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"Wakarimashitaka?" Thirty Minutes with Ojii-San Itoigawa

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"My mouth dropped again in amazement that the Evil of the Bomb had passed over all three generations of Hiroshima District residents." Kansas added.

Kansas continued stuttering, "You mean that all generations of your family who have lived here in Hiroshima are sitting in front of me and none of you are suffering any related illnesses?"

"I thought: This is all certainly a miracle!"

By this time it was getting fairly late, Kansas had also reached the utter-limits of his Japanese language skills and needed to run and make his curfew back at the Miyajima Youth Hostel: "I was frustrated, but I could not have probed any deeper into this Japanese family's singular experiences in the post-atomic era of modern Japan. Even though all our tongues were loosened by the alcohol, I had not acquired the Japanese language facility to delve deeper-even though as a historian through my college training, I would have certainly loved to have learned so much more. All kinds of questions passed through my head in English-but how to put them into Japanese? That is a difference endeavor!"

"Finally, as I readied to leave the Yamanaka family, I simply allowed the conversation to turn to lighter topics, and soon, as we all parted. I said good-night to Yamanaka's family. I was quickly driven back to my hostel for the night by another member of the Yamanaka household. What wonderful and special hosts they were!"

"Wakarimashitaka?"

All the while, Tomie family's eighty-two year-old Ojii-san in Itoigawa, where Kansas worked and was doing his two-week home-stay, continued to explain in his mother tongue, i.e. a difficult and colloquial Japanese dialect the following points, "On a short patrol ... through ... those Chinese mountains ... my fellow troops ... and I ... got ... pinned ... down on ... a hill.... We were ... stuck ... in a cross-fire ... for seven ... whole days. We ... hadn't brought ... enough ... food ... for but a ... single da. Worse, ... we had ... had no ... extra ... water.... We suffered ... horrrrrrrrribly. We thought ... we were done for.... After one week, though, ... suddenly ... the shooting stopped... By this time, I ... become very very weak.... Soon, I caught ... malaria."

Kansas was greatly frustrated, "I am missing so many key ideas which Ojii-san is trying to relate. Sadly, my mind is beginning to wander again, too."

"Then my returned again to the memory of a train-ride south of Hiroshima, i.e. where I had been earlier in my thoughts: From Miyajima Town that very next morning I had taken a very slow train south about 45-kilometers to the famous Bridge at Iwakuni, which I had read about in my guide book. This famed architectural wonder is a five arched pedestrian bridge made of wood. It is one of the more beautiful examples of classical oriental architecture I have ever seen!"

After wandering about along the river and viewing-and photographing--the historic structure from many angles, Kansas slowly crossed over the five arches and onto the opposite bank, where he continued walking along up-river. Along the way he also admired the blossoms of the cherry trees or sakara along with the many other flowers in bloom in the private gardens located nearby. Still, further upstream, Kansas came upon a small picnic table situated in front of a restaurant, which had not-yet-opened. Therefore, Kansas walked over to the vending machine and bought a can of orange juice and sat down. From there, he could do his journaling and still continue to admire the distant wooden arches of the Iwakuni Bridge. Also, along the banks of the river-running just below him-Kansas could admire a few elderly Japanese bending over and working in smaller gardens as the sun shined pleasantly that cool spring morning.

Kansas continued his tales, "I was sitting and writing some sentences down, describing the view of the bridge and the surrounding scenery-as well as jotting down a short description of the events from the previous night in Miyajima with the Yamanaka family--, when one of the elderly men working in his garden below from me began to make his way back up the bank. The man then proceeded to come walking in my direction. It soon became clear to me that he owned the restaurant behind me. This elderly gardener subsequently took off his gardner's hat or kasa and startled me by starting to speak in fairly clear English. The restaurant owner then asked me several questions. However, he quickly seemed to run out of things to say in English, so we both switched over to speaking Japanese and a mixture-of-these-two-tongues, which is commonly referred to jokingly as Japlish."

Kansas asked the ancient gardener, "What is the name of the river flowing in front of us?"

The elderly native replied with a very slow pronunciation, "Nishi-ki-gawa." Then he crouched to the ground and began to write the Chinese symbols, or kanji, in the dirt. He thus spellt out the three parts of the river's name in Chinese symbols. Next, the man wrote the pronunciation of each kanji in roman letters or romanji below the Japanese kanji.

Kansas added, "The elderly restaurant owner and gardener then asked me if I were an American soldier--because of my short or close-cropped hair. I indicated that I wasn't. Then, because I had not often met men of his age in rural areas of Japan willing to try and speak to me at length in either Japanese or English as he had already done, I boldly asked him whether he had been a soldier abroad. He shook his head indicating that he had not been abroad in WWII. However, later as a young man it had been required of him at a special local high school for adults that he learn spoken English, due to the presence of the former occupying American military base situated near Iwakune town. Even now decades later, there is still an American military force stationed at a base nearby called Iwakuni."

Kansas noted then, "At that moment, it had occurred to me that this Japanese man must have been growing up as a boy near Hiroshima--or at least near Iwakuni area-- in the last days of the Second World War. When I asked, the elder native responded, 'Hai'. He had certainly been right here in this area. He spent his childhood during the Japanese Imperialist War years going to school, working on the local farms, and fishing right there on the banks of the Nishi-ki-gawa river passing in front of us now."

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KEVIN STODA-has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades.--He sees himself as a peace educator and have been-- a promoter of good economic and social development--making-him an enemy of my homelands humongous DEFENSE SPENDING and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global (more...)
 

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