We take a taxi from the train station, the driver with immaculate white gloves and blue brimmed cap efficiently packs our luggage in the trunk. I hand him a piece of paper with the address and he nods. Hiroshima is much smaller than Osaka, and greener, my students tell me. The city ranges over craggy hills by the sea, hotels and residential streets fringed with blooming May flowers, the covered shopping streets, shotengai, hosting streams of tourists. Cicadas screech in the humidity.
Shannon and I met a few weeks after I arrived in Osaka, became inseparable, sharing a restlessness that brought us here, urging us past the familiar. We had tea every day in the alcove of her long narrow apartment, seated on the floor on silk cushions, leaning out the window to watch women in business suits and high heels ride their bicycles to the train station, talking on their cellphones. Moshi mosh? We would complain that there were no men in Japan. Is that why we came? I moved from the suburbs to her apartment building where many teachers lived, which was known as the spaceship, due to its shiny silver exterior. The landlord wore plastic flip-flops and drowned a rat in my bathroom. Occasional giant cockroaches raced down the hallways. We sprayed them with insecticide and took pictures—some had wings and could fly, which was a shock. It was an old building. My next door neighbour was a Buddhist, his chants low and sweet coming through the walls, competing with my electronic music. On my days off I would go to ramen shops, line up with the rest of the customers at the narrow counters, slurp the salty noodles. I would pick a village within an hour’s train ride and wander the streets, find a temple I could sit in for awhile and if I was lucky, there would be monks chanting, their wrinkled heads bowed. I learned to kneel in Japan though the bones of my ankles would never quite conform to the hard ground, being reshaped by a new discipline that felt unnatural, exhilarating.
Shannon’s stepfather pays the driver. He’s tall and lean, friendly, rangy like a corn stalk. Dave and Muriel. They are going to China after this, to see the Terracotta Warriors. Shannon is breezy, bright, summer wildflower. Muriel a potted plant, sturdy, that blooms in the spring.
“The Peace Park is over there.” I gesture broadly to the left and no one notices; they’re already inside the air-conditioned lobby. A porter dressed in hotel colours, white tailored shirt, blue pants, holds the door for them, his head bowed slightly, hair gleaming blue black.
Our hotel is a few hundred feet from the hypocentre of the atomic bomb. Where it stands was flattened, burned for weeks, bloodthirsty, parched. After dinner Shannon and I walk across a curved stone bridge to the Peace Memorial Park, built on the banks of the Motoyasu River. Dave and Muriel are at the hotel resting. Elegant inscriptions on stone tell us that the park was built on the grounds of Nakajima District, which contained seven towns and 6,500 people, most of whom perished in the bombing. The district is about the size of the village I grew up in. A round mound rises up on our right, a grey concrete pagoda resting at the crest, holding the ashes of 70,000 unclaimed or unknown bodies. Elegant hotels with balconies, streetside cafés and shops, puffs of shrubs and trees watch over the park. A-bomb Dome is a shambling dinosaur, the only wreck left standing after the incineration. Majestic and eerie, a sign says it was built by a Czech designer and is a World Heritage site. Blasted window frames like eye sockets, dark, immobile. A river eases past.
Blue green white yellow red delicate cranes folded in sharp pointed angles and tied together in long strings drape over natural stone monuments, dedicated to villages, schools and workers wiped out at the hypocentre. A three-pronged sculpture in the shape of a bomb with a young girl standing atop, arms stretched wide to hold the shape of a bronze crane. Imposing arc-shaped cenotaph at the heart of the park keeps the names of 221,893 souls safe in a chest and fountains spray tonnes of water a minute to quench thirsty souls. Behind the A-bomb Dome there are hundreds of cranes hanging in bushes, made by school children from all over Japan, a sign says, in the hopes that a disaster of this magnitude will never happen again
How many bodies are buried here? Bones, ashes beneath pavement, deep in the ground. All the signs say the souls are resting and they may be. The park is peaceful. Families, knots of friends seem to float by as if on some invisible, calm breeze. Teenagers sit on the edge of the river where the grass is soft and nubby, chatting and smoking. Some girls wear the classic school uniform: boxy blue blazers, short blue pleated skirts and white leggings past their knees. Jagged, straight glossy hair. A boy with dark blocky glasses and rolled-up grey jeans sits alone, listening to music through headphones. Air smells like green buds, fresh and lemony.
