might be feeling guilty about his own conflicting feelings. Later, I was pleasantly surprised by a lovely invitation from his mother to come and visit their home. Although the friendship eventually faded, I remember that episode in the lounge as one of my earliest journeys in understanding the grief of others and their effect on my life. From time to time, visitors from Japan also came through the seminary’s iron gate, prompted by Papa who himself could not himself break away from his duties—and all were relieved to find me in everyday attire rather than a nun’s habit. To them, entrance into a theological seminary represented an extraordinary separation from secular society. One of these visitors, Mr. Matsuda from Hiroshima, had attended Keio University like Papa had; he and Papa both belonged to its alumni club, Mita-Kai, in Hiroshima. He was running the family company, which had started moving into the automobile industry, and passed through Chicago on his many trips to Detroit to arrange deals with auto companies there. Mr. Matsuda was fired with passion for all things automotive and was especially taken with a novel German design for a rotary engine. Over bowls of noodles and plates of sushi, he regaled me with his ambitious plans to make his company a leading automotive innovator. Although Mr. Matsuda’s company succeeded in getting these radical rotary engines working, they were rather expensive and the company struggled; and Mr. Matsuda was eventually forced out. Years later,

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Hideko with Cousin Ko-hei Nishikawa, 1960

the company altered its name to look less Japanese even though pronounced the same way: Mazda. And it ultimately did manufacture Mr. Matsuda’s dream car, with the rotary engine. After leaving his company, Mr. Matsuda turned his vast energies to a completely new project: establishing a professional baseball team in Hiroshima. He even built a baseball stadium on the vast parade grounds of the old army base, right next to the site of the now-vanished Seibi Academy. Another visitor from Hiroshima was Papa’s cousin Ko-hei Nishikawa, who often came to Chicago after his company entered into a licensing agreement with a Chicago company; he loved the steaks at the Stockyard Inn. He, too, was way ahead of his time. He and his older brother had turned the rubber goods manufacturing company founded by my grandfather into a multinational company that produced over forty percent of the auto industry’s weather stripping worldwide. He set up joint ventures and factories in both Indiana and Michigan. My visitors from Japan would bring messages from Papa and news of the relatives. The few hours we would spend together brought Hiro-

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shima back to me. Once Cousin Nishikawa, an energetic and upbeat business executive, recalled his experience of the day the Bomb was dropped. A student at the time, he had been mobilized to work in a factory just outside the city. He struggled toward home that day, chased by fire and lending a hand to aid burned and mangled people who were mostly beyond help. Home had never been so far a journey, he told me. Finally, exhausted, he collapsed on a grassy patch by the Ota River and spent the night there, his hair singed and his entire body covered with soot. By that point in his story, Cousin Nishikawa’s usually masculine and confident face had turned somber and lusterless as he gazed in space and said it was “very very hard.” We never touched the subject again. My second year at McCormick Seminary entailed a collaborative effort with several local professional schools of social work. Unlike the rarefied studies of theology, my studies in human services were something concrete that I could relate to and enjoy. After a year of working with teen groups at the Erie Neighborhood House, I signed up for a joint graduate program offered by McCormick and the University of Chicago. The university’s course requirements for that program were heavy, so I began to spend more and more time on the University of Chicago’s south-side campus. The daily travel expenses from McCormick to the South Side were eating up a big chunk of my seminary scholarships, so I couldn’t afford to buy lunch as well. This was not a serious problem because my job in the McCormick Commons dining room provided free breakfasts and suppers—but the story of my having to go lunchless traveled to the McCormick dean, who immediately arranged a generous stipend that would allow me to find a residence closer to University of Chicago. The International House on the university campus seemed just the place. Leaving behind the quaint and peaceful Chalmer’s Place, I headed for my new environment on Chicago’s South Side.

The International World My plain and small room at the International House held just enough

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space for a single bed, a desk with a chair, a lamp, and a lounge chair. The room was conducive to quiet study but not to the congregation of friends. For the first time, however, a diversity of cultures and races surrounded me. No longer did I stand out because of my non-Caucasian features or heavily accented English. One’s ethnicity was a respected identity. People still spent more time socializing with members of their own ethnic group, and we Japanese were no exception; but differences in class, age, and gender were less of an issue here. Doctors, researchers, and students, younger and older, male and female, bonded together. My circle of friends included an unlikely mix of people who probably would not have come together had we met back home. With a moment’s notice we would jump into an old Hillman sedan owned by a newly arrived physicist and head to the movies, visit museums or the zoo, or go for noodle soup at a Chinese restaurant on Sixty-third Street. Within this circle, one person’s trouble was everyone else’s. We all mourned deeply when the wife of a visiting scientist from Kyoto died during heart surgery. Like my own parents, the couple had married for romantic love rather than the customary arranged match. The scientist blamed himself for having placed his hope in advanced American medicine over his wife’s doctors in Japan. “If I hadn’t wished for a cure,” he lamented, “she would be alive today. She didn’t want to do it, it’s all my fault.” Now a broken man, he could not be comforted by any of us telling him we understood how it felt to be in his shoes. And I could not bring myself to tell him that I too had once held myself responsible for Mama’s death owing to my insistence on returning from Kimita Village the day before our city was struck down. Had I only known that the Enola Gay was coming on its terrible mission, I would have been ecstatic to remain in the country with all its lice infestation and starvation—as would my best friend Miyoshi have been, instead of dying in Hiroshima the next day. Our scientist friend had lobbied for a noble cause: his wife’s welfare. But my sense of culpability for Mama’s death came from making a demand that I now considered selfish and childish—I had just wanted to be at home with her.

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I tried to convince the scientist of the legitimacy of his high hopes for his wife’s medical treatment in America and that there was no way he could have known it wouldn’t work. But my efforts were to no avail; he still blamed himself and felt lost without his best friend. He remained solitary for the remainder of his year-long stay at the International House, after which he returned to Japan. Welcome as it was to be living among compatriots at the International House, I also experienced an unexpected downside. Even before the untimely death of the scientist’s spouse and all of the emotions it triggered, a strange hallucination had begun to haunt me. At random times, for no apparent reason, an image of Mama would flash into my mind. Her hair was in disarray and her eyes showed little emotion. She was wearing her nemaki (sleepwear) kimono but I could not tell if she was ill or just weary. An old Japanese folk belief held that visions of deceased loved ones were indications of their souls’ wandering or that they were trying to send messages to the living. I had no idea what Mama’s messages to me might have been. It was scary to be alone in the quiet hours of the dark night with visions of my mother’s face stripped of joy and energy. I tried to fight off these recurring morose images by recalling Mama’s happy faces and her young happy days with Papa, but it was of no use; as soon as I did so, something within me would whisper, “Remember how it ended.” The hallucinatory experience was so strange that I could not bring myself to share it even with my closest Japanese colleagues. Another tormenting recurring experience was the vivid physical sensation that I was dying. It had first happened during the summer we returned to Hiroshima three years after the A-bomb explosion. While lying on a tatami mat on the night of Obon (a Buddhist ceremony honoring the dead), I was suddenly gripped by the most awful sensation of the moment of death and had to repress a scream. I asked Aunt Fumiko if she had ever experienced anything similar; she said she hadn’t. Aunt Fumiko had coached me through many challenges ranging from the monthly feminine visitor to cooking perfect rice, but this one baffled her. Now, ten years later, the sensation still

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recurred at random times. Like my visions of Mama in sleepwear, it came without warning and struck anytime and anywhere, making me stiffen in alarm and groan in desperation. It was as if the voice of the living dead within me was finally speaking out. Meanwhile, I was continuing to progress in my graduate work and enlarging my understanding of common human needs, casework theories, psychosocial pathologies, and child placement. The voices and faces of various graduate school professors—Ms. Towle, Pearlman, and Schultz, and Drs. Skolanski and Litner—still return to me. These teachers opened the doors to a deeper understanding of the human experience. Perhaps because I was raised by parents who were open to Western thinking, these individuals’ insights furthered my intellectual understanding of both my own early life and my clients’ behaviors. But all the insights were not sufficient to lighten my psychological burdens. Neither prayers nor knowledge brought lasting respite. I blamed no one but myself for this condition, not realizing that the walls of desensitization I had built in order to manage my overwhelming emotional trauma were slowly crushing my ability to feel and darkening my spiritual life. In both the chapel and the classroom, my numbness deepened. On the surface I was still a smiling student who earned good grades, but I was finding no salvation in my studies. Eventually, my desperation to remain a human being capable of feeling exceeded my embarrassment about exposing my predicament, and I confided my troubles to my wise seminarian friend Barbara. Not at all shaken or surprised, she simply smiled, said that “blind faith” crumbles easily when tested, and assured me that I was far ahead to be questioning each step of the way. Much relieved, I began to focus my efforts more and more on helping my clients. This at least was something good and positive that I could do. Listening to my clients, old feelings would be evoked by the recognition that some of their experiences were similar to my own. To help a fellow human being, however, was not always so simple. One client of mine, for example—a retired lawyer of Polish descent who lived in a tiny room by the Sixty-third Street El track—loved to

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take walks in the snow, but his only pair of shoes left his feet soaking wet and cold. He needed proper galoshes, but there was no allowance for galoshes in his public-aid budget so I resolved to buy them for him myself. My request to do so was gently denied by a sympathetic supervisor, however, on the basis that the rules had to be kept the same for all public-aid recipients. Another ethical quandary involved a young, ADC (Aid to Dependent Children)-supported mother of a seven-year-old boy. One day, as I sat in the kitchen visiting with this client, a male caller with a boxer’s physique arrived. Missing his name, I asked him, after my own introduction, what he had said his name was. He replied curtly, “I didn’t say.” That was the end of our conversation, but he subsequently seemed to be around a lot, and I got the impression that he was essentially a part of the family. To minimize ADC program costs, we were required to report on any possible outside sources of income for the participating families. I took that responsibility very seriously, but in this case I left things loose, so the family could have more rather than less. A few years later, I saw the same mother in a grocery store. She appeared more settled and secure with her son. Much to my amazement she greeted me enthusiastically, saying how helpful I had been years before. In spite of my ignorance of the fabric of American life, I managed to get through my training in the placement and supervision of children in foster homes and in counseling the children and their parents. Then a new obstacle arose: one of the work requirements was the ability to drive a car in order to make home visits. I needed had to find someone to teach me how to drive. A buddy from the Philippines, Nene, gave me the name of a young man of sterling character. That’s how I met Robert D. Snider from Weiser, Idaho, in the lounge of the International House. He had very blue eyes and slightly receding blond hair and, when I first saw him, was engaged in an animated conversation with several of the male dorm residents. My Japanese upbringing forbade me to just walk up to him, so I asked Nene if she might introduce us. I told Robert I needed help and that his character reference had preceded him. Robert was actually quite shy.

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His face turned red at my praise, but he said that he would be happy to teach me how to drive. During that conversation I also learned that he was a master’s degree candidate in political science, on a Woodrow Wilson scholarship. I had been told that teaching a person how to drive was a very trying experience. One could not have known this from Robert’s instruction. His patience, as the Japanese would say, “was like the Buddha’s.” My feel for easing the clutch and pushing the gas pedal was so awkward that it caused the vehicle to move like it had the hiccups; but Robert took it in good humor, saying that everyone starts out awkwardly. He was never irritated. We began to spend time with each other outside of the driving lessons, and a friendship evolved naturally. One thing that stood out in this friendship was the ease with which he respected my boundaries, in contrast to some other casual acquaintances who were quick to hold my hand and intrude into my physical space. I would then have to explain the different practices in our cultures, as if to apologize but feeling altogether uncomfortable. One afternoon Robert drove me to the new-drivers’ test site on the South Side, where I concentrated very hard on my parallel parking between two flags marking the space. On the third or fourth try, I thought that I had finally nailed it perfectly—until I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the flag wagging slightly. A barely audible curse slipped from my lips. I realized immediately that I had just spoken in a way that was most inappropriate for a proper young Japanese woman. I had never before committed such a gross faux pas. I looked at Robert in great embarrassment, and he chuckled at first, raising his eyebrows. Then something I hadn’t expected in my wildest dreams happened. He bent over and kissed me. I had neglected to recite for him my customary speech about Japanese practices. A mild breeze passed over our warm cheeks as we looked at each other, more surprised now at the reaction than I was at the word I’d uttered just seconds before. What was kindled in a driving-test lot that afternoon transformed into a growing trust and a strong bond between a young American man

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from an Idaho farm and a young Japanese woman from Hiroshima. The distance between our two worlds was vast, and yet we were very much alike under our very different appearances and dispositions. Robert was quiet and deliberate; I was, shall we say, more outspoken and tended to move quickly and decisively. But we shared many inward traits. We were drawn to the same types of music, schools of thought, people, and food, and to the kind of dignity we accorded each other. In short, we were a pair of different peas in the same pod, as comfortable together as a tree and its branches. Our similarities blended perfectly, and our differences complemented each other effortlessly. As our relationship developed, the grotesque visions and persistent lethargy I had been suffering began to fade, and laughter took their place. I even tried to make fried chicken with gravy after hearing about his mother’s culinary feats. I had no idea how the dish was made, and neither did Robert, so we experimented following a recipe from a cookbook. Once we were caught by a storm while driving near a forest preserve. The forceful thunder and lightning were frightening, but Robert’s comfortable presence took the edge off my dread. The light was beckoning from beyond the horizon as I tried to forget and break away from my inner struggles. Shameful and embarrassing memories from my past were the last thing I thought of when I was with Robert. I told him only that I had survived the Hiroshima bombing but my mother had died—nothing more. I wish today that I had shared more of myself with him then; I know his support would have been unwavering. By the time my professional training came to a close and Robert’s master’s thesis in political science was nearing completion, he and I agreed on a permanent commitment and became engaged. I had not, however, abandoned my goal of contributing to the welfare of my own society back home and felt a strong obligation to return to Japan and share what I had learned about social work. I also felt strongly that my bond with Robert should receive blessings from both of our families even if it took time. Robert was more independent-minded on this subject; he was entirely comfortable making life decisions on his own.

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After the A-bomb, I had lost all faith in the permanence of anything on this planet and had insisted to my friends and family that I would never marry. Nobody took that promise seriously—not even me. Now, although still in the midst of an agonizing personal journey, I dedicated my future to be spent in Robert’s presence, wherever life might take us. But most immediately, while Robert was preparing to continue his doctoral studies at a West Coast university, I decided to travel home to restore my relationships with my family and win support for my marriage to a foreigner. The two of us had committed to cultivating a workable relationship together, but we had not set any deadline for when to start that work. Our bus trip from Chicago to San Francisco, from where I would depart for Japan, included a detour to Weiser, Idaho, for a visit with Robert’s family. There, I saw the origin of my friend’s dignity and steadfastness in the loving relationship between his parents. The family’s alfalfa fields stretched wide, filling the basin between the mountain ranges; and the beauty and harshness of mighty nature, combined with the dignity of one man’s work to dwell within this setting, was reflected in Robert’s father. This tall, handsome man with graying hair, warm shining eyes, and a great presence was not without misgivings about his son’s choice of wife. Robert’s quiet and gentle mother stayed in the background, busying herself with the meals and routine household tasks. She and I only exchanged a few incidental words during my short stay, but I sensed that she wanted me to have a comfortable visit. Like my grandfather, who sought illumination from the Buddhist holy texts, Robert’s father turned to his Bible and prayer for answers to his understandable apprehensions about our plans. Robert’s siblings, an older sister and younger brother, could not have been more supportive. I could sense their warmth in reaching out to me, but based on this visit, a seed of uncertainty about the viability of Robert’s and my marriage had nevertheless been planted as my journey home continued.

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The Darkening Shadow 1962 Back from a distant shore, to give back what I learned Is coming home ever possible to a hollow ground where thousands tread their last walk? Tadaima kaerimashita: I have returned now.

