HIROSHIMA: My nephew Tony wants to come!

When I sent out a general invitation to my extended family-of-origin (the one my niece Lisa responded to from Afghanistan), my 49-year old nephew Anthony, a trucker in Harlingen, Texas wrote back, "I wanted to tell you that in answer to your question, would I go to Hiroshima if money were no object. The answer is yes. I would be proud to go to Grandma Barbara's Ceremony. I think its wonderful that they are recognising her. The summers I spent with her were incredible getting arrested at the pentagon, church in south Chicago and Watts. I even shot air rifles at a target range in her friends basement once. I bet not many people can say they went shooting with Barbara Reynolds (except maybe on the Phoenix?). So, it its a real thing I will make the time."

On another occasion he wrote me, "She took me to the most interesting places. Once when she had Dao and her (Vietnamese) family living with her I told her the kids had picked something off the sidewalk and eaten it--and she said, 'You should have seen the things they ate in Viet Nam during the war!' Later she took me to a Vietnamese restaurant and I couldn't eat a thing."

She took me to an anti-nuclear protest when I was four. She got arrested and our picture was in the paper. One of the guards told her, 'Shame on you for bringing your grandson here!' and the sergeant said, 'She did that so my grandson won't have to go through a nuclear war.'"

HIROSHIMA: Monument to my mother

"I, too, am a hibakusha" (nuclear bomb survivor)--in spirit

     The date has been decided. On June 12, which would have been her 96th birthday, a monument to my mother will be unveiled in Hiroshima's Peace Park.
     For her years of humanitarian and moral support to the survivors of the first two nuclear bombs dropped on human beings in 1945 and for founding the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima in 1965, the hibakusha (literally "fire-bombed people") determined to build a monument to her.
     It has been years in the making, involving the forming of a Monument Committee, the drawing up of plans by a design company, many changes in wording and photo used in the design, and permits from the International Peace Promotion Department, City of Hiroshima for permission to erect the monument in the SE corner of their Ground Zero.
     Not the least of the obstacles the committee had to overcome were the strong objections by some members of our family to spending money on a monument to Mum at all, and to calling attention to her rather than giving the money and attention to the survivors themselves. They pointed out that Mum herself opposed the idea during her life.
     But the hibakusha persisted.
     Others of us kept correcting, fine-tuning the English wording on the monument or preferring a different photo (the original choice, which was black and white, looked "grim," as my brother Ted put it).
      Each request for a change required that the Monument Committee reconvene to consider it. (Finally, I see, they scrapped the over-critiqued text and kept only one quote and the fact that Mum founded the World Friendship Center.)

 
This is the proposed monument, one of only three monuments dedicated to foreigners at Hirohima's Ground Zero.:

Monument to Barbara Reynolds, SE corner of Peace Park, Hiroshima

Lord willing, this is where Jerry and I will be on June 12.

Beyond the news blackout

You won't read/hear about it in this country. Both the Japanese and American governments seem to have agreed to downplay the continuing effects of the nuclear disaster in Japan, as the cloud of radioactivity spreads across the Pacific, the United States, and the rest of the world, lest knowledge of  the truth create panic.

(NEW:) As soon as their instruments started showing increased levels of radiation in milk in this country, our EPA did two things: 1) announced they would be testing fallout in the United States LESS frequently and 2) stopped reported their findings to the public.

But you can find out the continuing dangers of radiation to all of us at these two sites:

Effects on Japan: Continuing coverage of disaster in Japan

Effects on the United States: blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/05/12

HEROES: Kotaku Wamura and FUDAI, the little town that didn't die

How one Japanese village defied the tsunami

• • AP – In this photo taken Tuesday, April 26, 2011, Fudai flood gate looms over a beach, foreground, in Fudai … 

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press – Fri May 13, 6:20 am ET