Walking the circumference of the park, monuments pop out pale like ghosts from the trees and shrubs. Severe grey concrete monoliths ribboned with strips of kanji, natural stone standing bold, unmovable. Sculpted willowy woman with a delicate deer by her side. Lion’s head fountain spouts continuous streams. Coins glint through the clear water. We find a bench, share a smoke. As the sun goes down, the shadows from the A-bomb Dome steal across the grass, part of the river, the holes of windows blacken so no light gets out at all.
Glow of cigarettes spark the night. We don’t leave right away. It’s cool, the flutter of voices and bark of laughter punctuates the black. Birds flit, sing to each other. Stillness sets my legs straight out, toes hanging out of my sandals, even they feel relaxed, weary after cramped crunching on trains and taxis. Puff of pot floats by, aromatic.
“Smells good. Should we crash that party, track down the smoke?”
“Nah. They don’t want to hang out with gaijin.”
“I could get some for your mom. I think Muriel needs a puff.”
“My mom is driving me crazy. I wish she would relax.”
“She’s worried about you. God knows why.”
We don’t move for awhile, pass cigarettes back and forth. Breeze picks up, flips my hair around, and we curve to the hard slats of the bench beneath us. It is inscribed with the name of Naoto Yamamoto, a respected teacher and former resident of Nakajima. She was forty-three when she died.
Dene
Allied to Na’kwoel’s family was brooding Tsalekulhye, the first of a line of hereditary chiefs, whose family came from Pinche, a village on Stuart Lake. Born about 1735, he was younger than A’ke’toes, whose sister or cousin he must have married, since his eldest son ultimately succeeded to A’ke’toes rank.
Some members of the northern Sekanais tribe made a friendly visit to the Stuart Lake band. One evening there was a scream in the camp, and one of the Sekanais saw his own sister bleeding to death from an arrow wielded by Tsalekulhye. Narrow eyes, keen rage, Sekanais shot Tsalekulhye as he crept to the woods. Angry arrow gouged his thigh. He recovered his strength but the wound sunk deeper, malicious. Notorious story passed like poison at fires, tribe to tribe and his fear and pride grew—no one would cross him or his family.
About the year 1780, a beloved member of the Naskhu’tin tribe died near the confluence of the Blackwater and Fraser. Grief flooded the ears of a shaman who said that Tsalekulhye killed him. Twisted bitter Tsalekulhye, he said, and the Naskhu’tins despair sickened to wrath, and they gathered their rage in arms to Stuart River, in search of Tsalekulhye.
Japan
Next morning Jack Johnson’s mellifluous voice breezes in the background of the café. On and on, on and on, on and on … Dave and Muriel seem to have recovered, clear eyed, buttering their toast. Muriel looks at Shannon intently, as if trying to glean some secret she knows the answer to. Best to be quiet, her firm even mouth seems to say. When Shannon told Muriel she was going to Japan, her mother slapped her, marked her cheek like claws.
“Coffee’s good! So girls, what’s the plan?” Dave is handsome when he smiles.
An efficient waitress dressed in a faux Dutch uniform with an elaborate hat that looks like a folded diaper clears our table. She smiles, “Good morning!”
“Museum and then Miyajima in the afternoon,” I answer. Shannon is texting on her phone.
“Will we have time?” Muriel is hunched
in her seat. The room is yellow, bright, stuffy, smells like sweet bread.
I am not rested. Even with the air-conditioning I woke in a sweat and stared at the blank grey ceiling which was screening an internal war movie, wooden forts being defended, gunshots and whizzing axes. I watched daylight seep in white ghost fingers. Shannon didn’t move in the next bed.