Return to Hiroshima The welcoming entourage that greeted me at the airport stood behind Papa, who was calling out my name: “Hideko, here, here.” Little Cousin Kumiko had grown so tall that I saw her smiling face first, a few inches above the others. She was standing next to my stepmother Tetsuko and my friend and former classmate Miyoko, who happened to be in Tokyo now, living with her sister, and had joined my airport welcoming committee at Papa’s invitation. Miyoko and I had been friends since our Kabe Girls’ School days right after the bombing and had also attended the Jogakuin mission school together. Before the war, Miyoko’s father had been a well-respected plant manager for the Tamura Industrial Group, and although he later went on to become a successful independent businessman, the warm tie between our two families had endured. I bowed long and deeply to my father, speaking with great emotion the ceremonial greeting: “Tadaima kaerimashita”—“Now this moment, 200

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I’ve come home to you.” It was ten years since I had last glimpsed him from the deck of the parting American freighter. The prematurely aging man standing before me now had looked so much younger when we waved our last goodbyes. Back then, we had had doubts as to whether we would ever see each other again. Papa suppressed the overwhelming emotions evident on his own face and quickly led us to the airport skyline lounge for refreshments. As we followed him, we broke into excited chatter, asking and telling one Hideko at home in Hiroshima, 1962 another simultaneously how good it was to find each other in the huge crowd. “You’re going to rest first with a drink of soda,” Papa commanded. I had already had more than enough food and drink on the plane, but of course I complied. This stop in the airport lounge was also a ceremonial occasion. We sat together, speaking a few words at a time as we observed one another’s changed appearances. I noticed that Papa’s hair had thinned out and his teary eyes had grown smaller and more deeply sunken, clearly showing the toll that the hard post-war years had taken. My cousin Kumiko was hardly recognizable. The shy little girl who

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used to look up at me was now a large, fully developed young woman wearing makeup and towering over me. My stepmother Tetsuko-san seemed ageless, however, looking exactly as I remembered her, regal and quietly in charge. She spoke sparingly, with reserve. Miyoko also seemed unchanged with her still-beautiful fair complexion and lovely features. A touch of resolve and discipline was mirrored in her thoughtful eyes. She had cared for her father, and after his death she had put her younger sister through school before undertaking her own college education. This was no ordinary sacrifice. She watched me search for words of reentry back into their world. I was wearing a new woolen suit of blue and gray tweed purchased from Marshall Fields, a reputable department store in Chicago, along with a blue feathered hat with a short veil like Mama used to don. This clothing was a far cry from the secondhand outfit I had worn when leaving Japan ten years earlier. As we sat together taking in one another’s changes, we chattered away about old connections, friends, families, and places. Slowly, I was entering back into their lives. Two family members were missing from my airport-welcome entourage: Hideo, my half-brother, who excelled in school, ranking at the top of his class in the Hiroshima University Lab School; and Uncle Hisao, who had developed a large tumor at the base of his throat around the site of his earlier injury from the Bomb. Papa had written very briefly about it just before I left Chicago. “What do the doctors say about Uncle Hisao, Papa?” I asked. “They don’t seem to really know, maybe it’s a goiter.” “Can they cut it out maybe?” In Cousin Kumiko’s presence, I was afraid to ask if it was cancerous. I noticed that her eyes were downcast. “Well, the doctors told him that he would be running the risk of possibly damaging some of the delicate nerves controlling the facial muscles.” “You mean he could be drooling and all that?” “That was the gist of it, and my brother wouldn’t have it.” “So what is he doing about it?” I wondered. I definitely understood my uncle’s apprehension about this treatment option and its possible

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outcomes. He was, after all, the first-born son of the man who had brought industry to Hiroshima and also a revered public servant in his own right, having served on the city council of Hiroshima during the war years and after. He would probably choose death over losing control of his speech or of his ability to relate to the public with dignity. “The doctors suggested that about the only thing left to try is radiation treatment,” Papa replied. “Is that safe, Papa?” I was apprehensive. “Wasn’t that what killed everyone?” “Well, apparently in small dosages it could shrink the tumor.” The subject had subdued the entire company by then, and we drifted on to other topics. Grandma Tamano had passed away during my absence. I recalled our exchange of goodbyes while standing on the Hiroshima Station departure platform ten years earlier. I remembered the grip and the warmth of her hand like she was there in front of me now— she had said she was afraid we would never see each other again if she let go of my hand, and her fear had been borne out. Grandma Tamano had been suffering from chronic abdominal pain since the bomb exposure, but doctors were never able to find the cause, and she died without knowing exactly what had ailed her. Aunt Kiyoko, who had looked after Grandmother before her death, still lived in their shared house on the old estate site. “She’ll be so happy to see you,” said Papa. “Is she in good health? She used to be sickly during the war, remember?” I pictured my once-intimidating aunt who, when I first told her about my interest in attending Bennett College, had warned in a stern voice that I was not to bring home a kuro-chan ( “darkie”). I remember being stunned by her suggestion and replying that I had had no thoughts of bringing anyone home with me and that my sole purpose in going to America was for my education. It was fortunate that no other family member had made any comments of this sort then or since, as I might have been tempted to defy them just to prove my

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own youthful and self-righteous boundaries and show that I had a mind of my own. Papa was eager to take me around Tokyo and to keep feeding me as part of the welcoming celebration. He asked what I had missed most in food, and naturally my answer was “sushi.” So we soon were sitting at a nearby sushi bar to feast again. We then climbed the Tokyo Tower for a spectacular view of the rebuilt city, but it looked just like any other metropolis and not the Tokyo of old that had been so dear to me and Mama. The chrysanthemums at Meiji Shrine were the next stop; it was restful there, and the cool breeze smelled like something from the long past. Poor Papa, with his thin, small frame, led us hastily from one spot to the next, trying his best to make this day the warmest of homecomings for me. We spent the night in a Tokyo hotel and rode the train home the next morning. Looking out the train window, I saw that the countryside was still as I remembered it. The golden rice fields had been harvested and the fall leaves colored the mountain landscapes. Familiar sights were coming back to me. In less time than the drive from Chicago to San Francisco had taken, I had left behind my American experiences and returned to my hometown soil, Hiroshima. Aunt Kiyoko, Uncle Hisao, Aunt Fumiko, and Mama’s brother Uncle I-chan and sister Auntie Kozue were all at the Hiroshima railway station awaiting our arrival. I was ashamed of having focused my thoughts on Aunt Kiyoko’s sternness when I saw her now-bent back and aged appearance. Uncle Hisao’s lower face was swollen; he looked as if he should be in terrible pain. “I’m under the care of a doctor, you know,” he assured me as if to apologize for his changed appearance. He insisted that his condition had not weakened him, but his vibrant laughter and energetic strides were gone. My little half-brother Hideo had grown from the toddler I remembered into a young teen nearly as tall as Papa. He occupied my old room, sharing the study area with Cousin Kumiko, whom he called “Sis.” I used to carry him on my back after school and take him for walks by the riverbank. Now that he had become a big, reserved boy, I

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felt lost as to how to reach out to him. The sudden reappearance of his older half-sister must have been equally awkward for him. I have no recollection today of any of the gifts I brought back to my family on that return trip except for the ones I had picked out for Hideo: a Parker pen and a trendy sweater that I carefully selected after several days’ search. He nodded when I gave them to him, but I could not tell if the gifts had pleased him. I simply judged his lack of expression to be that of a typical young Japanese boy. Sometime later though, I saw him in his new sweater looking quite pleased. I bowed deeply to everyone, repeating “Tadaima kaerimashita,” and each time received their response, “Yoku kaetta” (“It is good you returned”). My most important “Tadaima” was to be spoken at the Tokuoji Temple, in front of the family grave. The ashes collected from the rubble of the building where Mama was last seen had been placed in an urn under the gravestone. Papa drove me there right after we arrived. Under Papa’s guidance, coming back to Hiroshima was a relatively quick and simple transition, both physically and socially. But there were no words to describe the sense of pathos I felt standing before the family grave. “Hideko-chan, give Mama your Tadaima greeting, she’d be so glad.” That’s all Papa said as he lit incense sticks and placed a small bunch of flowers in the specially designed receptacle inset in the gravestone. Ten years before, I had come to this grave to say, “Itte kimasu [I am leaving], Mama,” also at Papa’s urging. It was as if he were trying his best to keep her presence for me by showing her our respect. I never could speak of the frightening visions I had had of Mama while in the U.S., or the recurring sensation of dying that I had been experiencing since shortly after her death. Visiting her grave forced me to think of her dying moment. I could not accept this place as her resting place; rather, I envisioned it as being somewhere in the physical and spiritual universe of 1945, eons ago. A part of me had stayed there, too. I felt a growing sense of anxiety as we drove away. The greeting of “Tadaima kaerimashita” was repeated time and again as I went around reporting my safe return to nearly twenty Tamura

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relatives. Following the traditional homecoming practice, I presented to each family a gift—a beautifully carved and stained tray—to signify the rekindling of our renewed ties. I wore my blue tweed suit and veiled hat each time and discovered that sitting on my knees on a tatami while wearing nylons was a strain on both my hosiery and my leg muscles after ten years of relaxing them on chairs. But I managed small chats even with ailing relatives at their bedsides, like Uncle Bunji, my Nishikawa cousins’ father and the CEO of Nishikawa Rubber Industries. Once a powerful chieftain, he was now in frail health like Uncle Hisao but was happy to see me, repeating with a smile, “Well done, Child, well done.” For those who had departed this world while I was gone, I burned incense praying for their souls’ peace and for their protection over me, as we believed them to be our ancestral guardians. My relatives were eager hosts and appeared surprised that I acted pretty much like anyone else my age who had never left the country. Some, however, complimented me on the changes they did see, observing that I had become more mature and thoughtful in spite of my suspected Americanization. Papa had made the guest room into my room, closing it off with a privacy curtain across one end of the room and converting the tokonoma (special display space) into a clothes closet space. He even added a small bed with a rose-colored futon cover that one of his former employees had given to him for my use. The lovely room, I was told later by Aunt Fumiko, had been assembled at a great sacrifice, not only in expense but also in the strain that it had caused in Papa’s home life. My stepmother had raised understandable objections to losing their guest room which had been the only unused space for their daily needs. Papa anticipated that during my years in America, I would have grown accustomed to living in a separate room of my own. He was right; I welcomed the space. Aunt Fumiko’s revelation did not surprise me, but the tension in the family revived old fears and pain. Papa’s home still did not feel like a safe refuge but rather a fragile place that needed to be navigated most cautiously, like walking on stepping stones in a murky pond. All my newly acquired counseling

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skills didn’t provide any clues about how we could begin building trust. To demonstrate my good will, I helped with the chores around the house, but Tetsuko-san remained uncommunicative.

Pilgrimage After all the fanfare about my return had died down, my quiet pilgrimage back to the Hiroshima I had left a decade ago began. I took a walk on the banks of the Ota River where I used to sit to watch the sunset. I visited the railroad crossing that had swallowed an old despairing man before my eyes. The dirt road along the riverbank was more busily traveled; it was no longer a restful place to sit in the hours of twilight as I had done in my youth, and four-leaf clovers were hard to find now. The view across the river held drastic changes as well. The grand cherry orchard whose beautiful blossoms charmed the people of Hiroshima every spring was now gone, cut down to make room for public housing. Rows of buildings showed the city’s population growth. I understood the need for better housing, but I was disappointed that the builders had not left any cherry trees at all. MacArthur Road, which had seemed so needlessly wide when it was built during the American Occupation, seemed quite suitable now for the busy throughway it had become. Even finding my way back to Yokogawa Station, the nearest railroad stop, was awkward. The colors of the buses and the names of the bus lines had been changed and were completely unfamiliar. The “People’s Hope” café that Papa and I used to visit had moved to the downtown Hon-dori (“Main Street”) shopping arcade, a relatively new, upscale section of the commercial district. The Hon-dori arcade was the talk and pride of the town; its merchants had pooled their resources to put a roofed cover over the walkways for all-weather shopping convenience, much like an American shopping mall. I walked up and down looking for familiar landmarks and names. Fukuya, once the only department store in town, now had a competitor called Tenmaya, a smaller store that offered less-expensive items. The bookstore Mama and I used to frequent during the war had been rebuilt but still

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occupied the same spot across from Fukuya. The old established chinaware, kimono, and jewelry shops that used to be on Main Street before the war had also been rebuilt in their former locations. The biggest change I noticed was that the shopkeepers now addressed me as oku-sama (married female customer) rather than ojō-sama (unmarried younger female). To be accorded a title without having achieved the corresponding station in life was uncomfortable at first, but there was no point in calling special attention to my being a twenty-something leftover ojō-san in a world where most of my friends were now married with children. The Jogakuin mission school buildings were being renovated, but the senior high school was still housed in the structure that had been rebuilt immediately after the war. The students streaming out of school now were wearing the same uniform and school insignia that my friends and I had worn, but these students showed no hint of the pain, hardships, or independent quests that we had navigated in our youth. I remembered when a small group of us, urged on by Ms. Jones, had marched into the faculty room to present our grievances. Though undertaking such actions was unheard of for students at that time, the faculty members subsequently held discussion groups to learn more from us and exchange ideas. The high school girls before me now appeared well fed, well behaved, and content; and the students on the Jogakuin College campus gave a similar impression. Their clothes were no longer threadbare, nor were their shoes worn down like many of ours had been. In the school cafeteria, whale-meat shish kebab prepared by the home economics students was being served to the staff and returning visitors. I had never tasted whale meat before. Apparently even the local culinary tastes had changed while I was gone. My old physics teacher, Mr. Hashimoto, was there to greet me; he was now the principal of the junior and senior high schools. We reminisced about our trials and trepidations during the post-war years. Dr. Hirose, the Jogakuin chancellor, also welcomed me back enthusiastically. I had seen her from time to time during the past ten years, when she visited the U.S. on official and personal business; now, she offered

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Hideko with Jogakuin mission school Chancellor Hirose and Principal Hashimoto, 1962

me a job teaching an introductory college course in Religion and Ethics. A former professor at Jogakuin College—Dr. Oguro of the Department of Philosophy and Religion—had enthusiastically recommended me for the position. The job offer was most generous and gratifying, and I could not have hoped for a better one. I was profoundly grateful that the value of my education was being recognized, and it would have been a golden opportunity for any young women fresh back in the country without Japanese academic credentials. Still, I hesitated to accept it. I hated feeling ambivalent about the employment opportunity my former school was willing to extend to an unworthy graduate of whom the faculty apparently were still very fond. I wish I could have accepted their offer, but contemplating the job offer forced me to recognize that I would never be at peace in Hiroshima. The shadow of death still hung over the city like a poisonous cloud, and the extensive rebuilding had only served to accentuate the once-elegant city’s destruction, like a woman who has tried to cover her facial scars with too many cosmetics. I could not bear the constant reminders that what once, for me, was a happy place had been totally destroyed.

