Hope for Peace - All of Us Together, All of Us at the Same Time

 I am dedicating this blog entry to a dear friend, who was born in Japan in 1949 to a Japanese mother. Her father was an American soldier. My friend was taken to an orphanage almost immediately after she was born.  She was adopted at age three, brought to America, and raised in Florida, in a place far away from any touchstone of her birth culture.  She is a person of great heart with a mother's ferocity towards actions that bring destruction to humanity and the planet and with a deep tenderness she shares by fostering green habits and caring for animals and being an incredible friend to those who know her. 

August 1, 2010
This afternoon I was very fortunate and blessed to be present at the  65th Commemorative Service of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Victims and Prayer for World Peace at the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in downtown Los Angeles. A beautiful elderly Japanese woman welcomed me warmly and motioned towards empty seating.  The building is an auditorium, with three elaborate temples set up in the back of the stage.  Two Buddhist priests in dark robes faced each other and chanted the from the Sutras.

Mrs. Kaz Suyeishi, the woman who had welcomed me, stood at the front and invited us to come forward.  One by one we took a lit votive candle and placed it on the shrine, took a pinch of powdered incense, offered it into an urn, then bowed as we gave our silent prayers.  As some elderly Japanese people approached the front, Mrs. Kaz Suyeishi gently touched their arms or gave them a hug.  She patted the shoulder of every boy who stood at the shrine and I imagined her inoculating them against war.  When an African-American girl of about three years old came up with her father, Kaz Susyeishi smiled, lifted her up shoulder height and held her out above the altar.  She swung the girl with a graceful movement, bowing her body.  I had been crying since entering the door, but along with others, at the sight of the young girl held high in the name of peace and forgiveness I laughed with joy.

It was so powerful to be in the forgiving presence of those who had been in Hiroshima at that time, or who had family and friends who had been killed or who were also "Hibakusha" which means "explosion-affected people." I came home and googled Mrs. Kaz Susyeishi and discovered that she was 18 years old when the bomb dropped.  She was born in Pasadena, but was raised in Japan. On August 6, 1945, Kaz and a friend were chatting in the front garden of the family home in Hiroshima when  the silver plane appeared. "It looked like an angel," she said.  "It looked like heaven and it looked like peace."

Kaz Susyeishi suffered from radiation poisoning.  She says that "You cannot see the scars here," pointing to her face, "but I am scarred here," tapping her chest.  "I don't want anyone to go through what I went through.  I don't ever want it to happen again."  She has dedicated the rest of her life to bringing a message of peace.  She closed the ceremony with a speech delivered in Japanese sprinkled with a few phrases in English like, "Never, Never Again." She did a great imitation of machismo, raising her fists and saying "Fighting, fighting!" Then, she asked us all to hold the hands of those next to us and to say, "I love you!"  "This is the way that we can bring Peace to the world," she said, and we laughed through our tears and gratefully squeezed each other's hands.  Believe me, if Mrs. Kaz Susyeishi says so, it must be so.  I know it, I felt it, and my heart is still vibrating.  Read her story here:

Echoes of Hiroshima - Los Angeles Times

Another speaker, Darrell Miho, a photographer, has started Project Hibakusha: Hope for Peace.  He says, "As a third generation Japanese American, whose parents were incarcerated during World War II and whose paternal lineage goes back to Hiroshima, I feel it is my duty to help the hibakusha spread their message - their message of peace."  His short term goal is to photograph and document the stories of 66 hibakusha and open the exhibit in Hiroshima and/or Los Angeles on August 6, 2011, exactly 66 years after the first bomb was dropped.  Please visit his website: Project Hibakusha: Hope for Peace

Cranes who visit my friend this entry is dedicated to!

Read about the story of Sadako Sadaki a Japanese girl who was two years old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and who developed leukemia.  Her story led to the practice of folding of paper cranes as a symbol of peace and friendship.  The Gift of Cranes by Bruce Nichols 

MAKE AN ORIGAMI CRANE by following this youtube video

How to Make an Origami Paper Crane

August 2, 2010
"All of us together, all of us at the same time."  That's the message from the planetary alignment of Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars, according to Len Wallick of Planet Waves. Two for T by Len Wallick

All of us together, all of us at the same time -- if we can all walk together towards peace with reverence for our Earth and compassion for each other, surely all will be well and PEACE WILL PREVAIL, as Mrs. Kaz Susyeishi declared with passion.

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:
The Los Angeles Nuclear Disarmament Coaltion laandc.org sponsored a silent walk to City Hall.
 I was particularly moved by Walt McCarron's talk.  He represented the Southern Califonia Federation of Scientists, whose motto is "Science in the public interest." Southern California Federation of Scientists