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Show THE DAILY HERALD, Provo, Utah, Sunday, April 2, D10 Psge " 1995 -ss- T "WSJ"" -jp. !.- -. uum JAPAN HOMI (Continued from Page D9) y 4V A. Just a few blocks from the glittering Maruyama d relic of entertainment district stands a Nagasaki's past, the comely Spectacles Bridge, built more than 350 years ago in 1834. still-use- One of these groups, on a field trip to Nagasaki from the distant city of Gifu, hailed me in a flurry of peace signs, then presented me with a handmade "peace message." Inside its paper covers, a girl named Sachiko had written, "Thousands of peoples lost their life when Lhe bomb was thrown on Nagasaki. That's why Peace I'm hoping for. I don't want war to come again." Clearly, the horrific events of 50 years ago are still very much on the ry Un-ze- in the world can become secondary to counting on others to know their place while we're trying to unwind. For instance, the last thing we want to worry about when we're sitting in a beach chair at some Mexican or Thai resort is the life of the person who's giving us a massage or delivering our At no time during the week t7ti-an- minds of the Japanese, even the younger generations . The bomb continues to resonate alpine woodlands criss- d 18th-centu- shoguns. ry And somehow the city rose a new ffom the ashes of a nuclear holocaust. The degree to which Nagasaki tyas rebounded materially from the bomb is astounding; even more remarkably, its residents also seem to have repaired the inestimable damage inflicted on their collective morale. As an American visitor, I was concerned that the local citizenry pould respond with hostility to a son of the nation that dropped the bomb on them. But I didn't have to orry: At no time during the week Ij spent in Nagasaki did I detect so much as a flicker of ill will. There might well have been some bitterness, of course. But the Japanese abhor confrontation and are famously polite to gaijin, as foreigners are called, so any was kept tightly under ! ! resi-4u- al most forcefully, of course, for those who felt its wrath firsthand as Katsuji Yoshida did. A dapd man with a wiry per, build and sparkling eyes, Yoshida was 13 years old when the bomb exploded half a mile from where he stood. In left profile, he appears astonishingly unmarked by the blast. From the other side, however, the story of the apocalypse is writ large on Yoshida 's countenance: The entire right half of his face is a matrix of purplish scar tissue and grotesquely disfigured flesh. During a visit arranged by the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, Yoshida says that Aug. 9, 1945, dawned humid and overcast, although by the sun was beginning to burn through the scud. Wisps of cloud drifted languidly over the harbor. d sirens had wailed through the city earlier in the morning, but when no materialized, an "all clear" was sounded. Young j I speak only a half-doze- n cor-pers- to-b- e -. ogjsh on me. I Ki la. monument in Hypocenter Park in Nagasaki is dedicated to "the students, women volunteers, factory workers and ether citizens of Nagasaki" killed by the atomic blast. In memorium: badly that it was impossible to tell men from women. The Urakami River was choked with the corpses of people and animals. "Two students about my age passed by; one had broken both his legs and was being carried by the other, whose eyeballs hung down onto his cheeks. Most of his skin had been burned away. I could see the veins pulsing in his exposed muscles. Realizing my friends and I were nearby, he declared, 'I feel so relieved,' and then collapsed dead on the ground. Fifty years later, the sight of those two students is branded vividly in my B-2- Yoshida exited a community bomb shelter and started walking back to school with six fellow students. Halfway there, the boys stopped to draw a drink of water from a roadside well. "For no particular reason," Yoshida recalls, speaking through an interpreter. "I looked up after I finished drinking and noticed two parachutes floating down through an opening in the clouds to my right. Then there was a blinding flash, the sky filled with fire, and I was hurled across the road into a rice paddy. "In that instant, time seemed to slow down, like in a dream. I remember very clearly the sensation of flying through the air, my body curling against the intense heat, the memory." Having survived the blast, Yoshida spent more than a year recuperating in hospitals outside Best Canton Tours In Utah! May 4 Sept. 5 4 Oct. 2 6 November Starting at $1068 GRAND COLORADO Especially designed tor Grandparents and Grandchildren Amtrak Cenuer to Gltnwcod the ruined city, and endured 13 operations. Upon finally returning to Nagasaki, he tells me, "my disfigured face attracted stares and made children cry. For many years, I stayed inside my home because I was ashamed to go outside. I have also suffered many serious health problems from the radiation." into the I When ground. regained consciousness, I looked down at my arms and saw that the skin had peeled off in sheets. It hung from my fingertips like a torn shirt. The exposed flesh was bright red w iih blood, but strangely there was no pain, not at first. 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BEACON TOURS 1995 ESCORTED TOURS impact of slamming t Tom Addttioail 17M featuring Portland floe Festival C74S June A ture of ammonia would cure everything. Then I noticed all the people staggering down from the surrounding hillsides, groaning and screaming, small children crying for their parents, everyone begging for water, people charred so Air-rai- fort cbujet ttm stow 7 BRANSON Photo courtesy of Jon Krakauer NORTHWEST TEMPLE TOUR July 10-2- 2 (13 Days) I & BYWAYS April June Cutis 'Alaskan ... 