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The public area at the epicenter of the atomic blast had been enlarged to make room for a peace park. The park’s Peace Memorial Museum, which had been completed after I had left, was located not far from the memorial marker sculpted by Isamu Noguchi early in the post-war period. The marker’s engraved pledge, “The wrong shall not be repeated, so may you rest,” now seemed remote and powerless in a world so full of nuclear weapons. I refused to enter the museum, for no collection of photographs and burned artifacts could possibly communicate the horrors I had seen. No museum display could ever convey the smell of burned bodies, the screams of the trapped, and the pleas of the dying. The memorial dome at the blast’s epicenter was now fenced in so that no one could walk in and touch it; it had become a symbol and a protected shrine while I was gone. I remembered the many times I had sat on the rubble inside the dome, gazing at the broken-down walls and the burned steel structure, sometimes even sketching the scene in watercolor. Looking at the dome now from outside the fence was not quite the same. I could not relate to a symbol I could not touch. As a youngster, I had had little awareness of what I was actually trying to accomplish by going there, walking inside, and climbing over the rubble. I wonder if those visits were an attempt to integrate or accept my confrontation with the bomb’s horrific destruction. Having been away for so long, and having studied for so many years in order to understand the grief of others, I thought I might gain profound insights as I paid homage to these markers of my youth. Instead, I felt uneasy and far less confident than I had anticipated. Could it be that nothing had fundamentally changed in my life during the years away? Or could it be that to relive so vividly my childhood memories of Hiroshima sucked out any feelings of confidence and security I had managed to develop? The news of my return to Hiroshima traveled fast, and my former Jogakuin classmates and Seibi friends were happy to renew our bonds. We had corresponded across the sea during my years in America. In my troubled times, they alone gave me the kind of solace that helped

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me feel worthy as a human being despite my self-doubts and the unresolved conflicts at home. I had never forgotten the kind farmer who had rescued me on the evening of August 6, 1945, when I was trying to find my family’s designated meeting location after my arduous escape from Hiroshima. I searched for him, but to no avail. I was heartbroken—this man and his family had shown kindness and charity on the darkest day of my life, when no one else had cared. I owed them my life. My father had gone to visit them shortly after the war, but he had lost touch with them. I reached out to some of my former Seibi classmates for help, including Mr. Takamura—who was now chief of the advertising department at Chugoku Press—and Mr. Kake, who was now a postmaster. Both knew the area intimately, but my recollections were inadequate for identifying the farm in question. Mr. Takamura printed an article about my search in his newspaper’s August 6 edition, but no one responded to it and I was never able to express my gratitude to the humane farm family. Not finding them left me with an enduring sense that their virtue must be passed on, through me onto others, forever. I decided that I had to go back to another place from my past: Kimita Village, the evacuation location for Seibi schoolchildren in the summer of 1945 and where, on August 5, Miyoshi and I had begged our mothers to take us back home to Hiroshima. I had to see for myself if the village still existed in the same harsh conditions as when we had experienced it. Uncle I-chan and Papa agreed to drive. My stepbrother Hideo, Cousin Kumiko, and Little Cousin Toshie—Uncle I-chan’s daughter—joined in the ride. The trip from Hiroshima to Kimita, which had taken all day back in 1945 when we traveled by bus, took only a few hours by car. We went on a cool spring day. The flurry of wildflowers in pink, blue, and yellow covered the ground like beautiful carpets everywhere. I had not seen them during my summer sojourn at Kimita. The stream where we had washed our faces and brushed our teeth had narrowed and become shallower but still flowed next to the rice paddies. I found the Zensho Temple, where the Seibi schoolchildren had lived, just where I’d pic-

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tured it would be. The forty-some stone steps leading up to it were breaking down, but an old woman who appeared at the gate invited us in. She was the mother-in-law of the young priestess who had led our daily sutra chanting. Had her son come home from the war? Yes, he had. Is her daughter-in-law still performing the temple duties? No, she has children now. I asked her about one of the local village representatives who used to look after our needs, and who had helped arrange places for us to bathe by persuading the farmer families to share their facilities. She said that he had died of appendicitis a few days after the Hiroshima bombing. The villagers had carried him on a stretcher to a distant hospital in the town of Miyoshi, but the doctor and nurses there were unable to get to him because of the huge number of dying A-bomb victims who had been transferred there. Instead, he suffered in pain, waiting for help that never came. The villagers had mourned for this kind and decent man, the old woman told us, and they kept wondering why he had had to die when his disease was so treatable. I could not have agreed more. Why, indeed? We continued bowing to each other as we parted. I took my relatives to my secret place of solace in the woods, where a hanging bridge hovered over a fast-moving stream. The water was still breaking in an icy crystal splash as it moved over the large rocks under the bridge, and I could almost hear the laughter of my classmates and feel the pure tranquility that once was there. But there was no longer any magic as we watched; now, the spot was simply a clearing in the woods. The village school still stood atop the small mountain with the same long set of stairs climbing up to it. The bars I had played on were still exactly where they used to be. Explaining to my family the taunting that had followed my performance on those bars so many years ago was too cumbersome, but I still remembered it vividly. I sought to find out what had happened to Takada, my one village friend who had not taunted me. His family’s farmhouse was behind the temple we had just visited and, amazingly, it looked exactly as I remembered it. It seemed to be a popular day for visitors at this farmhouse, as a stream of people were going in and coming out; and there was no warn-

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ing for the utter surprise that awaited us there. First, a mature woman with a hand towel over her hair came toward us to see who we were. I recognized her face right away as that of my old friend’s mother, and she also remembered me from the days of our evacuation. She said she had heard I lost my mother in the bombing of Hiroshima. She also said that this was the day of the village council election and that her son was one of the candidates. On our approach to the house, I had noticed several white flags planted in the ground but had not read the bold, black calligraphic letters on them. Now I saw that they were the words of encouragement for candidate Takada, and they included a phrase written larger than life: the “Communist Party of Japan.” During the war, to declare one’s affiliation with communism would have been a death sentence. Even in the post-war MacArthur era, many communist leaders had been purged. Communist party membership was not an easy political affiliation in a largely capitalist society, nor could it have been for Takada, whose family appeared to be quite well off. My old friend soon came to greet us, breaking away from his campaign crowd. I would not have recognized him from his sixth-grade days; he had grown tall, his fair and gentle face had turned to the darkest tan, and his gentle eyes were stern and piercing with resolve. If he hadn’t smiled, I would not have known he was the same person. He chatted some and then returned to his campaigning as we bowed and wished him good luck in his campaign efforts. As we left Kimita Village behind, Cousin Kumiko remarked that it was not surprising for a young, serious, and idealistic man to turn to communism in a backway rural area where local politics tends to be business-as-usual and young men typically are without a voice. Takada had been different from the rest of the village children, and I hoped that his road ahead would be met with encounters as kind as the ones I had experienced with him. In the end, I realized that my Kimita Village no longer existed, even though its physical site had not disappeared or been bombed like Hiroshima. The visit served to jolt me from nostalgia into the present, the changed Today.

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At home, I looked for the box in which I had kept my school pictures and yearbooks, artwork, and calligraphy that had won various awards and learned that it had been moved from the house to an outdoor shed, where its contents had been exposed to rain and wind and eventually were thrown out. There was no explanation other than that the box had taken up inside space that was needed for other things. Aunt Fumiko, who loved my calligraphy work, had retrieved one piece from the large pile of weather-beaten photographs and papers. I regretted that I had not taken them all with me. I became more and more aware of the silence in our household in contrast, for example, to that of my uncle and aunt with Cousin Kumiko. It did not take me very long to realize that there was a void in our family—and that all my theology and psychology courses and field experiences in America had not taught me how to fill it. This saddened me; I would have opened a thousand oysters to find one pearl that might have brought us closer. My stepmother said that Papa was never talkative anymore, and he had had a frowning expression for as long as she could remember. “Except,” she added, “one morning, a few days before your return from America, he walked outside after getting up and I saw him smiling and heard him say ‘What a nice day!’ looking up to the sky.” I soon realized that I had become a stranger who could not again be an integral part of the family. My return had generated so much tension in our household. One night, exhausted from this emotional stress, my tears began to roll. The weeping turned to choking that continued through the night. I remembered then why so many years before I had thought of going to the railroad tracks to end my young life. The current situation was no one’s fault but rather the evolution of broken pieces that could not be made to fit together again. When the memories of past experiences began to break through the denial that I had been using for protection against them, that buffer began to erode rapidly and the feelings of being abandoned and unsafe returned in full force. In the middle of my pilgrimage back to Hiroshima, I found myself a helpless child who needed to flee again.

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Meanwhile, Uncle Hisao’s swelling was now turning red and the surface of his skin was stretching and cracking after the radiation treatment. The doctors were still uncertain about his problem, and my uncle could only conclude that he had an incurable disease. In earlier days, he had joked about the shards of glass that were still under his skin in various parts of his body. Doctors had considered them too risky to remove, and they had therefore been left in place. Until recently, these embedded shards had seemed to represent his invincibility, especially in light of all the other injuries he had also suffered. But now my uncle had joined all of the other hibakusha whose lives were ticking away. None of us knew when, where, or how some mysterious disease induced by the A-bomb’s deadly radioactivity might strike us. We wouldn’t know until our last breath. The Hiroshima Atomic-bomb Hospital, which opened in 1956, provided services to ailing hibakusha free of charge. All hibakusha who could verify by witnesses that they had been in the city when the bomb dropped were eligible to receive a registration card that entitled them to free medical care and a few other care-related compensations. But for those who, like my uncle, had been utilizing private care outside the national health care system, the hibakusha card was of little use. To be on the safe side, I applied for and received my own survivor’s registration paper during my return home, but having it was a double-edged sword: it did provide access to limited compensations, but it also branded its holder as a hibakusha. From the beginning, the hibakusha were oddities; no one knew how their bodies had been changed. In the early months of the post-war period, many survivors without any visible injuries died. Then, an untold number continued to die slowly all throughout the prefecture and elsewhere after they had relocated and presumably returned to normal health. An ominous cloud followed them as they complained of a malaise without a label, and they were sometimes considered employment risks because of their ailments. Marriage brokers became concerned about the possibility of birth defects for children of matrimonial candidates who were bomb survivors. Business owners such as my own relatives had little to worry

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about in terms of economic independence, but I suspected that those without a solid financial base would have had to try even harder to prove their fitness to counter public perceptions. The hibakusha were reminders of a tragic past that the country would have preferred to forget. I didn’t want to think about that past, and I did my best to run from it. But denying lived experiences has a peculiar cost, and the past always catches up with us in one way or another. I was no exception to this rule, as I was already learning. My former classmate Yoshino was also having difficulty with her past catching up with her. We had both left Hiroshima the same year to attend college in the U.S.—in her case, an aunt who had immigrated to Ohio sponsored her trip. She subsequently suffered from a general malaise in Columbus, Ohio, where she and her husband lived with their young son. Doctors there were unable to discover any cause for her symptoms and attributed them to an adjustment problem. Finally, she traveled back to Hiroshima and sought help at the Atomic-bomb Hospital, where she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. When I returned to Hiroshima, she was convalescing after removal of three-quarters of her stomach, her spirit remarkably upbeat despite that ordeal. Her American husband had joined her, and shortly thereafter they headed back to Columbus. I now knew that I would never be at peace in Hiroshima, but I was still determined to find work in my home country that would utilize my education and training. So much had been expended on that education: the grueling years in school; the efforts to overcome fatigue, mental terrors, and the persistent language barrier; and all the charity that others had extended to enable my academic success. I could not give up on the idea of trying somehow to help people in Hiroshima. Only a few of my classmates who had not yet married were pursuing career paths at that time. The outlook for finding a vocational opportunity that would allow me to give back what I had learned was fast becoming doubtful. The Ministry of Welfare had not yet defined social work as a paid occupation; rather, it was still understood to be volunteer charity work for the unfortunate. An undergraduate college

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of social work had been established a few years before in Tokyo, and its graduates were establishing networking contacts, but social-work jobs were very scarce. My personal demons exacerbated my own selfdoubts about finding relevant paid work, and even though my family knew intellectually that my education should be put to use, they were uncomfortable with the prospect of a woman being employed. Papa’s friend Mr. Matsuda was willing to hire me as his personal secretary in the Mazda corporate office, but I was no more qualified for that position than I was for the next job offer of working as a cottage mother in an orphanage. That job entailed all of the domestic and custodial care duties associated with taking care of ten to twelve children alone around the clock. Working as an interpreter or serving as a bilingual secretary were still the most likely job prospects for an Americaneducated female. I began to doubt that there was any place at all for me in Japan, even vocationally. A rare opportunity to exercise both my theological education and my bilingual skills did arise, however, when my friend Hiroko sent a frantic request from Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture for my assistance in acting as an interpreter/translator for a Texas contingent of the Reverend Billy Graham Crusade in the early spring of 1963. Billy Graham’s brand of theology came from the evangelical tradition, including tent meetings and revival renditions. To follow the Texan pastor’s passionate preaching, the translations had to be just as passionate and emphatic. It was a performance I had not attempted before this occasion, nor have I since. My friend Hiroko and her husband Rev. Higashi would have been lost without my help, and I was more than happy to lend a hand since doing so also gave me a chance to explore job opportunities in nearby Tokyo. As soon as I was released from looking after the evangelists, I headed for Tokyo, checking out every connection I had. Finding a social-work job there would free me from the debilitating tension in my Hiroshima household while also allowing me to remain in Japan and utilize my education. I sought counsel from the president of the newly established social-work college, whose daughter had once come

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Hiroko and Rev. Higashi with the Texas evangelical team, 1962

to me for support in the United States. He warned me that Japanese culture and customs had not yet advanced far enough for people to accept the notion of a stranger intruding into their personal difficulties and challenges. Traditionally, these problems had always been taken care of by teachers and relatives. He gave me a book called Amae no Kozou (“Make-up of Dependence”) that offered a social and psychological analysis of the basic structures of Japanese relationships. Papa’s youngest sister Aunt Yoshiko, who lived in Kotohira, was a powerful backer of the then-foreign secretary, Mr. Ohira from Shikoku Island, and she put me in touch with the secretary’s subordinate for a possible international position. But nothing came of that inquiry. I even followed up on my previous contact with the American embassy, also without fruitful results, so I returned to Hiroshima emptyhanded. I had stayed in touch with Mrs. Ethel Verry Knight, my former employer at the Chicago Child Care Society where I’d done an internship, and she became quite sympathetic when she learned that I could not find a social-work job in Japan. She contacted the U.S. Immigration Office

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to express interest in my reentry as a desired and needed professional for her agency. Meanwhile, letters between Robert and me had been crossing the Pacific frequently as we kept each other abreast of our experiences and plans and continued to affirm our deep feelings for one another. I looked for his letters like a soldier on the battlefront starved for words of comfort. His was an untainted warmth that I believed would never be touched by my Hiroshima experiences. I still could not describe how empty and shattering my homecoming had been, so he was unaware of the darkening shadows I was walking through at the time. Robert was not the only one I did not share this information with; I told no one about the shadows. I had not understood or accepted them to be anything other than my own shortcomings. I was bent on keeping them to myself. One day during lunch when Papa and I sat alone, I finally told him about my problems fitting back into Japanese life. Neither of us spoke to others about the immense hardships and struggles we were experiencing as a result of the bombing and the war. They were a given, something we all lived with, like living in the mud would be if that were one’s designated dwelling place. The mud would be taken for granted, not discussed. Venting regrets or questioning how life might have been under other circumstances were luxuries we seldom indulged in. I also told him for the first time about Robert and me: how we had met, the kind of a person he was, his many strengths of character, and our love for each other. I described his academic track, his continuing graduate work, and his interest in teaching political science. Papa was very quiet but listened intently. I could not tell from his immediate reaction whether he was relieved or disappointed that I had actually chosen a young man. I told him that ours was a longterm commitment, that we had not yet set a timetable for our marriage, and that I hoped Robert felt very flexible about the timetable as well. I believed that of all people, Papa would understand. He had himself defied the code of his own Japanese society when he chose to marry my mother.

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Papa looked at my large black-and-white portrait photo of Robert for a long time, and then he spoke with deliberation. He said that he would miss me if I were to leave again but he would try to support my decision. He said he would need to talk it over with Uncle Hisao and others family members for their consent in the decision. When he did so, Aunt Fumiko was saddened and tried to persuade me to stay on. Why did I have to leave in so short a time? she pleaded. Uncle Hisao was also averse to my leaving, siding with my aunt. Papa gave the situation a romantic twist by asking them to bless young love, and in the end they gave in to his wish to let me go. As soon as my interest in returning to America became known to others, the tension in my immediate family eased. Tetsuko-san’s expressions softened, and she spoke to me in a light-hearted, joking way, even offering to pay for all the dress-making charges I had incurred during this visit. The conversations between my parents began to flow more freely at the meal table. I knew then, painful as it was, that I had made the right decision. A non-matching piece of the family jigsaw puzzle was removing itself as I prepared for yet another pilgrimage.