“Yeah, we should,” Shannon answers curtly, flips her phone. “Let’s get going.”
Our café is in a shotengai, a covered shopping street. In Osaka, the shotengai at Namba feels like a surging carnival, a colourful roving shopping breathing being. Hiroshima crowds don’t run in the same numbers and it feels like being in an atrium, rounded opaque awnings giving off refracted greenish light.
Irashaimase! Irashaimase! Beautiful young girls in shops call out to us.
“It means welcome,” I say to Dave, who is walking beside me. Muriel and Shannon are in heated debate behind us. I can hear Shannon hiss, then yell “No!”
“Mothers and daughters,” Dave says lightly and laughs.
We are nearing the end of the tunnel where the park opens up, a Saturday morning moving, milling landscape, groups of families festive with portable karaoke machines. Bash of drums and slash of guitar—two or three impromptu jam sessions crank the air. One singer is swivelling his hips like Elvis, his hair in a slick pompadour, bright red lipstick.
Dave is delighted. Muriel takes pictures of the A-bomb Dome, asks us to stand in front of it. Cacophony seems to have erased the mood of last night. Earthy aroma of roasted nuts, moss-coloured matcha ice cream. We follow the crowds to the museum.
“What were you guys talking about?” I ask Shannon, as I dodge a huge pink Hello Kitty balloon.
“She wants me to come back home, get a job teaching in Toronto.”
“Why? You’re teaching now.”
“That’s what I told her. She’s never happy. Wants what she wants, you know? She was like that with my dad too.” Shannon’s father is remarried and lives in China with his second wife.
The museum is grey, sprawling blocks, flat-roofed, like a spread-out accordion, slatted sections with brief black windows. At the entrance a picture of licking flames takes up the entire wall. Orange red yellow daubs and gashes. Spattered spilled and splayed like flesh.
“That was painted by a survivor,” says the cashier brightly and hands me my ticket.
Inside there’s a slab of stone emblazoned with the shadow of an incinerated body. Those closest to the hypocentre combusted instantly, leaving black imprints and ash. Behind glass, torn and burned school uniforms, books, crushed eyeglasses. Framed letters from the Japanese government pleading for an end to the war. Pictures painted by survivors of naked bodies, tongues bursting. There was no water. Thirst was so intense that people threw themselves in wells, off bridges into the river circling the park. Skin peeling off in whole sheets like puff pastry. Accounts from the survivors, translated, etched in vellum, accompanied by broad charcoal strokes of leaning naked bodies.
As we near the end, Shannon realizes that we’ve lost Muriel and we backtrack to find her sitting on a bench, weeping. We circle her, shielding her from stares. Dave is as shocked as we are.
“I don’t know,” she cries in a high voice that croaks in a sob. “I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to lose…” People pass by, too polite to stop but I can tell they’re listening. “To lose a child. How horrible.” We are near the exhibit with the children’s clothes, blasted book covers.
“Muriel, you’re exhausted. Let’s go back to the hotel,” says Dave. She doesn’t look at any of us, pulling her face together after its collapse, determined, smoothing out wrinkled thoughts.
“No. Let’s go to the island. I need to get out of here.” Grown-up voice again with forced cheer, which does not inform her weary walking. Shannon hands her a napkin to dry her eyes.
“What a place,” Dave says as we walk toward the bridge to our hotel, hoping to open up the conversation, deflect from the outburst. He may have a knack for making light of things. Path is less crowded than when we came, the bands have packed up.
“It was grim,” I say, thinking of all the survivors, talking to translators, the wrenching of words, images seared to their insides. Primal, unbearable heat. “How can you not remember it and carry on?”
“I guess you cannot not remember,” Shannon adds. We stop for matcha ice cream. “Does that make any sense?” We laugh but it takes awhile to shake it off, like the morning after a bad dream, wanting the familiarity of your room to crowd out the unrest that came from somewhere. A little boy’s jacket, a little girl’s skirt.