FUDAI, Japan – In the rubble of Japan's northeast coast, one small village stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet.
     Fudai is the village that survived — thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor's expensive folly and now vindicated as the community's salvation. The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one.
     His 51-foot (15.5-meter) floodgate between mountainsides took a dozen years to build and meant spending more than $30 million in today's dollars.
     "It cost a lot of money. But without it, Fudai would have disappeared," said seaweed fisherman Satoshi Kaneko, 55, whose business has been ruined but who is happy to have his family and home intact.
     The gate project was criticized as wasteful in the 1970s. But the gate and an equally high seawall behind the community's adjacent fishing port protected Fudai from the waves that obliterated so many other towns. . .
     "However you look at it, the effectiveness of the floodgate and seawall was truly impressive," current Fudai Mayor Hiroshi Fukawatari said. . .
     In Fudai, the waves rose as high as 66 feet (20 meters), as water marks show on the floodgate's towers. So some ocean water did flow over but caused minimal damage. The gate broke the tsunami's main thrust. And the community is lucky to have two mountainsides flanking the gate and offering a natural barrier.
     The man credited with saving Fudai is the late Kotaku Wamura, a ten-term mayor whose political reign began in the ashes of World War II and ended in 1987.
Fudai, about 320 miles (510 kilometers) north of Tokyo, depends on the sea. Fishermen boast of the seaweed they harvest. A pretty, white-sand beach lured tourists every summer.
     But Wamura never forgot how quickly the sea could turn. Massive earthquake-triggered tsunamis flattened the northeast coast in 1933 and 1896. In Fudai, the two disasters destroyed hundreds of homes and killed 439 people.
     "When I saw bodies being dug up from the piles of earth, I did not know what to say. I had no words," Wamura wrote of the 1933 tsunami in his book about Fudai, "A 40-Year Fight Against Poverty."
     He vowed it would never happen again.
     In 1967, the town erected a 51-foot (15.5-meter) seawall to shield homes behind the fishing port. But Wamura wasn't finished. He had a bigger project in mind for the cove up the road, where most of the community was located. That area needed a floodgate with panels that could be lifted to allow the Fudai River to empty into the cove and lowered to block tsunamis.
     He insisted the structure be as tall as the seawall.
     The village council initially balked.
     "They weren't necessarily against the idea of floodgates, just the size," said Yuzo Mifune, head of Fudai's resident services and an unofficial floodgate historian. "But Wamura somehow persuaded them that this was the only way to protect lives."
     . . . Even current Mayor Fukawatari, who at the time helped oversee construction, had his doubts.
     "I did wonder whether we needed something this big," he said in an interview at his office.
     The concrete structure spanning 673 feet (205 meters) was completed in 1984.. .
     On March 11, after the 9.0 earthquake hit, workers remotely closed the floodgate's four main panels. Smaller panels on the sides jammed, and a firefighter had to rush down to shut them by hand.
     The tsunami battered the white beach in the cove, leaving behind debris and fallen trees. But behind the floodgate, the village is virtually untouched. . .

For rest of article, see http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110513/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_village_that_survived
___
Follow Tomoko A. Hosaka at http://twitter.com/tomokohosaka

My niece in Afghanistan

     I didn't know I have a niece in Afghanistan until today! Lisa is married with four young daughters, a busy veterinarian somewhere in Michigan (I thought). I think I've only met her twice, at family reunions, and I don't remember her ever answering any of my letters to her.
     So when I wrote the whole Reynolds family, my family of origin, about the unveiling of Mum's memorial next month (see posts below), inviting them to consider "going yourself or helping others go to the ceremony." I only tossed Lisa's name into the mix as an afterthought.
     She responded almost right away:

Dear Jessica, I would love to be there with you in Hiroshima, but I am currently in Afghanistan and circumstances are such that I cannot attend. 

Lisa

You can imagine my astonishment and curiosity! I wrote back, 

Dear Lisa,

I had no idea you were in Afghanistan! That news brings all kinds of questions to my mind--under whose auspices? for what purpose? for how long? Does Ted know? And Naomi? Who is with the girls? What about your practice? If you are free to explain, I would be very interested.

Thanks for writing.