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Farewell, Hiroshima 1963–1975 Farewell my Ota River, flowing waters and the sea, full of laughter and sun burns Joys of yesteryears long gone Farewell Hiroshima Like a sparrow that returns in spring back to its old nest. Will I see you again? Farewell Hiroshima

Return to Chicago Ethel Verry Knight’s persistent lobbying at the Immigration Office on my behalf eventually paid off, and the papers for my re-entry into the United States were put together within several months. Robert’s letters conveyed his enthusiasm for my early return. The Tamura clan gathered again at the Hiroshima train station to see me off, just as it had when I first left the city a little over a decade earlier. This time was different for me, though: I was leaving with the knowledge that I had failed in my efforts to confront the dark side of my Hiroshima. No light had dispelled its shadows in my soul. 221

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I was leaving feeling more shattered and less worthy than when I had arrived. The brokenness inside was like the rubble in the ruins of my late grandfather’s once-grand estate; it needed to be cleared before a new structure, no matter how small or humble, could be built. All my efforts to rebuild family ties and find employment utilizing my education had fallen short of my hopes; now, attaining these goals seemed impossible whether I was in or out of Hiroshima. I was reminded of the counseling clients who had often told me they were sick of trying to cope with their problems anymore. I felt the same way now. An overwhelming sense of “combat fatigue” had set in. Meanwhile, Papa was doing what he could to ease the pain of yet another separation. This time, we didn’t have to rush out to buy suitcases. There were too many books and personal items to pack, so he carefully constructed hard board boxes with plastic lining to ship the excess. At this time, he was also trying to start up a new business in chemical coating while continuing to help his ailing brother with the sewing needle manufacturing company. It was a difficult time for everyone. A small farewell dinner party was organized at the suggestion of Aunt Fumiko. She cooked a festive red snapper with thin Japanese noodles. Trendy French dishes were prepared by Cousin Kumiko, and meat dishes with finely prepared salads were added by my stepmother. Aunts Kiyoko and Shizuko—the relative who had brokered Mama’s return to the Tamura household after her brief departure during our early days in Hiroshima—joined together and spoke into a microphone for the first time in their lives to record their parting wisdom. Cousin Kumiko sang a theme song from the popular TV program, “Let Us Meet in Our Dreams.” Uncle Hisao, too, belted out some ancient Chinese poetry even with his swollen neck, and we chanted along with him. All of their voices still echo in my ears when I think of that afternoon. They must have sensed that I knew this journey was different my first one ten years ago. They also must have known that they might be gone before the next reunion, though we told each other just the opposite. The World’s Fair would be coming to Tokyo and so would the Olympics; surely we

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would reconnect on those occasions? Of course, they also wanted me to come back with my husband. I remember the sunny room where we sat and how I wished deep within that those happy moments might have been daily occurrences during my visit, instead of the parting event. How much easier it would have been to change my mind and stay, had that laughter and those smiling faces also been part of my earlier memories of life in Hiroshima. But this was not to be. The irrevocable changes brought on by the consequences of the Bomb had to be accepted. Now, I just wanted to get as far away from Hiroshima as I could. I would find my work and home in Chicago with Robert. The Tamura clan congregated on the platform of Hiroshima Station before the train pulled out. Unlike upon our parting before my vibrant first journey to the United States, my voice cracked and turned into silent tears as I thanked my relatives for coming. This time, Papa and my stepmother accompanied me to Tokyo, from where I would fly off to America again. I do remember treating Papa and Tetsuko to a steak dinner in Tokyo the night before I left. I can still see their candle-lit faces. Papa had taught me how to dine in European style when I was a small child. He had taken Mama and me to an elegant dining room in a hotel on Miyajima Island. There, he had pointed to an array of silverware and explained their respective uses for soup, salad, meat, and fish and instructed me on holding the fork in the left hand without changing it to the right hand as we progressed through several courses of food. That scene came back to me as I watched him and Tetsuko-san enjoy their last meal with me. I cannot remember how Papa, Tetsuko, and I parted at the boarding gate the next day, but I do remember my good friend Hiroko—there with her husband, Rev. Higashi—calling out to me from the open rooftop, “Tamura-saaan.” Hearing her distinct voice, I turned around and waved back. I also remember the rapid climb of the jet plane when it took off from Haneda Airport; I knew this was the termination of my past relationship to Hiroshima. And I remember how good it felt to

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step on San Francisco soil when the plane finally landed there after a brief stopover in Honolulu. Arlene, a classmate from McCormick Seminary, was there to help usher me back into the country. I felt a great sense of relief that there was indeed a place to which I could return where I might resume my life and personal growth in my committed relationship with Robert. Such was my plan, and I did not doubt that I had chosen the best course. What I did not yet know when I walked out of the gate at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport was that I was returning to America a changed person, having just intensely relived the shadows of my past life. Robert’s beaming face came into my vision immediately. He eagerly embraced me and planted a long kiss. It was then that I realized something was terribly wrong between us: I wanted to push him away. My conscious thought was that this was not the Japanese way—it was not correct to be so publicly demonstrative. But I also felt lifeless inside, within his embrace. I knew how much I had loved the person standing before me, but while I could still recall those feelings, they now seemed distant. Robert detected my apprehension but saw no need to press the matter. When he did later ask me about my mood, I was unable to express my true feelings, seeing how happy he was to see me. In a few short weeks he was to return to his parents’ farm in Idaho and then head to Seattle for his continuing studies. We decided that I would join him there sometime later after I had served for a sufficient period in the social-work agency that had invited me back. As I look back now, I recognize how foolish we were to give ourselves so short a time to become readjusted to one another. I had just severed my ties to both the country of my origin and my family. Thus separated from all close ties, I was feeling numb and emotionally disconnected from the world. The numbing effect did not discriminate; I felt distanced from Robert just as I felt distanced from everyone else. But the feeling was even more scary with Robert, whom I had loved. I cynically saw only the folly of love, because it was subject to change and could even be left unrequited at death. I needed time to come to terms with my Hiroshima nightmares. Having returned to America

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with something akin to combat fatigue, I had resolved to reject any further expectations. At the end of that summer, still unsure of myself, I wrote to Robert to discuss our commitment, and on Labor Day weekend, I flew to Spokane, Washington, to see him. In a small café just north of the Canadian border, I suggested that we break our engagement. Our eyes were red from crying as he drove his father’s DeSoto on a scenic highway. I tried to explain that I was emotionally confused, and that it wasn’t his fault. Robert had already sensed my reservations earlier and did not question my explanations; he simply assumed I had had a change of heart. (Neither of us, of course, had yet heard anything about post-traumatic stress disorder, which would not be formally diagnosed until 1980 based on studies involving Vietnam War veterans and other severe-trauma survivors.) Robert asked me to keep the set of rings he had given me, saying that his heart was still with me, so I might as well keep them for him. Upon returning to Chicago, I walked through the vacant O’Hare Airport in the dark hours of night. Something inside felt like a lone kite floating with a string held by no one. Over time, the correspondence between us became less and less frequent until one day a letter from Robert arrived requesting the return of his rings. There was no accompanying explanation; none was necessary. Just as he had not asked any questions in the little border café about my change of heart, I simply assumed that his love had finally died—as, I believed, all love eventually would.

Return to Painting I found a place to live near both my workplace and the University of Chicago campus, feeling with the strongest resolve that my new life in America had to work. I tried to structure this new life to meet as many as possible of the physical, social, and intellectual essentials for healthy living. I met with old friends, volunteered on the International House advisory board, participated in American Youth Hostel activities, spent Sunday mornings at the Unitarian Church on the university campus, and listened to discussions held by the Ethical Society of Chicago in

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the evenings. But the most rewarding activity was one I chose out of my childhood love for it: pursuing painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I first drew, sketched, and painted live and still objects and then moved on to abstract painting. Out of my complicated past came an abstract painting called “Family,” featuring at its center a jovial child with loving parents, and to the side a “Family” painting, 1970 suffering couple with a discarded offspring. Without forcing me to dwell on the impossible quagmire of the loss of my mother and so much other sorrow and trauma, concept painting granted relief and pleasure simultaneously.

Search I sought refuge from my post-Hiroshima-visit “combat fatigue” by burying myself in my work at the Chicago Child Care Society. I hurled myself into the work of counseling young mothers and finding foster care for abandoned children. Mine was a mission of seeking peace of mind for myself while also serving the needs of my clients. Although Ethel Verry Knight—the agency’s executive director who had previously hired me as an intern and then sponsored my return from Japan—left the agency the same year I returned, she stayed in close personal contact, treating me like an adopted daughter. Festive dinners on holidays and tantalizing fresh fish and seafood every Friday could be counted on at the home of Frank and Ethel Knight. Usually very sharp and articulate, Mrs. Knight would never contradict her brilliant but opinionated

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husband, an eminent economics professor at the University of Chicago. At moments of disagreement, she would simply remark in a gentle protest, “Why, Frank!” and Dr. Knight would chuckle. I myself could not have agreed more with her husband, however, when he assessed current events with the observation that “the human race is rotten”—this was my sentiment exactly. The most exciting part of joining their dinner table was meeting Dr. Knight’s distinguished dinner guests: former students and colleagues who honored the profound contributions he made to the Chicago School of Economics. Dr. Milton Friedman, a former student of Dr. Knight, lived in the same building and was a frequent guest, as was Dr. George Stiegler; both would later be awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Listening to their comments on world affairs was fascinating. My work at the Child Care Society led to a growing interest in the mental health and counseling profession; and as a prerequisite to moving into that field, I undertook a four-and-a-half-year course of psychoanalysis with Dr. Joel Handler. In the aftermath of this experience, I finally felt ready for an intimate relationship; in 1968, I married a man I’d met on a bicycle ride five years earlier and we eventually started a family together, as described in the next chapter. In July 1970, after ten years with the Chicago Child Care Society, I made the career switch into mental health, taking a faculty position as casework supervisor in the Northwestern University Medical School’s adult psychiatry clinic. Because of my intense desire to help my patients, I continued my professional training far beyond the yearly continuing education units required for license renewal. As part of this training, I spent time with a noted psychiatrist, Dr. Milton Erickson in Phoenix, Arizona, who taught and utilized hypnosis in his therapy. He had me go deep into hypnosis and return to a happy part of my childhood. The technique was successful; it would swamp painful recollections with warm ones each time a hint of war memories returned. But the respite I experienced with this technique was only temporary; a few hours later, I would begin to see in my mind’s eye images of countless hands moving and crawling over an iron gate. I could

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not shake them. Without further instruction from Dr. Erickson, I decided to fight them in my own way. Just as had happened for me as a middle-schooler in the immediate aftermath of my Bomb sickness, my instincts led me to do something physical. In Midorii, I had scaled cliffs with my bare hands; here in Arizona, I chose to climb a nearby hill in the predawn light. I had not been prepared for a rough climb, but I chose a direct route up Squaw Hill rather than taking the established path. I pushed directly through cacti and brush on a straight path to the summit. Bruised and scratched, I inched my way to the top. The horrid images did disappear; but it was then, looking into the distant dawn, that I also realized Hiroshima would be with me always. I could not escape from it, so I had to confront it, however terrifying or long the confrontation would be. I needed to get on with my life. I next took a training seminar with Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, widely known for her work in death and dying. My request to work on my grief led to a private session with one of the trainers, a PhD psychologist, who insisted on my verbalizing what I had not uttered at the moment of the A-bomb explosion. I protested that such verbalization was impossible for Japanese people; she refused to accept this excuse. In the midst of our argument, I suddenly heard myself cry out, “Mama, I am so scared.” It was my first admission to myself that the deafening sound of explosion and the raging motion of destruction on August 6, 1945, had taken away even a small opportunity to ask for my mother’s help, which I had desperately needed at that moment. Unfortunately, my physical reaction to the trauma of the Hiroshima bombing—profound nausea and headache—recurred every time I spoke about my Hiroshima experiences after that, and I simply had to become silent on the subject. My existential search also took me to Toronto, where Dr. Fennigstein—a Holocaust survivor of the Polish ghetto, where he had been a physician—conducted survivor workshops. There, I gained profound insights into the similarities in the aftereffects of survivorship between my experience as a Bomb survivor and those of Holocaust survivors.

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Just as remarkable a set of similarities appeared in the tendency of survivor parents to place greater-than-normal expectations on their children. This insight was a profound wake-up call for me as a mother. The births of my healthy children (described in the next chapter) had brought me the utmost joy and highest hopes and had put to rest the fear of anomalies in hibakusha offspring. They were beautiful and spirited from the start, but now I realized that so far I had given them no time to just be children; I had been expecting too much from them despite their young ages. Upon leaving Toronto, I could hardly wait to come home to enjoy the child in my children.

My Father By far the most significant insights I received during this long period of searching were from the work of Dr. Robert J. Lifton, who chronicled the experiences of Hiroshima survivors in his 1968 book, Death in Life. I was able to share these insights with Papa when he came to Chicago in 1968 to attend my wedding (described in the next chapter). I explained how important it was for us to be able to talk about our experiences. I told him about the concept of “psychic numbing,” and said that if he had felt numb in all of what he had to do clearing the dead and searching for Mama, it was not because he was heartless as he might have thought. I told him about the tainted feelings of guilt that survivors often experienced for having survived while being powerless to save others. The man who taught me to walk, read, write, and create art was now listening to me, taking in all that I could explain. We talked for hours. It was then that Papa told me about an encounter that he had not shared with anyone before, an encounter with a young American prisoner of war. Papa was at his military Inland Sea Transportation headquarters beside Ujina Harbor at the moment of the bomb explosion. He saw the flash indirectly as I had; the port buildings were shattered, but he and his staff were unharmed. His first task was to survey the damage but the reports he received were so unclear he decided to investigate the situation himself. He was driven in a tri-motorbike by

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Papa traveled to Chicago for Hideko and Harold’s wedding, 1968. From left: Anna and Bill Larson, Hideko, Ms. Ethel Verry Knight, Papa, Harold’s mother, Harold.

a staff driver. Collapsed houses and injured survivors overflowing the streets made the going extremely difficult. About an hour or two into the surveying efforts, he spotted a group of people composed mostly of elderly men and women carrying stones in their hands and surrounding a tall foreigner dressed only in his boxer shorts. The young man was blue-eyed and blond and looked about seventeen. Papa immediately surmised that this was an American prisoner of war who had wandered off after the bomb fell and been stopped by the confused and understandably upset citizens. Papa got off the motorbike to intervene. In his officer’s uniform he spoke to the stone-wielding group, saying that the prisoner was obviously unarmed and not about to hurt anyone, that he was under the army’s protection, and that they should not harm him. Unfortunately, Papa then had to move on to report back to army headquarters, so he did not know the young man’s subsequent fate—but he could still remember the print on his boxer shorts. “Kawaisoni [a pity], he was just a boy.” Papa’s tear-filled eyes were seeing the young man again through his sharp painter’s vision.

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“His parents probably never knew what had happened to him, did they, Papa?” I thought of the “missing” category into which Mama had been placed in the record book of Hiroshima casualties. “So was this young man listed in the Americans’ record book?” I asked. “No, they probably had no way of knowing,” Papa replied. I wanted to know more about Papa’s post-Bomb experience with American prisoners of war, and what he told me next was even more shocking. He said there had been about thirty prisoners of war housed in the bunker at army headquarters near the Hiroshima Castle, and few of them survived the explosion. He went on to explain that during the cleanup operation, while the Japanese citizens’ bodies were being collected and cremated, he had given an order for burial rather than cremation of the dead American prisoners, explaining to his subordinates that this was the custom of the country from which the prisoners had come. By granting the American dead their last respect in death, my father thus transcended all prior animosities. The prisoners had been buried along the banks of the Ota River near the A-Dome. I was speechless; all these years Papa had kept this memory to himself. A short time after my father’s return to Hiroshima, I was surprised to hear of his discussions with reporters about the American prisoners of war who had died and were buried in Hiroshima. He even appeared on television and identified the burial location. It was good for the Japanese people to know that our fate had been shared with some Americans—and it was good for Papa to unload his untold sorrow. My long years of struggle were far from over, but now, once in a great while, there were moments in which I sensed the dimension of human existence even in Hiroshima experiences. A tiny crack in my frozen perception and the deep, unresolved longing for my lost mother was opening. Out of these feelings I wrote a poem acknowledging my odyssey through an arrested childhood, my longing for freedom from the past terror:

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The Dawn My bleeding fists clasped tightly Pounding on the Wall, pleading and crying out, “But I need her now, Please let me pass.” “The dead mustn’t be disturbed child, run along now.” Echoed the wall “If she can’t come, take me to her, let me pass.” There were no more echo, Only a deafening silence. But for my bruises, and torn flesh, no one heard the cry, no one saw even a shadow. A score of years I ran, behind me crumbled the wall, slowly disintegrating into pieces so small. “You may return now,” the voice was heard in the wind. “You’ll see our monuments, upon them you’ll build Your City, find your roots in the ashes of your parents, shelter your love in the rubble of their dreams.” So the children who survived because they could run, returned as men and women to the site of tomorrow. One lighted a torch, it burned so quickly he was frightened. Another searched for water, but the earth was dry. They huddled in the cold as the night pierced through their shivering limbs. Their pilgrimage into the past for the sake of tomorrow ended for many before the dawn when the morning sun could have brought moisture and warmth. I think I was lucky, I waited.

