How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [84]
So in class I let the other students argue, shrinking into my desk, waiting for the discussion to be over.
TARO OFFERED TO GO with us to visit Nagasaki. Rather, he announced that he was coming. “You’ll get there easier with me.”
We slept overnight on the train. “On the way back, we will stop in Kumamoto. You must see the castle,” Taro told us.
“Can we see Yasuo again?” Helena whispered.
“Probably not.” I patted her arm.
In the morning, we walked to the Peace Park. It was very clear out, but cool; around us people were walking to work or shopping, dressed in lighter spring clothes and sweaters, hoping the day would warm as promised. I expected there to be no vegetation, but of course it had grown back, the same way it did after fires, after wars. There were kids and dogs running around. It was a normal park to the casual observer.
“On that day”—Taro stopped and breathed heavily—“there was an air-raid alarm in Nagasaki. They turned it off and said it was safe, so everyone was outside.”
“Was there an alarm where you and Mom lived?” I asked.
“No. Too far away. Here people thought the B-52s were only doing reconnaissance. You see, the government didn’t tell us how bad Hiroshima was. How horrible. They said it was a new kind of bomb, that we would be safe in concrete buildings or in our bomb shelters. And no one thought the Americans would do it again.”
We arrived at the main area. There were red brick pavers set in a huge circle with grass growing in between. In the middle was a tall, shiny black granite pillar.
Taro stopped. “This is it. This is where the bomb hit.”
One hundred fifty thousand people killed or injured, the inscription said. The bomb exploded five hundred meters above this spot. Everything in the bomb’s path was annihilated.
“The toll would have been greater,” Taro said, “if Nagasaki weren’t shaped like a bowl. But the poison got many more people than we know.” I knew he was thinking of my mother and Aunt Suki.
I inhaled deeply. My lungs felt like razors against my rib cage. People walked by and I felt they were examining me, the American. But it was all in my head. They didn’t notice me at all, even as shame rushed up. I stared at the pillar.
Helena took my hand. Her face was more solemn than I had ever seen it. “I don’t know, Mommy,” she said in a small voice. “I feel like we should say a prayer or something.” She sounded embarrassed even to mention it.
“We can pray.” Taro took each of our hands.
“Even if we’re different religions?” Helena was hopeful. “I mean, I don’t even have one.”
“We’re all here.” He closed his eyes and began.
WE WALKED THROUGHOUT all of the Peace Park. Statues donated by various countries dotted the landscape, all in a promise of “Never again.” The most famous one was the Peace Statue. It was a blue-green depiction of a man, designed by a Japanese sculptor, with one hand pointed up and the other horizontal; he looked neither Asian nor European, but both.
“The hand up points to the bomb, the hand to the side means peace,” Taro explained.
We stopped at a golden statue of children standing below an adult, who pointed behind to safety. “This way.” Taro led us to a stairwell.
We walked through a hallway that brought us to a corridor formed of tall glass mirrored pillars stretched up into a skylight. Above there was water.
“From above, this is a fountain,” Taro noted.
We went around a corner. Victims’ names were inscribed on a wall. In another room, monitors showed photos of people who had died.
As I looked at this, I couldn’t shake how far removed I felt from my comfortable life in San Diego. Or how different my mother’s life now was from her childhood.
“I understand why you hated Americans,” I whispered to Taro. I had felt the same way in school when we were learning about the torture Japanese performed on American POWs, as though I were somehow responsible in my very DNA. Or learning about the Rape of Nanking. I would never be done doing penance.
He drew himself up straight. “It is good that you bring your little one here,” he said simply.