Love,

Jessica

Hey Jessica, I am here in Southern Afghanistan as an Army Veterinarian.  Mostly I am taking care of the Military Working dogs that are sniffing out the IEDs and unexploded ordinances, but I also am here to support the local Afghan veterinarians and farmers, as we are attempting to stabilize the region and provide the local nationals with the tools to provide for themselves.  There are many many sheep and goats here, plus a few camels running around.  And, I have no idea if dad knows, I think he might.  Mom and Naomi do because when the Tsunami happened, they tried to contact me and eventually figured out why I was not answering my cell phone.  The Reynolds side of the family is pretty anti military so I don't go around talking about what I do much. But, I am envious of you as I would love to go to Hiroshima and be part of the history. Lisa Lisa, I think what you're doing is amazing! I was just reading about Army dogs online, including a photo essay by Rebecca Frankel. We will be praying for your safety and the safety of those (human and otherwise) with whom you are working. Is it okay if I let Ted know? He was telling me he hadn't heard much from you and he sounded kind of deflated about that. I can't imagine he wouldn't be proud of you. Love, Jessica  Wow.  That just goes to show that one should never make assumptions.  I didn't think you would be supportive.  Thank you.  You are welcome to tell Dad.  The one time we did discuss my going to Afghanistan, he said that I was supporting an invading Army and the conversation kinda stalled out about then.  I do love him lots and I am sad he feels that way.  I feel he doesn't understand what we are doing here and doesn't want to hear my perspective.  Hell, I'm not sure I understand what we are doing here.  But the Army has learned that the only way to defeat terrorism is to stabilize those areas of the world that are unstable, so that people have choices and the oportunity to do the right thing.  It is the poverty and the hunger and the lack of education that permits Al Queda and other extremist organizations to florish.  Most of the insurgents that are being taken out here are just local farmers that get paid by the Taliban $10/mortor round they fire at us.  Killing them doesn't stop the number of hungry farmers that need $10 to feed their children.  Introducing poutry and aquaculture industries, replacing Poppy production with Safron fields, promoting improvements to the agriculture and food animal industries, these things may help those farmers not chose to take that $10 offer.  I think sometimes we do a better job than other times at accomplishing that goal, but the stability operations and nation building is a huge focus now and we hear about it every day.  Gosh, did I just get on a soap box or something?  Well, it is midnight here so I am going to crawl into bed.  Take care and have a WONDERFUL time in Hiroshima. Lisa

Since I had her permission I forwarded this correspondence to her father, my brother Ted. Under the subject heading, "Friends again?" Ted immediately wrote to her, with a copy to me,  

Dear Lisa,
I've gotten along with Jessica for decades by not arguing with her about religion.  Think you and I could work out a similar modus vivendi?  I love you and miss you, respect what you are doing, and think that's more important than any difference of opinion.
 

Please stay in touch.

Have you done much with camels yet?
ted

All of this happened today.

Mum was a woman who loved reconciliations and restorations of relationship. She would be thrilled to know that the invitation to the dedication of a monument in her honor would have reconciled her son with his daughter and her granddaughter with her aunt.   

HIROSHIMA: We accept the invitation

(For invitation, see previous post)

Dear Michiko, Riji-kai, and everyone who has helped with this monument,

     This is so wonderful it takes my breath away! It is the culmination of so much work and so many dreams! You have all been so patient with our family in our making so many demands for changes in the wording and picture on the monument. I deeply apologize for the continual inconvenience we--I--caused you. But I believe the end product is beautiful and will be a witness and inspiration to other foreigners who visit the Peace Park and see what God can do through any individual listening to Him. 

     We feel so privileged to be invited to the ceremony. I see this ceremony as closure, a perhaps final opportunity to honor the generation actually exposed to the atomic bomb for their dedicated, tireless, unfailing commitment to peace and the abolishment of nuclear weapons. Among these hibakusha we can now count all those irradiated by the disasters at the Fukushima power plants. Radiation, whether from bombs of war or power plants for peace, still kills. I want to be a part of declaring the use of nuclear energy--because of the short- and long-term risks--to be inhuman and "politically incorrect." 

     It is also closure for my mother's involvement with Hiroshima and the hibakusha, symbolically laying her spirit to rest in the city she came to love and feel a part of.

     Jerry and I accept with pleasure the invitation to the unveiling ceremony. It seems appropriate that it be held during the week of my mother's birthday, June 12.

Blessings,

Jessica

Invitation from Hiroshima

     We just received the following letter announcing the completion of the monument to my mother, Barbara Reynolds, for her 17 years' humanitarian assistance to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, including the founding of the World Friendship Center. The writer, Michiko Yamane, is on the board of WFC and is a point person for the Riji-kai (group of decision-making elders) who originated the idea of and desire for this monument.

     In less than five weeks, the long-awaited monument will be erected and unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Park. (For back story, read anything on HIS SCRIBE marked MUM or PHOENIX or anything about "nuclear" or "Hiroshima." Ted is my brother and Naomi is his eldest daughter, captain of the Phoenix.) 

 

Dear Jessica, Ted and Naomi,

I hope this mail finds you well.

We have a good news about Barbara’s monument.

Finally this morning we received a permit to change the photo into the one with the serene , peaceful and faithful expression.

We are so happy to meet your request.

We will receive another permit soon to install a monument at the south-eastern corner of Peace Memorial Park during the period from June 1^st till June 10^th.

As soon as we complete placing the monument, we should have an unveiling ceremony.

Although we haven’t decided the exact date, weekend or weekday, could you come to Hiroshima to attend the ceremony during the third week of June, from 11 to 17?

We want to set up the date according to your schedule.

We are looking forward to your response.

Peace and many blessings.

Shalom,

Michiko Yamane (^-^)