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After writing that poem, I felt as if the clouds had parted and I could see some sunlight for the first time since August 6, 1945. My father was my last strong emotional link to Hiroshima. His death in 1975 completed my break with the city; the rest of my life would be spent in America.

15

Survivor’s Destiny—Life Beckons 1972–2003

Two things prompted me to leave my casework supervisor job at the Northwestern University psychiatric clinic in 1972. First, the national treatment paradigm for mentally ill patients was beginning to shift from isolating these individuals in large state hospitals to using a community health model; and to accommodate this shift, the Northwestern University clinic was restructuring to create multiple “zone” treatment centers. This meant that casework supervision assignments would also be decentralized. Second, I was pregnant with my first child and wanted to be a full-time mom. Eventually, I established a private practice that would allow me continued close proximity to my children during their early years.

Family I had originally met Harold Friedman, the man I would eventually marry, on an American Youth Hostel cycling tour of Hyde Park in 1963; but we began seeing each other only when my four-and-a-halfyear course of psychoanalysis under Dr. Joel Handler was ending, and I was feeling ready to settle down. Harold was a mechanical genius, able 234

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to fix and repair practically anything. I do not recall discussing much about my background with him, but he had an uncanny way of sensing a troubled past and my sense of abandonment, which no one else had suspected previously. He took it upon himself to “fix” this problem as well, by suggesting I write down that my mother was killed by the atom bomb, and that I was not abandoned. I felt gratified that someone else had found a place long hidden inside me. After returning from Hiroshima in 1963, I had been determined to keep the ugly war memories out of my mind. I wanted a new start and to build a good life in America. It was, however, an uphill battle. Even with Harold, the traces of the bomb experiences seeped through like a water leak. Once, while we were watching fireworks on the Fourth of July, without any warning I nearly passed out and had to cover my eyes and ears, trying to flee from the emotion. Harold was perceptive and giving; he played a strong role as a friend and partner. We married in 1968; my father joined us in Chicago for the wedding, the only trip to the United States he ever made. Marriage to Harold was like an experiment, of a master chef (Harold) executing an intricate recipe. He was a survivor in his own life script, with serious abandonment issues of his own, and saw me as a lost female to be rescued. He helped repair all broken household or personal items and even tried to help rewrite my guilt over my mother’s death. Being rescued has its cost, however: subservience in gratitude, for which I had been well trained in my cultural tradition. I longed to have children, but my fear of the radiation I had suffered in Hiroshima initially deterred me. The first doctor I consulted misinterpreted a harmless cyst as a tumor and urged me to have a hysterectomy. A second opinion from a faculty member at the Northwestern University Medical School, however, verified the absence of any problems and, after doing some research in post-radiation-exposure chromosome renewal, this doctor assured us that it was safe for me to have children. With that good news, Harold underwent a reverse vasectomy; and shortly thereafter our dream came true—pregnancy became a reality.

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Other than persistent morning sickness, the pregnancy was a breeze, filled with a positive and happy outlook, and I worked until a few days before the delivery. For no explainable reason, however, as the delivery date approached I felt imminent danger, as if death awaited. I had to mentally fight the thought that I might die. I worried about what would become of my baby. Harold, a photography buff, recorded from the delivery room doorway the moment in 1973 when our newly born daughter—Miko Rose—was held in the air by the doctor and made her first cry. She was covered in blood. For just an instant during the happiest moment of birth, the sight of this blood-covered tiny body, a beautiful gift of life born of me, generated an unconscious shudder and cut off my elation and happiness. I experienced a numbness like a coat of film covering my body. God help me, I thought, away from Hiroshima, please wipe away the blood from my baby. To ease the childcare burden on a “high-risk” mother (due both to my age and my A-bomb background), Harold sought to lighten my workload with inventions such as a rinsing and drying device for dirty diapers. He also took turns with childcare, carrying Miko in a baby carrier on his back as she watched his tinkering over his shoulders. In the early 1970s, such behavior from men was most atypical. Discovering how much I loved being a mother, I became a stay-home mom with a private counseling practice, and we decided to have another child. My second pregnancy had an unexpected complication. Just four months in, I lost amniotic fluid in the middle of the night. When we called the hospital, the doctor advised us that the emergency room was full and that we should abandon any thought of the baby surviving; instead, we were told to stay home and contact him when I began labor so that he could come and remove the dead fetus safely. Knowing that the baby inside me was going to lose his life was a dreadful and powerless feeling. When the contractions began, I lay helplessly in my bed. The familiar sensations of powerlessness were unbearable. But then the same primal sense of life-strength that had saved me on August 6, 1945, emerged inside me; I knew that I must try to save this

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child. This time, though, my mother’s voice was not there to guide me. I began making jokes with my daughter and husband, and the three of us started to laugh. With a help of a bedpan, I lay as flat as possible for as long as possible, all the while practicing relaxation exercises. Miraculously, the contractions ceased and the amniotic fluid gradually came back. I remained flat on my back for the next four months to save my baby, and that’s how my son Joshua came into the world in 1975. We often kidded about his tiny finger reaching out to clog a hole so his water could come back. I had been planning to visit my father well before Joshua’s birth, but the loss of amniotic fluid forced me to cancel that visit. Upon Miko’s birth, Papa had sent her the traditional Japanese gift to a newborn girl: a set of dolls representing an ancient lord and lady. After Joshua’s birth, he sent the corresponding gift for newborn boys: a samurai helmet. I had hoped to visit him as soon as Joshua could travel, but my father died of untreated heart failure five months after Joshua was born. The next few years were a time of great joy and discovery for me; the demons of the past were shouldered aside by the intensity of motherhood. Both children were exceptionally bright and talented, perhaps because of the many stimulations we provided. My daughter was on my back in a baby carrier being shown and talked to through museums and zoos. Her father introduced her to classical music through earphones before she was a year old. She loved Mozart. My son Joshua followed similar steps, and his keen sense of observation was startling. He could hear and smell things before others could. He could play one of Bach’s minuets on piano before school age—this without any training. We were at the Chicago Art Institute every week for their Sunday afternoon family programs. When Miko was in preschool, she and I enrolled in the Suzuki Violin class at Wheaton College, both of us diligently practicing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” every day. In fifth grade, she began taking voice lessons and sang in the Glenn Ellyn Children’s Choir, soon becoming a soloist. I remember a conductor’s introduction to her singing of the American classic “Simple Gift,” appearing like a little angel in her

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Lord and Lady dolls, Papa’s newborn-gift to Miko, 1973

white choir gown; he told the audience that to hear such a pure sound of beauty was a rare opportunity. By this time, Joshua—who had also started Suzuki lessons at an early age—had become a talented child violinist. Both children went on European musical tours, competing in Helsinki and Vienna. The hardest part of motherhood, for me, was dealing with the everyday cruelties that children sometimes visit upon each other. My children were sometimes taunted; my son was bullied, had hot tar poured on him, and once was attacked and suffered a broken nose. My own difficult experiences at school, without parents ready to defend me, drove me to hypersensitivity to my children’s problems. I both desperately wanted to protect them against any and all threats and was unprepared to help them navigate their difficult encounters with peers, for this was the very thing I had struggled with in my own youth without nurturing adult help. It was through watching and experiencing their growing years through my children’s eyes that I became more thoroughly educated in what it is like to grow up in American society. These years were exciting beyond imagination for my children, but at times also tormenting.

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The abundant resources available to us in the United States stimulated the birth of many talents in Miko and Joshua and helped them stretch their potential. But they also suffered the downside of being “different” from others here, at times being taunted and at times hitting a glass ceiling where abilities were secondary to the color of their skin. Ultimately, I withdrew my children from our local school system and enrolled them in a laboratory school at the UniSamurai helmet, Papa’s newborn-gift to versity of Chicago. Attending Joshua, 1975 this school involved a thirtyfive-mile commute, however, so I decided to find a job on the university campus that would coincide with their school hours, thus allowing me to assist with their transportation to and from campus. Little did I realize then that in seeking to help my children in this way, I was also opening another door of discovery for myself.

Turning Point I found employment at the University of Chicago hospital as a medical and clinical social worker. Because I had never worked in a hospital setting, I found the work disorienting at first. The hospital was large and complex in shape, and I was easily lost without a map. Even trickier was the organization’s political map, which was never visible and had to be learned by feeling one’s way forward through fog, making it all too easy for a newcomer to inadvertently trigger awkward moments. Learning the code of medical culture took some time.

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My initial responsibilities covered patients in the “Green Surgeries” (trauma) and transplant departments. My primary role was to help organize the support services that each patient would need during recovery. The work kept me busy, but it was not emotionally draining. I still felt ambivalent about my commitment to being in the midst of so many sick people. Having spent so much of my life avoiding anything related to sickness or disease, I found it extremely challenging to remain calm and committed in the middle of an institution where human sickness and disease was the focal point. But I marshaled on because of the need to coordinate my work location with my children’s school location. But something very unexpected happened one day that completely changed my outlook. I had received a call from a nurse on the liver transplant unit; a patient that had just undergone a transplant was not responding well. The nurse asked if I would go see this patient in the intensive care unit and give her emotional support. After donning a paper gown three sizes too large for my small body, I opened the door to the patient’s room, and a wave of shock rolled over me as I beheld a barely conscious person who had just undergone surgery, surrounded by an intricate and intimidating web of life-support machinery that was keeping her alive. In a flash I was transported back to Hiroshima and the vivid images of abandoned dying people who had no one to care for them, no medicine, nothing. For decades I had labored to erase those terrifying images of dying men and women lying curled on the dirt in the open, their flesh singed and darkened and infested with maggots; now it all came tumbling back. In that instant, a life-changing realization swept over me. My mental focus shifted from the agonizing memories of the past to the sparkling opportunities of the present. A bolt from the blue made me realize that, instead of grieving for the unaided dying victims of the A-bomb, I was standing before another person hovering between life and death—and I had the training and skills to help her. I was part of a team that could give life to grievously sick people. I walked up to this patient’s side without hesitation to give my support. I was able to tell her that she had been given a chance for new life and how

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much she could look forward for her future and all that awaits. It was a turning point in my life. I now identified fully with the hospital’s mission: to save the lives we could and to provide humane care for those we couldn’t save. I could now help do what had been impossible in Hiroshima. Meeting patients in critical care hooked up to a multitude of life-support mechanisms, I felt warmth in knowing that everything medically and humanly possible was being done for these individuals, and that I was participating in that effort. After a few months at the hospital, an opening came up to provide services to women suffering from cancer. Again I felt ambivalent about the opportunity. As a hibakusha, I was especially sensitive to this particular disease. Many hibakusha back in Japan were dying of cancer, and I could never shake the fear that it lurked in my own future. My old classmate Yoshino had died of stomach cancer a quarter of a century earlier, leaving her little boy without a mother. Yet my wiser self knew that taking this new position was a necessary step in my own life’s progress. I did not know how I would fare working every day around seriously ill cancer patients. At the same time, though, I felt a deep sense of reassurance that I was part of a team effort to do everything possible to help these individuals. It was in this service that I learned firsthand about the pain of maternal love—that when a mother confronts her own death, she also knows that she will be leaving her children behind. A blue-eyed, blond mother in her late twenties shared that her ultimate grief was not about dying itself but about not being able to see her sons grow into boyhood, graduate high school, and all the other markers of their young lives. Her intense sorrow—which she must have felt all the way to the end—left no doubt in my mind what my own mother must have felt the instant before she expired. That broken, unimaginable moment came alive for me at that point. This encounter was truly a teaching moment that helped me shake off my powerless sense of abandonment. My greatest professional challenge, however, arose a short time later when an opening in the hospital’s Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology came up. Without being entirely aware of the fact, I

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had apparently always lived in fear of radiation as a terrible destroyer of life. The massive radiotherapy machines were located on the hospital’s bottom level; the mere size of these metal structures was oppressive and intimidating. A part of me wanted to run, because I wanted no part of this technology, but the rest of me demanded a final confrontation with the very power source that had changed my entire life and world. So that was how I came to learn about the miraculous ability of radiation—discovered long before atom bombs were developed—to cure, save, and possibly extend lives rather than destroy them. Being authentically and fully present in the lives of cancer patients at a lifethreatening juncture, helping tackle whatever needs they had, and affirming their worth and courage as fellow human beings gave me immeasurable satisfaction. I considered it a privilege to be there as we journeyed together. To better support my oncology patients, I participated in grief counseling training offered by a noted Evanston psychologist, Ken Moses, and his team. One morning near the end of the training, I asked to work on the last unfinished piece of my own grief: to discuss with Mama what I did not get to share with her in person or ask her after she waved goodbye for what we both had thought would be only a brief parting some fifty years ago. I asked Mama if she had suffered great pain. I told her that had I known where she was, I would have been there to dig her out at any cost; that I would have been happy to have died with her; that the life that followed without her had been unbearable and difficult. I recalled my wandering through dying people as I tried desperately to find her. I asked her if she had heard me in the wind as I tried to comfort her the best I could, humming her favorite songs. I needed to know, “Did you hear me, Mama?” I apologized from the very bottom of my heart, telling her how very sorry I was to have insisted on coming home from Kimita Village the day we did, when she would rather have stayed in the country one more day. I took her through the milestones of my post-August 6, 1945, life. I told her how sick I had become after the Bomb, and then how hard

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I had tried to be the excellent student she had always wanted me to be—but that when I had achieved that goal, no one seemed to care, for no one came to see me receive the awards I’d earned. “It hadn’t mattered to anyone but you, Mama.” I told her that I lost my motivation after that but, like a good daughter, I kept on trying. I said how proud she would have been of her beautiful grandchildren who were growing into remarkable adults. I told her about the scary times I had encountered throughout my life and my attempts to protect my children against harm. The fear of cancer, I told her, had always been in the back of my mind. During that conversation with my mother, I also shared many of the happy developments in my life. None of this would have been possible without the presence of Gwen, the sole female staff member on the team and the person to whom I expressed my words as if she were my mother. The grief counseling skills training that I undertook to better serve my patients ended up being a gift that enabled me to cope with my own dreadful memories, close the open wounds of my shattered childhood, and begin the process of healing them.

Divorce and Aftermath In the early summer of my daughter’s senior year in high school, Harold and I separated, and we divorced a few years later. During our twenty years together, a union that had begun with deep caring had slowly disintegrated into an abyss of exhaustion. The old wartime motto, “Do not ask until victory,” had long conditioned me to suppress my wants and needs until there was nothing more left to give. The time of separation was painful and devastating; in these dark hours of my adulthood, the last wall of denial had to be faced as it came crashing down. It was as if I had come to the edge of a cliff, an infinite fall awaiting me. Letting go of that cliff edge and entering solitude had a more positive outcome, however: I began to reconstruct the way I had been a long time ago, in a world safe, sound, and nurtured. I began to discover the boundaries and passageways that had been stripped away from my childhood. From the edge of the cliff, I was to fly instead of falling.

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I thought about my mother, who, though she died young, had been with me all along. I saw her courage in my own ability to be reborn without a guarantee that the next stage would be better. In letting go of a relationship that was no longer working, a lasting affirmation came through. It was not temporary this time.