Dene
The Carriers were camped in three large detachments on the upper course of the Stuart River. The southernmost tribe was the first to hear the swarming news—a large force of Naskhu’tins was on its way up to avenge its dead. Tsalekulhye knew that his name was on their blackened lips, painted on their war faces. Fear forced him to the lower encampment.
Frightened and doubtful that they could fight off the warriors, the southern tribe decided to move up and join the other two allied bands. But a heavy snowstorm came on, delayed their departure and a great cry was raised on the top of the bank. The Stuart Lake people were hunted with whizzing arrows, spears flying, war-clubs stunning right and left. Such hideous yells of attack. Two headmen were slain and mutilated, the marauders kept coming. Most of the women were taken as prisoners, enslaved. Tsalekulhye, the cause of the disaster, took to the water, and was on the point of escaping when he was recognized, killed and pulled apart.
Japan
We get directions to Miyajima from Kimi, a clerk at our hotel. She has very thin, fine hair that frames her narrow face, tiny curved shoulders huddled in a cardigan, her narrow fingers point at the red torii on the map and trace backwards to our hotel. A streetcar will take us there. We catch it here, and she points to a tiny spot in a myriad of lines, marks it with her pink pen.
“You will find it, no problem,” she smiles.
“Can we take the map?”
“Of course,” and she hands it to me, bows slightly.
Although Shannon and I are famous for getting on the wrong trains and not noticing for several stops—stories which we regaled her mother with—we are allowed to do the navigating. Probably because Dave and Muriel don’t want to think.
“Things all cleared up now?” I ask.
“Who knows? What’s with the public meltdown? Is she trying to guilt me?”
From the immaculate streetcar windows Hiroshima peeps out in carefully cultivated beauty, flashes of tankers on a choppy sea. New housing areas open up outside the downtown core, chunks of ripped-up earth covered over quickly in concrete, paved roads. Tiny perfect cars in the driveways. We pass a school that is playing children’s songs on the outdoor PA system, high-pitched clear voices float through some open windows. In my guide book the Shinto temple on Miyajima is built on wooden pillars, resting on the lap of the sea.
“We should go for a swim,” I suggest to Shannon. I want to get away from Dave and Muriel. It has been uncomfortable being in a family dynamic that is not my own.
Streetcar weaves and climbs stubbled green hills. Industrious caterpillar about to shed its passengers at the ferry dock. Gaggle of girls giggle at the back, light tittering laughter. Afternoon heat dumbs us down. Muriel is sleeping in her seat.
“Great idea. They can shop for awhile.”
My legs are sticking to my seat and I have to slowly unglue them. The ferry is a welcome, breezy boat and I lean over the metal railing, trying to catch a glimpse of the torii like some beacon. My guidebook says the torii is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of a Shinto shrine. It symbolizes the transition from the profane to sacred.
Salt air reminds me of home and for a moment sadness mars the moment; I want the familiar, to feel snug instead of wide open.
Ferry grunts and puffs and sways off to the island and when we arrive the torii is as magical as th
e book says, floating on the sea though its foundations go deep. Shinto shrine has light tatami rooms that smell like wheat, lined up against each other like secret compartments. Incense circles in the corners. We walk on the wooden slats, bright orange beams reflect off Shannon’s sunglasses in blobs.
“Think about walking out here every morning with your java!” I say, enchanted.
We find some concrete steps that we can jump off of near a little beach at the end of the shopping street. A well-dressed little boy is picking up pebbles, dropping them in his mother’s lap, one by one.
“We can change into our suits at a restaurant bathroom when we have lunch.”
“Does anyone swim here? I don’t see anyone swimming? What if we’re not allowed to?” Suddenly Shannon is apprehensive.
We have to go swimming, I’ve decided that it is necessary at this time to feel clean. The shopping street on the island is an elegant shanty town selling rice cakes, ice cream, paper fans painted blue green outlining thin white cranes. Smell of roasted sesame seed, a dry green mixed with salt.
“Come on. No one will stop us. What will they do?”
The Earth Remembers Everything Page 5