Each week, someone from the meeting offers a "First Word." The speaker takes 3-5 minutes to reflect on his or her spiritual journey. Please email us your comments and questions!

Cynthia Gilliam brought this First Word to the meeting on June 25, 2006.

Hiroshima & Hope

First Word Files / Archive / WHF

I can get to feeling pretty hopeless when I look at the world and the choices my government makes in my name and with my money. I wonder if I will see peace in the middle east, in the world, in my life time.

Last April I reluctantly went to Japan with a group of students. While I like to travel, I was not looking forward to this trip. We spent the first three days in the modern city of Hiroshima. And on one of those days we visited the Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum built in remembrance of the lost souls who perished when our government dropped an atomic bomb on their hometown.

On the way to the museum we stopped at the monument to a young girl named Sadako Sasaki . Sadako was two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. As she grew up, she was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1955, at age 11, while practicing for a big race, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with Leukemia, "the atom bomb" disease. Her best friend told her of an old Japanese legend which said that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Sadako hoped that the gods would grant her a wish to get well so that she could run again. She started to work on the paper cranes and completed over 1000 before dying on October 25, 1955 at the age of twelve. The point is that she never gave up. She continued to make paper cranes until she died.

Inspired by her courage and strength, Sadako's friends and classmates put together a book of her letters and published it. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. Today, people all over the world fold paper cranes and send them to Sadako's monument in Hiroshima. All around the monument are glass cases with cranes donated from school children around the world. Our students had folded 1000 paper cranes and in a formal ceremony we presented these to Japanese representative. When I first came to West Hills I noticed our thousand cranes hanging here and only two weeks ago I learned the story behind them.

We walked through the Peace Mounment museum and saw evidence of the devastation caused by the bomb. Most memorable are the remnants of school uniforms, fused glass and a rusty tricycle a father had buried in a backyard grave because its owner, his three year old daughter was lost. Year later, her remains were identified and he exhumed the tricycle replacing it with her ashes.

We spent several hours in the museum and then we went to a room to meet Keijiro Matsushima, a 76 year old man who was in 7th grade when the bomb was dropped. He talked to us for an hour.

On the morning of August 16, 1945, he had been sitting in math class. It was a beautiful morning and he remembers looking outside and seeing two US bombers fly by. He said they looked like silver ice candy against the cloudless blue sky.. Japan no longer had anti aircraft defense, so US planes flying over was not unusual. Moments later he saw a flash and felt a blast that landed him on the floor.

He says he was lucky because his school was on the far side of a small hill from when the bomb exploded. His classroom was on the far side of the school and he was seat on the side of the room away from the windows and flying glass. He told us about the hours after the blast. He began walking into town to go home but as he walked he saw a line of charred people with their arms stretched out and with flesh literally dripping off their bodies, coming in his direction. He decided to turn around and go to his grandmother’s house which was several towns away. He walked for 15 hours and arrived there at midnight. He was joyously greeted by his mother and grandmother who were both sure he had been killed.

Keijiro believes that getting out of town quickly is what saved him from radiation poisoning. Keijiro grew up to be a teacher and principal of a middle school. For the past 10 years he has dedicated his life to telling people of the horror of that day and to work for the elimination of all atomic weapons.

During the question and answer part of our talk a student asked him about his feelings toward Americans. He talked about how during the war as a child he had participated in school yard games where children and teachers threw rocks at targets with pictures of Churchill and Roosevelt. And he talked about how now, his country and ours are allies and friends. He said that the reconciliation between the US and Japan is a model for how countries that once hated each other can become partners.

Later, as we left, one of my students walked next to me and had a question. “ Mrs. Gilliam,” he asked, “do you think we will ever be friends with Iraq? I answered yes. I don’t know if that was an honest response, but it was a hopeful one and that is how I was feeling.