Reconnecting About three years after Harold and I divorced, my son happened to express an incidental thought: “Mom, I really miss having a male mentor.” Although remarriage seemed out of the question at that point, my son’s comment prompted a nostalgic recollection of a few honorable individuals from my past—including the man to whom I had been engaged nearly thirty years before. That year I mailed a Christmas card addressed to Robert’s parents’ home in Idaho, hoping it would be forwarded. When the card was returned marked “addressee unknown,” I considered Robert a lost connection and gave no further thought to the possibility of finding him. Two years later, while resting in bed one April morning and watching television to distract myself from the discomforts of a minor cold, a flashing advertisement on a talk show suddenly caught my eye. The ad invited viewers with an important lost connection to write in, and the TV show would try to find the lost individual. Considering this to be all in fun, I wrote down the information. Later, I sent in a brief description of how Robert and I had met at the University of Chicago’s International House in our student days. I wrote of our engagement and separation after my return from Japan. I added that I wanted to explain to Robert why I had broken the engagement. About ten days later, I was astounded to receive a phone call from the TV show’s producer, informing me that my friend Robert had been found in Alaska. Thus began a series of long letters and phone calls between the two of us. Three dozen roses that arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing were particularly beautiful. Salmon caught in Alaskan waters and smoked locally arrived more than once. We slowly began to trace each other’s lives and discovered that the bond

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that had brought us together more than thirty-one years ago was still very strong. Robert confessed that there had not been a day that he had not thought of me in one way or another since our parting. We spoke by telephone daily, discovering how much common ground we still shared and amazed by our similar outlooks and philosophies. In the end, Robert decided to leave Alaska to fulfill our earlier broken dream of spending our lives together, a dream that had been shattered by the emotional trauma crippling my psyche. A year after rediscovering one another, we met at O’Hare Airport in Chicago for the first time in thirty-two years. There was Robert with his familiar broad smile. “Hi, Honey!” he exclaimed. Though he looked older, with deeper facial lines and graying hair, the sound of his voice was just as fresh as it had been in the days of his youth. Our eyes met and we were back in time where our friendship had begun, in a small auto parked on a driving test site on Chicago’s far south side. My long search for authentic encounter had brought me back to my former love. It was like coming home after a long detour. One morning in 1995, after a brief New England rain shower, Robert and I exchanged long-delayed marriage vows in a small chapel at my daughter’s college. We had planned to hold the ceremony outdoors, in the stunning campus site called “The Biblical Garden,” but the rain shower had sent us inside. After the ceremony, we walked out onto the chapel steps where the sun was now shining. I felt that I had found my full life again. During my marriage to Robert, I grew—both personally and intellectually—by leaps and bounds. I learned so much from him; his background in political science and philosophy under Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom was the source of many delightful conversations. Together we built our happy little nest, with bursting flowers and great food. When both of my kids had left for college, Robert and I were free to travel, following our love of American history and nature. We journeyed to southern Illinois and Kentucky to see sites from Abraham Lincoln’s past. In Virginia, we saw Jefferson’s Monticello. In Pennsyl-

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Hideko and Robert’s wedding, with Miko and Joshua, 1995

vania, we visited the battleground at Gettysburg. There we discovered that Colonel William S. Clark, who fought in several battles during the Civil War, was the same Dr. Clark who had helped establish and taught at the Hokkaido Agricultural University (then Sapporo Agricultural College), leaving the famous parting words, “Boys, be ambitious,” known to every Japanese youth. Robert loved my daughter Miko’s vocal talent and greatly approved of my son Joshua’s pursuit of classics studies at St. John’s College. He was also very clear from the outset of our relationship that he was prepared to give any amount of support required to overcome whatever maladies I might still be suffering from due to my war experiences. It felt good to be given such committed support. Although I still could not entirely articulate the dark cloud in my soul, his ongoing devotion and desire to comfort me sustains me even today. Sometimes my now-adult children would bicker with me. Robert and I had both been raised to always speak to parents with respect, and Robert was vexed by their behavior. More importantly, it vexed him that I did not defend myself against them. Having been filled with a

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sense of unworthiness throughout my life, I did not feel justified in defending myself.

One Sunny Day In the early 1980s, the increasing number of nuclear weapons throughout the world triggered the Nuclear Freeze international mass movement. One day I received an invitation to speak at a regular meeting of Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of many organizations working under the Nuclear Freeze umbrella. I was still reluctant to publicly discuss my past experiences, but I eventually subordinated this personal unease to my sense of duty to humanity. Besides, I told myself, this might be another step forward in coming to terms with the Bomb. Apparently, my story inspired so many people that I kept getting more and more invitations to speak at conferences and rallies. Feeling a responsibility to honor the memory of those who had died in the Hiroshima bombing, I worked hard to do my best. I seldom wrote down my lectures beforehand because I felt that approach to be inauthentic. I didn’t want to merely tell a dramatic story about August 6, 1945; I wanted to share the experience of that day. I wanted to paint a picture of what the day had felt like, not simply narrate a sequence of events. It was the gestalt of the death, the loneliness, the terror, and the uncertainty that I wanted to communicate to my audiences. I prepared for these lectures by taking myself back to that day and reliving it. I had no use for written notes; the words poured forth from my heart in their rawest truth. But reliving that terrible day in lecture after lecture took a heavy toll on my energy; I felt weak and nauseous after each presentation. I eventually realized that the time had come for me to face the abyss of August 6, 1945, squarely: to describe and possess or disown it freely. For I had finally discovered that the spiritual house in which I dwell exists inside me and had been built long before my physical world had been lost. With this recognition, a never-before-experienced peace of mind evolved, and my cup finally felt full. I was able to hold my memories without the fear of malaise that had so often plagued my past

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attempts at recollection. For the benefit of my children, I recorded all of my memories—up to my first journey to America in 1952—in a manuscript titled One Sunny Day. I wrote it in 1994 but, with no prior experience as an author, was unable to find a publisher. Then one day, a door unexpectedly opened after the manuscript was read by the renowned radiation oncologist Dr. Samuel Hellman, a professor and senior consultant in our department whose past roles included (among many others) physician in chief and professor at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and dean of the University of Chicago’s Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr. Hellman suggested that the manuscript was suitable as a magazine article for the upcoming special issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. For the cover photo of this May/ June 1995 issue, the Bulletin’s editor chose a snapshot from my early childhood—one that showed Cousin Hideyuki and me, full of happy, expectant smiles of the good life. Within a week of the Bulletin issue’s publication, I received an offer from an Illinois publisher to publish an expanded version of my story in book form. The first edition of One Sunny Day: A Child’s Memories of Hiroshima was printed in 1996.

Cover photo for journal that first published my One Sunny Day manuscript

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In Search of Hope 2003–2021

A Harmony in Hiroshima The veil that fell over reality and covered my eyes and senses the day the atom bomb exploded in Hiroshima never lifted, lasting throughout my life. It became thicker when I was stressed; the automatic drive that allowed me to remain functional would kick in at those moments, just as it had on that catastrophic day in 1945. I would become joyless and detached, burying my feelings but also trying to continue providing the same empathy, caring and understanding for my patients that I struggled to provide for my family and myself. Upon my retirement from the University of Chicago Hospitals in 2003, Robert and I decided to move to southern Oregon, to be closer both to my daughter’s medical training in California and to the mountains and fishing streams that Robert loved. Here I was also able to pursue the love of singing I had inherited from my mother by joining the newly formed Rogue Valley Peace Choir. Thirty-eight Peace Choir members traveled to Japan in 2006 for the sixty-first anniversary of the bombing. My best friend Etsuko, whom I’d known since our Hiroshima Jogakuin school days, served as lead organizer in Japan, helping me plan concert venues, meals, lodging, 249

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transportation, sightseeing, and homestay opportunities. We recruited many of our former Jogakuin classmates to provide a warm welcome and unforgettable experiences for all involved, connecting heart-toheart through singing, sharing, and much laughter. The Peace Choir sang to the sick in Kyoto and with the famed Kwansei Gakuin University Glee Club OB (“Old Boys”) in Kobe, a decade after the fateful earthquake that killed or left homeless tens of thousands in that area. One of our most moving experiences was seeing and hearing the American men in our choir, and the Japanese male members of the Glee Club (some of whom had participated in the war and occupation against each other sixty-one years earlier), singing the U.S. Civil War lament “Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground” in perfect harmony. At the conclusion of the concert, there was a roar of joy and connection so profound as to be tangible; and all of us rose up, joining hands and voices in “We Shall Overcome.” In Hiroshima’s Peace Park, our choir conductor, Dave Marston, sang an apology for the bombing in his own words, accompanied by a beautiful melody that he had also composed, to the tear-filled audience. Marston’s song was utterly shocking in its honesty and had a profound, restorative effect on both Dave and the audience. One guest who was especially moved was Dr. Nishigaki, the chancellor of the Hiroshima Jogakuin Mission School that I had attended. In the many years he had spent in the United States as either a student or school administrator, he had never experienced a friendly reception from the American people regarding the Hiroshima bombing; the echo of Pearl Harbor had always remained uncomfortably in the background. My daughter Miko—who was also on the choir trip—sang her own song of prayer that evening, hers for the grandmother she had never met and for all others who had also perished in the bombing without loving words of farewell. She was choking with grief singing about my lost soul waiting for my mother to return. Walking up to stand with her, I placed my hand on her back as she finished her song. After that trip, she went on to complete her medical training and joined the faculty of the Michigan State University’s Department of

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Psychiatry, where she developed a new approach to physician wellness training called the Joy Initiative.

One Sunny Day Initiatives and Learning to Speak Again After the conclusion of the Peace Choir journey, the success I’d experienced in bringing together people from totally different backgrounds (even former enemies), and in facilitating opportunities for them to feel differently about each other and even about themselves, sparked my desire to create other projects of reconciliation that would also bring people together. With the expense reimbursement I received from the Peace Choir for arranging the trip to Japan, I was able to form One Sunny Day Initiatives (OSDI), which was chartered in 2007 as a nonprofit charity promoting nuclear disarmament, peace-building education, and what I call “Collective Healing” projects. In 1952, when the San Francisco Treaty ended the Allied Forces occupation of Japan, new, more accessible information became available to the country’s A-bomb survivors. It was only then these survivors were able to form a new perspective—that the horrific experiences they suffered must not happen again. Coining the phrase “No more Hiroshima,” they began to share what they had witnessed at the city’s Peace Museum—an exhibition center with a display of artifacts and models—educating visitors about the history of the bombing and promoting the building of a peaceful future world. Like me, most other survivors also dreaded remembering or re-telling their grievous experiences but slowly became persuaded to do so, and began sharing so as to warn the world of the dire consequences of nuclear strikes and to promote the idea of a “No first strike” understanding. It was never easy for me to talk about my own experience, and on every occasion that I did so, I would become physically affected with headaches, nausea, and dizziness. In fact, while my children were young, I had to turn down all requests for such presentations. When I eventually resumed the challenging task of sharing my story, however, I met an impressive array of individuals in academia,

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the media, and various other professions across the United States as well as in the United Kingdom and Japan—and who I was pleasantly surprised to find were just as passionate about disarmament as I was. In 2010, I received an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from my alma mater, having served as visiting faculty at The College of Wooster, providing workshops and lectures on war experiences and the subsequent challenges.

When a Peace Tree Blooms In Japanese tradition, there are many stories about good overcoming evil; and since the trajectory of my life became one of telling meaningful and enlightening stories, the idea for writing a children’s story, or parable, about war and peace had been with me for a very long time. I also was aware however, that even when this parable—which I fondly titled When a Peace Tree Blooms—was finished, finding an illustrator would take some time. Initially, Mari Kishi, the person I ultimately chose as illustrator, was doubtful that nuclear bombing could be an appropriate subject for children’s literature; so extended weekend discussions across the ocean ensued, until finally she came on board and together we constructed the story within a story about a miraculous peace tree planting, in Japanese (which I subsequently translated to English). Clifton Truman Daniel— President Truman’s grandson and chair of the Truman Library Institute board—graciously agreed to write the foreword. A former Seibi Academy classmate, Mamoru Ishida, recommended a Japanese publishing company with a Beijing branch promoting cultural exchanges, and the company also published a Chinese version. Now a senior executive of a major trading company, Mr. Ishida helped us navigate through Chinese censorship, working with his former students in various positions. The translation was checked for accuracy by a Beijing University faculty member, and the book was distributed to libraries and institutions in both China and Japan. In 2015, the Hiroshima Peace Museum gifted copies with special inserts from the OSDI to Chinese students from Chongqing visiting Hiroshima.

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Seeking reconciliation with the people of China, I also—as a Hiroshima survivor with a fuller understanding of the suffering my nation had also caused—wrote a poem of apology about the Japanese territorial aggression toward China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The poem, “Memories of Wounds & Joy: A Letter of Apologies to the People of China,” was published in the Shanghai Evening Press on August 1, 2015, and received a phenomenal response from readers who supported the seeking of long-lasting peace and common ground between our two countries. I share that poem with you now: Memories of Wounds & Joy: A Letter of Apologies to the People of China Forgive me for not speaking out of my terror before now, At finding out as a young teen of the horrific victimizations You suffered at the hands of our military. Forgive me for feeling powerless when, Only the sickened feelings return even now, As I felt the pain of your wounds So much that I wished to be disowned and Disconnected in shame From the sins of history. For you were a guest in our home As my grandfather’s partner, Revered and commanding all our attention Under the head of our family. For you were my favorite story books, of enchanting heroes of the three kingdoms, of monkey’s empire, flying across the sky, All through my childhood Shedding tears and laughing time and again.

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Sharing the common bond With your mother continent, Mountains, rivers and the misty valleys We grew up seeing the scrolls and screens in our homes, we remember them Even after they were lost in the War fires. You were the forbearers and teachers. We owe much to you for our own heritage in arts, religion and values we share. When I mourned after our losses in our own war memories, Sensitized to our own pain alone We’ve erred hopelessly Without seeing the acts of violence perpetrated outwardly, of their consequences to our neighbors. I lost my universe to the atom bomb But I hid from their impacts Trying to hold myself together with dignity and wholeness Yet, holding on to the hurts of wounding. But I was wrong. There was no hiding. There was no wholeness in inhumane experience. The imperfections and consequences from the inhumane wounding Slowly surfaced and I began to see— For all the perils and the darkness of losses And their memories That you must have endured for so long—

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I am truly sorry. Please forgive, if such a thing is possible, in collective healing with me. Let us honor our beginning from the ancient times of Joy and Respect, again.

Dawns of Reckoning: Journey to Saipan and Tinian In 2015, I spoke at Oregon State University about Hiroshima and the need for collective healing. After my lecture, I was approached by a student from Tinian Island, the island from which the Enola Gay departed on its mission to bomb Hiroshima. She asked if I could send my book, When a Peace Tree Blooms, to her island’s schools. I told her I would personally deliver the books to them, as I was always interested in making requiem visits to Tinian and Saipan. My student’s mother, Jaunita Mendiola—an aide to one of the commonwealth’s representatives—offered to set up my schedule for connecting to the island communities through media and public officials such as the then-Tinian mayor, Joey San Nicolas. The Northern Marianas Humanities Council invited me to speak in Saipan and interviewed me on an hour-long radio talk show. I was warmly welcomed by Mayor San Nicolas and his staff, who filled the conference room and showered me with gifts of long seashell and coconut shell necklaces after our introduction. They were very interested in hearing about what had happened after the bomb was carried away from their island’s runway at the end of World War II. No one had come back to tell them about it. As I described my own experience as a survivor, one could hear a pin drop in the silence of the audience’s total attention. During my visit, a group of about ten primary-school-age children invited me to talk to them about the Peace Tree book. First, we introduced each other with names, ages, and special interests and making connections that could bring the concepts of peace and planting peace

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trees into their everyday life. There was a boy of about nine or ten who was particularly engaging, very curious, and quick to ask question, which was quite delightful. He was able to put himself in the theme of the book right way. If ever I could visit the island again, I would love to find out what happened to these children. When I visited the airfield at the north end of Tinian Island, from which the Enola Gay had departed, I sat on Runway Able, the long runway used for takeoff. Looking at the cracks and weeds and yellow flowers beyond the runway, my eyes filled with tears that kept on coming, and I wept until there was nothing left. I realized that harboring regrets and wishing that things could have been different would not change one single thing. This was history—and long gone. What was done was done. My mind, my body, and my heart all finally understood that fact. With a sense of resignation, I accepted the history as it had happened. A few miles north of Tinian Island is Saipan. When the Americans invaded Saipan, many of the Japanese residents, believing that the Americans would murder them in the most heinous ways imaginable, committed suicide by leaping off a cliff into the sea. I traveled to the Suicide Cliff to pay my respects to the honored dead. The deep swirling sea water, so white and blue underneath, conjured up the sense of profound grief the civilians must have felt during those last critical moments—when they believed their honor was at stake. I could not help but respect their final wishes but at the same time felt a deep longing to comfort their spirits. Taking a few steps to the very edge, three times I raised my arms and called out “Banzai,” the Japanese cheer that expresses a sense of “We are all together!” “We are all together” applies to Americans just as much as it applies to Japanese. Over the years, I have struggled to explain to Americans the need for the collective healing of the wounds to both countries inflicted by the war. Sadly, some older Americans reject my calls for collective healing, citing Pearl Harbor as justification for Hiroshima. Their wounds are so deep that they cannot contemplate healing. I spent more than forty years in the healing profession, helping people heal

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from the wounds they had suffered, but the scars of war seem never to heal. Nevertheless, I continue to work to help the world evolve into a place of humane caring.