7 Higtot 1 OREGON COAST Caribbean Cruise 7 Night Deluxe Motorcoach Tours Serving Utah Since 1S82 COASTAL HIGHWAYS With A .. Sitting here staring at those photos of the monk, the shepherd and the farm woman, I can't help butl remember how "at home" I felt1 ' when I was with them . ( In fact, I almost always feel t1 more' home when I'm traveling "Serving Vtoh P mid-morni- rud- imentary Japanese phrases, and couldn't decipher the language's fritten symbols to save my life, yet never have I found foreign travel easier than in Japan. Every tjme I was baffled by a bus sched-il- e or the cryptic runes on a road sigii',' some sympathetic local would notice my bewilderment and approach within seconds to offer assistance. American tourists are sufficiently scarce in Nagasaki that encountering one still seems to be considered an enjoyable novelty for many Jjapahese. It was not unusual for approached on street ?ie shyly, accompanied by and asked if prodigious bowing I would mind engaging in conversation. Three times in a single afternoon I was asked by groups of f iggling Japanese schoolgirls if ley might practice their halting i silver-haire- ani-ihosi- ty yraps. i ' is less than it should be. How civilized it seems. After all, the way we, in our culture, have come to define and express civilization focuses on our understanding of the ''pursuit of that is, on our suphappiness" posed right to, finally, feel happy: to satisfy our individual desires, to be responsible for ourselves primarily or solely, to freely reap the riches of our individual labor and property. To go on vacation, in a sense. It can be interesting to reflect, however, that the word and idea ill will. Our sense of community is heightened to include far more than than our hometown and pea- pie like us. It begs our understand-- 1 ing of, sensitivity to and compas- sion for other people who may jbg very different from us. And so,, traveling also can stretch our idea of happiness to accommodate the desires, needs, traditions and vai-- r ues of others. : J if all spent in Nagasaki did I detect so much as a flicker of . ! drink. It's enough, for the moment, that she or he is a sen'jet whom we can choose to acknowland edge with a smile, a thank-yo- u a tip. Or a curt, justifiable rebuke I go- - comfortably and contentedly at home than I often feel here. Places' somehow seem "right," and I feel "right" being in them. I've often; interpreted that to mean that maybe' I'm more European or Asian or' Latino or African at heart than: purely, exclusively, American. But that's not the reason, really.' It's more, I think, that the act .or state of traveling can clarify the sense of home that exists withik)' me. It gives me a clearer sense of-myself as I willingly open up to' experiences and relationships that,? here, I often avoid out of habit and pattern. clay-to-d- As an American visitor, I was concerned that the local citizenry would respond with hostility to a son of the nation that dropped the bomb on them. But I didn't have to worry: ad By it's very name and nature, a vacation is intended to take us Jives; away from our separate us from our usual patterns and concerns and responsibilities; lead us away from home to some piace, some context, where home is gratefully forgotten. Vacation is, in fact, an act of overt It centers on the self: give me a beach and some sunshine, a fantasy, and the rest of the world be damned for a weekend or a week. It's designed cot only to relieve us from our daily lives and our sense of the selves mired in them, but to suspend our sense of others who're jiving their daily Jives while we play out our fantasies. We go on vacation with a sense of what we deserve and what we are due. Comprehending our place day-to-d- Photo courtesy of Jon Krakauer with the individual. In that sense, being on vacation is less "civilized" than traveling. Traveling takes us into the world wim a less perspec- -' live: concentrating on our relation- -' with the others our link ship we meet aionj nfce way . Men we travel., 4 la other wo; our concept of "home" itself is J broadened to embrace not only the place we'ye left, but the place we are at the moment even places in , the world we may never personally , seif-center- ed world. -- crossed by hiking trails (if you're feeling lazy, Unzen's heights can ajso be reached by aerial tram). Thanks to its history of foreign influence, Nagasaki has always tiqerr a worldly city. It's also a resilient one. The inhabitants bounced back from bloody religious persecution in the 1600s, and crushing oppression under the l But there is a fundamental difference between traveling aod going on vacation, one that deserves a semantic distinction and that can be important to remember when we're trying to figure out how we operate and fit in the Nagasaki. By the early 2Gth century the city had grown into a booming industrial center. Nagasaki is no less v ibrant or fascioating today. In the heart of the cky is the Maruyama entertainment district, a maze of narrow, twisting alleys jammed with bars and pachinko parlors pachinko being a form of gambling, similar to pinball, that is a national obsession. Tantalizing restaurants beckon throughout Maruyama, ranging from boisterous, inexpensive sidewalk grills called robatayaki, to pricey establishments specializing in fugu a poisonous fish, considered a great delicacy, which is deadly if prepared wrong. A few blocks from Maruyama, a series of comely arched bridges including Spectacles Bridge, built by a Chinese monk in 1634, the oldest stone bridge in Japan spans, the Nakajimagawa Stream. At ih southern end of the city, museums, fountains, and the reexbuilt mansions of bucolic a patriates sprawl across hillside park called Glover Garden. ; When the weather is clear, the summit of Mount Fugen is visible oh the eastern horizon, belching sulphurous plumes of ash. This n sfeep volcanic peak juts from National Park, 20 miles from t&eftfcy as the crane flies, a pristine ekpSitase of steaming hot springs coif-- ceraed more with community than (Continued from Page forming the city into a nexus of wealth and cosmopolitan refinement. The beloved Puccini opera, "Madame Butterfly," was set in 19th-centu- "civilization," at root, is 22-2- 6 yiaaic (tu-fJ- r " ! Sept 20 thru Oct 6 Oct 7? 17-2- 8 |