Green Legacy Hiroshima Most of the trees in Hiroshima were destroyed in the August 1945 bombing, but some survived. Every year, members of Green Legacy Hiroshima collect seeds from these trees and distribute them all over the world. In 2017, I contacted this organization to request a set of seeds. Michael Oxendine, then-head of landscape services for Southern Oregon University in Ashland, graciously agreed to plant and raise in small pots the seeds I received. The poor plants were then shuffled from one refuge to another as circumstances changed during the subsequent years. They spent one winter in a small garage with an electric heater running 24/7 to keep them from freezing. After two years, we had over a hundred ginkgo biloba, camphor, camellia, and persimmon saplings. Planting saplings grown from the seeds of revived Hiroshima trees has truly been a project of collective healing, of rising from the ashes. The trees represent the same goodwill and friendship, resilience and hope for peace in the world, that the human survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have attempted to convey. I feel close to each sapling and speak to them in Japanese whenever I am able to attend the dedication ceremonies, wishing them well. When I attended the dedication ceremony for a persimmon tree planting at the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, I was quite moved by organizer Dr. Linda Richards’s thoughtful additional scheduling of a time for discussing students’ reflections and inquiries. The ceremony was attended by the university president and the Corvallis mayor, giving a full sense of approval for the planting. Also attending were a number of community activists focusing on nuclear-related health issues, working with the Marshallese people—who were subjected to radiation from the U.S. nuclear testing program— and the so-called “Downwinders” from the Hanford, Washington, nuclear reactors. Reading the plaque at the OSU peace-tree planting

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site, I discovered that the tree was being planted in honor of myself. Feeling that this dedication would divert attention from the true mission of my dear peace trees, I requested a rededication: to Lasting Peace in the World. The actual process of finding places to germinate and then plant and nurture the peace trees took effort and time. The pre-Pandemic plantings were typically festive affairs with music and dancing, at sites such as Alton Baker Park in Eugene (persimmon 8/6/19), Foothills Park in Lake Oswego (ginkgo 4/13/19), St. Norbert College in Wisconsin (ginkgo 9/20/19), and The Janus School in Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania (gingko 4/22/19). Many more plantings followed in 2020 and 2021, despite the Covid restrictions during those years. The October 2020 peace-tree planting (gingko and persimmon) at Chuck Roberts Park in recently fire-ravaged Talent, Oregon, took place in a charred landscape. Michal Oxendine, who served on the Talent Tree Commission, had initiated the request for a Hiroshima tree, and we were happy to oblige. I wanted the community to know, see, and feel that for those who survive any disaster, possibilities for healing and restoration will follow. It has been a joy to see the enthusiasm with which communities have embraced these living ambassadors for peace, and in turn have conveyed their own yearning for reconciliation and friendship. The plantings at schools and universities are especially well placed for continuing the promotion of peace into the future.

Generational Trauma I can hardly believe I have lived to be elderly. Dying from cancer or a related malady was constantly on the minds of all who survived the Hiroshima bombing. A little fever, a cold, or any other symptom always caused us to wonder Is this to be the end for me? Jay Lifton’s book Death in Life, based on early observations of fifty bomb survivors, pointed to humans fraught with death images. Expecting a short life span, the “war” never ended for those supposedly lucky

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enough to have survived nuclear devastation. In fact, most of us harbored an unexpressed wish that we had perished. When, in July 2017, the United Nations declared nuclear weapons to be inhumane and immoral in a written proclamation signed by 122 members—the international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (also known as the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty)—I wept for joy and called out to my mother and other deceased friends and relatives as if they could hear: “The time has come to be released from the bondage of the dark depths into the light!” No longer having to share my deepest grief, time and time again, was an unspeakable relief. In speaking to American audiences, I had always felt that their response to my story would be welcoming and even empathetic; and they often would be until I reached the part about the effects the Bomb had—and still has—on my country. At this point in the presentation, audience members would sometimes shut down, as if they would just as soon forget about the outcome of nuclear devastation—which made it difficult for me to emphasize the dangers of future such threats. I have unexpectedly lived a long life, but my physical issues relative to radiation exposure are ultimately somewhat secondary to the numbed and frozen feelings I have contended with for most of my life. The joyful memories of me, as an innocent child, caught up in the pull of nature and surrounded by a loving family, sometimes do come back, and I can feel all of that. But my feelings of true love and joy and an exuberance for life have, since August 6, 1945, never come back. The father of my two children used to marvel at my dedication as a devout mother. He had never seen anyone so hard-working in a maternal role. I was determined to carry my mother’s spirit with me and in me, to her grandchildren and to the next generation. But even with that commitment, it was hard for me to feel. Once my daughter told me about having stood in a long line to be hugged by a famous Indian female guru, and I wondered why she hadn’t come to me; I could have given her a hug many times. I later related this incident about my daughter to the son of a 1942 Bataan Death March

survivor.* When I said that I was puzzled by my daughter’s behavior, he told me that he could relate to it, as he too, at one time, had sought the same comforting hug from a male Indian guru in lieu of the ones he hadn’t received from his own father. Then it dawned on me: the horrific experience of being denied our humanity had left me and the boy’s father with something in common. Having each survived severe trauma, we lacked the ability to express the warmth and validation human parenting is supposed to provide. This insight makes me think about the infinite number of returning veterans and injured civilians of so many conflicts throughout history—and about how their wounds, visible and hidden, must have affected their ability to truly be present with their families. The warring twentieth century produced countless refugees and survivors around the world, bearing deep and enduring scars of loss and destruction, especially the Holocaust survivors. I do not know if the offspring of all of these people needed a quality hug from a compassionate guru, but I can well imagine many would have welcomed it. Surviving horrific events has far-reaching, long-lasting effects. Political conflicts and ongoing hostilities continue to tear apart families and their ways of life in so many areas of our world. And these conflicts and hostilities not only have direct and reverberatory consequences lasting for generations, they also destroy what little we have left. This culture of war and strife has to end. The culture of peace is urgently needed. I know—I have dedicated my whole life to fostering it. The Hiroshima experience was and remains an Ultimate Abyss— the theft and decimation of the Radiance of Life.

* The Bataan Death March, which occurred in April 1942 after the Japanese prevailed in its invasion of the Philippines, was a five- to ten-day, 65-mile forced march of the ~75,000 surrendered U.S. and Filipino troops from the southern tip of Luzon’s Bataan Peninsula north to San Fernando, during which the prisoners were subjected to great brutality and suffering by their captors. Those who survived the march were then transferred (via train and an additional forced march) to prison camps at a former Philippine army training ground, where many more died from disease and starvation. Tens of thousands of Filipino and American prisoners lost their lives during the death march and subsequent internment.

Epilogue

The Ultimate Destruction My beloved cousin and playmate Hideyuki loved the mechanical wonder, the B-29 bomber, that flew over Japan in the hundreds, even thousands, at one time during the war. He would stand on a rooftop and marvel at their size and appearance as they flew over, thirty thousand feet above us in the sky. One day, one of these planes, named the Enola Gay, adjusted its flight path to six thousand feet in order to drop a new, never-before-heard of type of bomb—packed with nuclear fission—on our city, Hiroshima. My cousin was directly under the drop site on that sunny morning of August 6, 1945. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, looking up in amazement at this low-flying metallic wonder, and then . . . Hideyuki was last seen staggering, falling to the ground, his face unrecognizable having been directly exposed to scorching heat, skin melting, unable to rise, but urging a classmate, “Go on, save yourself, for I can’t.” I wish I could have been there to carry him away and tell him how much we loved him. I thought about my cousin a great deal as I boarded a plane to Washington, D.C., in March 2020, before the seventh-fifth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. A specially arranged visit that included private time with the Enola Gay had come, just as the Pandemic was 261

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starting, with an invitation for a media appearance and well-publicized interview at the last minute. Despite the threat of possibly catching the new, highly contagious, life-threatening illness that was spreading so quickly around the world, I knew I had to go. Standing in the National Air and Space Museum in the D.C. suburbs, I was finally able to meet the plane my beloved cousin had so admired. (The bomb it had carried on August 6, 1945, was ironically nicknamed “Little Boy.”) As I stood there, looking at the hollowed-out plane, pieces from my past were now beginning to assemble themselves, like a dark puzzle. In the mid-1990s I had taken my children to Hiroshima as a graduation present. I had decided to take them to the Peace Museum, a place I had personally been dreading and avoiding for years, as I did not want to be reminded of the travesty of that day. Stepping into the exhibit, the first thing I had encountered was a hologram of a single plane flying across the Peace Museum rotunda, and I had unconsciously raised my hand to stop the moving shadow of the bomber that was seemingly passing my way. The tears had poured out of me uncontrollably, just as they had when I visited Tinian Island and the runway from which the Enola Gay had taken off in August 1945. And here I was, seventy-five years later, staring down the nose of the plane with distinct lettering on its side that read ENOLA GAY. The body of the plane was nearly in midair; its silver wings rested on the heavy post to which it was attached and that kept it balanced. “So you were the B-29 that came and destroyed my Universe and took everything away from me….” My requests to touch the plane and go inside it were denied, though I understood veteran airmen had been allowed inside smaller planes, accompanied by families. Somewhat chilled by this response, I viewed the plane more closely and found that it was no longer a viable vehicle. All of its contents, it appeared, had been removed or disconnected—only the plane’s carcass was on display. The Enola Gay, that mighty B-29, was no longer before me. It could not have taken off ever again. I stood feeling ever so relieved with this knowledge. I—with caring

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and determination to live fully a life of conviction, small as I am in stature compared to the huge object before me—was more powerful than the plane that died on display without an order or plan to fly again. It required the mind and the heart of Man to drop a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, and then to carry and explode another on Nagasaki. Will my beloved mother and my cousin ever rest in peace in a world that has condemned these weapons but secretly and openly treasures the possession of them? Will some rogue state or world power forget the results of the original bomb’s use and prepare to use it again, despite the condemnation of nuclear weapons in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and the subsequent demotion of this most inhumane weapon by the United Nations General Assembly? As I was preparing to leave the National Air and Space Museum that day, the nationally syndicated reporter who had invited me there stopped me and asked a question I had been asked many times throughout my life: “When you think about all that resulted from this plane’s actions on that fateful day—aren’t you angry?” I paused, and then answered, “No. I’ve never felt anger but . . . the deepest grief at the bottom of my heart all my life.”

Creating a Path of Hope At the time of my retirement in 2003, the University of Chicago’s hospital administration and social-work department gave me a formal luncheon and the opportunity to deliver a lecture titled “Healing.” My friend Studs Terkel gave me a gracious introduction. I told my listeners that it had been a great privilege to be present for my patients’ hours of soul-searching—without any guarantee or promise of life renewing itself, and the possibility that they might not survive always lurking close by, in the dark. I knew how they felt. This was my territory, and I appreciated having a second chance to be there for individuals who were confronting life and death with life-threatening illnesses. Most of us in Hiroshima had been unable to find our loved ones, much less save them. Here in the Radiation and Cellular Oncology department, I was

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able to support my patients with all my being, and even give them— and myself—hope. After Robert’s arrival back in my life, I had begun to relax my defenses. He helped me feel safe. I could trust him. I asked him one day how a “Neo-Con” like him, a conservative American scholar, could be so empathetic about the issues raised by the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings and the way they had affected me. I fully expected him to say it was because he loved me. But his reply reverberated through my body and soul as he replied, “Because you suffered so much.” Robert’s vascular disease slowly chipped away his functions. He passed away during Independence Day weekend 2014, in his room at the care facility I had entrusted him to. The funeral director was against my viewing Robert’s remains due to his changed appearance, so he put a plastic protector and cloth sheet over Robert’s body. My last chance to say goodbye to one whom I had loved and wished to hold in my arms was not to be. Feeling his chest through the cover, I buried my face in it, giving my deepest apologies that I could not be there with him at the time of his passing. This apology was identical to the one I have given to Mama and Hideyuki throughout my life. I conducted some Healing Touch energy work on Robert’s changed body, to cleanse and send his spirit into the Light. This was the best I could do for my beloved husband who had come out of a midlife situation just to be with me. In June 2018, a Native American artist who had visited Hiroshima and whose work I had seen in the Southern Oregon University art gallery was leading a water protester’s rally at the university. My sympathy for the historical displacements and genocides of America’s indigenous populations definitely played a part in my decision to attend the rally. Rushing to arrive on time from where I’d parked, I lost my footing and fell from the top of an incline, which resulted in multiple fractures and lacerations over most of my body along with an inner brain bleed and loss of consciousness. Once again trapped in a broken body, I was transported to the emergency room and then to a skilled nursing facility. For some reason, the images of my harrowing escape from the Bomb

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began flashing back during my recovery—unwelcome, frozen in time, still vivid like yesterday. My daughter flew in to be with me for several days, talking to the nursing facility staff and acting on my behalf. Friends and pastors found their way to my bedside. Everyone gathered to help me mend. Prayers were offered, appetizing home-cooked meals were made, flowers were sent, and gifts were given. I was stunned by all the support. A church deacon whose great aunt was a founder of the Doshisha Women’s College in Kyoto organized rides for my physical therapy and medical appointments after I came home. Today I am as fully alive as I never imagined I could be, even with some chronic issues. And I believe strongly in the human spirit. The absence of war does not ensure respect for human life. It takes a community to uphold social justice and movements toward peace in the world. My undying faith in the human spirit and desire for the greater good would not have been possible, however, were it not for the help I received from others going as far back as the very day of the ultimate destruction. A kind farmer took me in that day, and I was given food and shelter. During my high school years, a missionary with her own history of early loss understood my pain and rescued me from the loneliest experience of lostness. The good will that I have relied on has been there whenever it was sought, responding to my search for sharing common ground. I could not have come this far without those who supported my journey, all the way through. Hope eternal beckoned with the United Nations’ 2017 passage of the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, but we have a long way to go. As of this writing, some countries are still procuring and developing nuclear weapons and materials; and animosity is building between the United States and China and is ongoing with Russia. The bomb that destroyed and changed my life remains a real and existential threat to all life. The people who created that horrific weapon were misguided human beings who were acting within a political order that endorsed the concept of “Total War.” The governing cultures underlying our conduct during World War II went awry for both sides.

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We must not let that ever happen again. The gift of life belongs to us all and deserves our deepest respect and protection. The Hiroshima Peace Trees we have helped plant have taken root in Oregon and other places around the U.S. I wish to conclude my story with the image of their hopeful presence, now standing firmly with the message of hope and resilience for Life. May they grow to be towering trees, in friendship and prayer for lasting peace. Dr. Hideko Tamura Snider Peace Ambassador for the City of Hiroshima Chair, One Sunny Day Initiatives www.osdinitiatives.com

Hideko viewing peace lanterns during annual memorial at Hiroshima Peace Park, August 6, 2008

Appendix

This is a translation of the official report by Hideko’s father, Captain Tamura, on his activities on August 6, 1945. As an officer, Captain Tamura was permitted to go home in the evening and return to work in the morning. With responsibility for organizing the shipment of military supplies, Captain Tamura commanded twenty soldiers. Two other captains ran the coding of the secret military communications and the organization of naval resources. They were all based at Ujina, the port district of Hiroshima. This placed him about three miles away from Ground Zero in Hiroshima and four miles away from home. Ironically, his military duties placed him farther away from Ground Zero than any other member of his family. We have modified the text to explain points that would be easy for a Japanese military reader to grasp, but difficult for an American civilian. We have also left out some bureaucratic details. Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Casualty—Volume I, pages 294–300, City of Hiroshima, 8/6/71 (広島原爆戦災誌第一巻第一篇総説第一編第3節294–300 頁、広島市昭和46年八月6日出版) Activities of the Military Supply Transport Control Division (輸送統制部)

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On August 3, 1945, Captain Tamura’s division received a message from Central Command in Tokyo warning of a “special attack” by the American Air Force sometime between August 4 and August 7. The message ordered the unit to be especially careful for the next four days. The division moved all classified documents to a special shelter. They were especially vigilant for any air attacks, but when nothing happened on August 4 and 5, Captain Tamura began to worry that this was a propaganda tactic on the part of the Americans. At 7:30 on the morning of August 6, Captain Tamura was at his unit’s station at Ujina, the port district of Hiroshima. He led his twenty men in their regular morning exercise; they simulated a sword charge. Because of the summer heat, the men were all stripped down to their trousers. After thirty minutes, Captain Tamura dismissed the men and went inside to the janitor’s station to cool off, review the schedule for the day, and get into his proper uniform. Suddenly there was an intensely bright flash; Captain Tamura dove to the floor. The window was shattered but Captain Tamura was uninjured. Throwing on his shirt, he grabbed his sword and ran outside. Because there was no bomb crater in sight, he concluded that one of the gasoline storage tanks a few hundred yards away had exploded. He ordered Sergeant Major Yamamoto to take him to the gas tanks using the motorcycle with sidecar. Although they took a main boulevard, usually busy with traffic, the place was eerily silent. Fallen objects, trees and other detritus were everywhere. They reached the main supply gas tanks and found them undamaged. Unable to understand the cause of the disaster, Captain Tamura crossed one of the many bridges and went to the nearest police station. Everything in the area was destroyed; buildings had collapsed, telephone poles were down, and electric wires lay on the streets. The time was now about 8:30 a.m.. The rubble on the streets made it impossible to proceed, so they parked the motorcycle at police headquarters and continued on foot. The few buildings that remained standing were on fire. Looking toward the center of the city, all they could see was thick black smoke. Captain

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Tamura realized that this was an unprecedented catastrophe. Now injured civilians began to appear on the streets. Dazed by the blast, they didn’t know which way to go. Captain Tamura told them to go across the river to safety. But the bridge over the river had been damaged; the safety railings had been torn off by the blast. Many of the refugees, dazed and unable to see, fell off the bridge into the river. Captain Tamura discovered seven or eight undamaged trucks in the lee of a building. He immediately commandeered those trucks, on his own authority. He then returned to his station at the port and spoke with the commander of the military police, requesting that a contingent of military police be sent to guard the trucks. He then spoke with his division commander, Major General Hata, reporting that several hundred incendiary and explosive bombs were dropped, resulting in extraordinary damages all over the city and heavy casualties. He recommended immediate rescue operations. General Hata put Captain Tamura in charge of all military rescue efforts. There were six hundred Korean volunteer workers at Kaita, just three miles to the east. Captain Tamura ordered the other two captains to send for two hundred of those Korean workers to come by boat. He then organized a crew for each truck: one officer, five or six soldiers, and some Korean workers. They split up into three groups and headed into Hiroshima to collect survivors, but by this time the city was enveloped in flames. Once the trucks had set off to rescue civilians, Captain Tamura ordered the radio operator to send the following message to Tokyo Headquarters: August 6th, 8:30 a.m.. The city of Hiroshima has been attacked by a special bomb, damages are extraordinary. Hiroshima Military Supply Transport Control Division. Captain Tamura then grabbed a bicycle and proceeded into the city to gain a better assessment of the situation. He encountered a man single-handedly trying to stop the flames; Captain Tamura verified that

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the man was uninjured and continued on. Next he came to a supply depot, whose officers had closed the gates to their warehouses to keep civilians out. Captain Tamura ordered them to open the gates and provide shelter and care to the injured civilians. He also instructed them to send regular reports to his Division. Civilians poured into the Ujina army station; the trucks brought many more. Captain Kobayashi organized the situation, arranging floor areas to be cleared so that the maximum number of civilians could be accommodated. He arranged for boats to transport the casualties to Ninoshima Island, the location of an undamaged medical facility. Even so, the boats could not transport the injured fast enough, and many inside the facility were dying. As per standard Japanese practice, they cremated the dead, but soon they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of dead and they began placing the corpses on barges to be taken to caves in the cliffs a few miles west of Hiroshima. Years later, some of the bones washed up after the waves eroded the cliffs. Later that morning Captain Tamura received an urgent request from Dr. Fujitsu, the unit doctor, to collect a sperm sample from a team member. Later that evening, Dr. Fujitsu presented the results to Captain Tamura. The sperm were all dead. “The bomb that was dropped must have contained X-rays or Gamma rays, invisible to the human eye. The victims will need blood transfusions and nutritional support.” August 7 was consumed with saving as many lives as possible. By August 8, most of the injured had been evacuated. On August 8, General Hata ordered Captain Tamura’s unit to clear out the main city avenues to facilitate the removal of the dead bodies in the city—eighty thousand in all. The Korean volunteers were commissioned to systematically burn the dead. Captain Tamura located ten drums of gasoline from outside the city and had them shipped in by boat. He allocated enough gasoline to each team to facilitate the work of cremation. Japanese tradition places great importance on retaining the ashes of departed kin, so Captain Tamura instructed the workers to collect identification from the dead for their families. However, most of the dead could not be identified.

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The Korean volunteers had worked hard during the rescue operations and the aftermath. But on August 16, Tokyo Headquarters sent an urgent message: “A Korean rebellion is feared, arrange for them to return home immediately.” On August 22 they left. Some had expressed a desire to remain and work in Japan. However, given the uncertainties of the defeat and social instability, their requests were refused. Upon the war’s end, the clothing in the warehouses was distributed among the survivors. The office equipment in the Ujina military station was turned over to the City of Hiroshima. On September 20, Captain Tamura’s division was dissolved and most of its records were burned.

The Men of the Lonesome Lady On July 28, 1945, thirty-six American B-24s attacked the Japanese battleship Haruna anchored at Kure, just ten miles from Hiroshima. One of the B-24s, the Lonesome Lady, successfully released its bombs and turned to head back to base. However, just thirty miles from the target, the plane was damaged by antiaircraft fire. The pilot, Thomas C. Cartwright, was unable to control the aircraft, and ordered the crew to bail out. He himself managed to bail out at the last moment. The navigator, Roy M. Pedderson Jr., did not survive the jump; his parachute failed to open. Bill Abel, the tail gunner, hid inside a hollowed-out tree for nine days before starvation forced him to surrender. The other crew members all landed safely and were captured. They were: Darden W. Looper, co-pilot, 22 years old James M. Ryan, bombardier, 20 years old Hugh H. Atkinson, radio operator, 26 years old John A. Long, gunner, 27 years old Bufford J. Ellison, flight engineer Ralph J. Neal, gunner, 23 years old The men were sent to the Hiroshima Army Base for interrogation. The pilot, Tom Cartwright, was sent on to Tokyo for detailed interrogation. Bill Abel, who surrendered on August 7, was sent to a military

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prison in Kure. The other crew members were put to work in Hiroshima under guard. On August 6, Looper, Ryan, Atkinson, Long, Ellison, and Neal were working only a half mile from Ground Zero; three were killed instantly. Two others died from burns within a few hours. The last, whose identity is unknown, was tied to a lamppost and abandoned by his guard. Captain Tamura passed by at some point and noticed the young man and commanded the people nearby to leave him alone, as he was under the protection of the Japanese Imperial Army. As Captain Tamura had more pressing duties, he left the scene. The young airman was killed. Only two members of the crew survived the war: Tom Cartwright, who was in Tokyo at the time, and Bill Abel, who was in Kure. A total of twenty-three American military dog tags were collected in the ashes of Hiroshima.

Glossary

amado: Rain door. Wooden sliding doors used to close in the house where there are no walls, keeping out the elements at night, or in extreme weather conditions during the daytime. appappa: Plain, simple cut, loose-fitting, one-piece summer wear worn at home by women. Astrakhan: Lamb’s fur from the Astrakhan region of Russia, or fabric imitation of the fur. Banzai: A cheer, as in “Long live the emperor,” or “Hip, hip hurrah,” with both arms raised above the head. bento lunch: Box lunch. bura-bura: Being idle, aimless, and at loose ends. Buraku, Buraku-min: The “Tribal People,” referring to the ethnic minority known historically as “meat eaters” prior to the introduction of the Western dietary style. Due to religious prejudice against the Buraku and Buraku-min practice, the group suffered longstanding discrimination in social acceptance. butsuma: A room reserved for the Buddhist altar used for religious worship. daikonoroshi: Grated white radish, served by itself as a condiment or with broiled fish/seafood. 273

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Edokko: Persons born and raised in Tokyo, the city formerly called Edo. Fukuya: The first major department store built in Hiroshima at the gate of the main street. geta sandals: Traditional wooden open clogs worn by both men and women of all ages. A pair of rectangular wooden pieces are sanded and varnished. Thick wooden heels support the flat surfaced platform. Reinforced sandal strings come in colorful fabric for women and children. go-between: A matchmaker in a matrimonial arrangement. goshinei: The portraits of the Imperial Couple, referred to as the “true shadows” of Their Majesties. The pictures were usually draped and hidden from direct eye contact by the commoners. gunshin: Military saint. The term was accorded to those who sacrificed their lives with unprecedented courage and dedication in their service to the Emperor and their country. gyokusai: Suicidal end in military defense or attack most frequently referred to during World War II. hakama wear: Traditional skirt-pants worn over a kimono. Men and women frequently don them for traditional martial arts exercises or other select occasions. Hakata, port of: A coastal town at the northern tip of Kyushu Island, spared from the Mongol and Chinese invasion in 1274 and 1281 due to violent winds in which all the enemy ships were destroyed. haori: Lightweight half-coat worn over a kimono, tied in front by a set of decorative strings. hibakusha: Atom bomb survivors. The literal translation is “person who was bombed” or “persons who were bombed.” Hon-dori: The name of the original downtown commercial district in Hiroshima. The literal translation is “the main street” or “the best street.”

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imon bukuro: A comfort/care package sent to soldiers at the battlefront. Itte kimasu: A customary greeting by a departing person who has the intention of returning, as in leaving for work or going to school. Literal translation: “I am leaving.” Kabe: A small town north of Hiroshima. It is about a thirty-minute commuter train ride from Hiroshima. kamikaze: Divine wind assisting patriots. kanbu kohosei: Officer candidates. Military men without military schooling were able to pursue an officer’s career by passing rigorous examinations and subsequent training. Kasumigaura: The well-known Japanese Air Force training base near the Tokyo region during World War II. kenpei: Military police, an elite corps of military men engaged in security investigation and enforcement. Kotohira: A town on Shikoku Island famous for the Konpira Shrine, the guardian of travelers. Kure: A naval base east of Hiroshima. Meiji Restoration: 1868 restoration of the imperial reign from the Tokugawa Shogun to the Emperor Meiji following a long period of civil war. It also marked the beginning of the westernization of Japan that ended two hundred years of isolation. Miyajima Island: A small island off the coast of Hiroshima, famous for its natural beauty and the Itsukushima Shrine, built in the twelfth century by Lord Taira. It is considered one of the three most scenic places in Japan. mompe: A government-designated wartime style of slacks resembling warm-up suits with an elastic bottom around the ankles. Women and schoolgirls were required to wear them to show their patriotism.

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mugikogashi: A sweet pudding made by mixing unrefined wheat flour and sugar in hot water. Namuamidabutsu: A prayer chant meaning “Save us merciful Buddha!” used in a similar context as “May he rest in peace.” nemaki: A kimono worn for bed. Sleepwear usually made of a soft-textured fabric, like flannel or terry cloth. obento lunch: Box lunch. Same as bento. An “o” affix does not change the meaning but softens the expression. obi: A wide ornamental fabric belt worn over a kimono, traditional Japanese women’s wear. Obon: The Feasts of Lanterns—the Buddhist All Soul’s Day. The lanterns are lit once very year on Obon evening for the souls of the deceased so they might find their way home and return to the beyond again. ojami: Bean bags used in juggling games played by children. ojii-chan: A term of endearment for “Grandfather,” as in “Grandpa.” Chan in Japanese after a name is an expression of affection. ojō-sama: A respectable, unmarried young woman, or a daughter of a respectable family. ojō-san: Same as ojō-sama, a young daughter. Sama connotes the expression of respect whereas san connotes endearment. oka-san: Mother. oku-sama: Madam. A term usually referring to a married woman or a female individual whose age appears to be past the teens or early twenties. okyu: A traditional folk medicine in which dried moss is burned on designated parts of the body for the purpose of curing a variety of ailments.

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omiai: A meeting of a couple arranged by a matchmaker for the purpose of exploring matrimonial interest. oyobare: Party guests. pika-don: An audiovisual expression that Hiroshima survivors coined for the atom bomb explosion. Pika refers to the sudden flash and don refers to the sound of the explosion. roka: a corridor that led to the toilet area saikeirei: The deepest bow reserved for the expression of deepest respect, appreciation, and humility. Sanzu, River of: The mythical water that must be crossed by the deceased to get to the world beyond. Similar to the River Styx. Shikoku Island: One of the four major islands of Japan, southwest of the largest island, Honshu, facing the Inland Sea on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the south. Shudo-In: The name of the orphanage located near the Hiroshima Station. Atom bomb orphans and Amerasian babies born during the Allied Occupation of Japan were cared for in this institution. The literal translation of the name means “Learning the Way.” Tadaima kaerimashita: A formal Japanese greeting when one returns home, literally meaning “Now this moment, I’ve come home to you.” In daily and informal use, one may simply say, Tadaima! Takarazuka: A theatrical and musical training school for women, famous for producing Western-style musical revues. Established in the pre–World War II era, it continues to thrive to the present. Takashimaya: A well-known Japanese department store chain comparable to Bloomingdale or Neiman Marcus in the United States, with international branches in Los Angeles and New York City. tatami: Floor mats made of fine reeds in a rectangular shape used to cover traditional Japanese rooms.

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Tenmaya: A competitor to Fukuya that was built during the post– World War II era. It sold lower priced and less exclusive items than those seen in Fukuya. tokonoma: An ornamental alcove in a traditional Japanese sitting room or guest room, designating the center and order of the seating arrangement in which the host and the guest are expected to sit closest to the alcove. Tomo: A farming village outside of Hiroshima Uebara: A farming community just outside the town of Kabe where much of the farming is done in the form of step-levels on hillsides and mountain slopes. Yokogawa Station: The second-largest railroad station in Hiroshima. It is located in the northwest section of the city. Yoku kaetta: The “welcome home” response to Tadaima kaerimashita, meaning “It is good you returned.” yomise: A street market open usually in the summer nights, selling trinkets, goldfish, candies, and toys. The young and old cool off in their summer kimonos, fanning themselves and browsing through the vendors’ booths. yukata: A cotton kimono without a lining worn to cool off during summer evenings. zabuton cushion: A cushion used when sitting on a tatami mat. zashiki: A drawing room or parlor usually facing the garden. Generally speaking, this room is reserved for receiving guests.