From the small, uncrowded airport in Omura, they rode a bus past the lush green rice paddies, past potato fields, groves of mikan and biwa and forests of camphor and cedar and into Nagasaki. Embracing the wooden houses built on the sides of the surrounding hills and blanketing the mountains that enclosed the city was more greenery than J.D. had ever seen. Everything was green except for the pale blue sky and its reflection in the water of the bay. And although the buildings downtown, crowned with billboards written in intricate, foreign characters, and the traffic lights that bleeped "pippo-pippo" when it was safe to walk were all distinctly Japanese, J.D. was reminded of his home in San Francisco. His roommate, Yoshi, thought Natsukashii - it was good to be home.
From the bus terminal, they hopped aboard a street car and rode towards the steep hills. As they walked up the slope leading towards Yoshi's mother's apartment, Yoshi introduced J.D. to the neighbors that greeted them, explaining that J.D. was staying with him for two nights on the way to Mt. Aso and the hot springs of Beppu. The neighbors welcomed him to Nagasaki and encouraged him to stay longer.
Yoshi, a senior in college in Tokyo, was dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans jacket. J.D., an American who had graduated the previous year and came to Japan as an English teacher, wore a Stanford University sweatshirt and black Levis. Both used moose in their short, slightly punk styled hair.
Yoshi's mother lived on the third floor of a large block of old, concrete apartment buildings. After clattering up the iron staircase, Yoshi knocked on the steel door, the hollow metal "kon-kon" sound echoing through the hallway, then opened the unlocked door and waved J.D. inside.
Yoshi's mother was short and frail with grey hair, and walked slightly hunched over. The left side of her face was slightly scarred. She talked only through the right side of her mouth - vestiges of a stroke, J.D. wondered. Although she didn't hug or kiss Yoshi, her eyes sparkled with delight. She immediately flew into a frenzy of questions - How was he? When did they land? Were they hungry or tired? Could J.D. speak Japanese? Could he eat sushi and sashimi? Wasn't it hot outside? - but before Yoshi could begin answering even the first question, she shooed them into his bedroom and began heating the bath water, then prepared a snack of sembei crackers and dried fish.
Yoshi changed into one of the two cotton print yukata robes set out for them. The bedroom consisted of a six straw tatami mat floor, with a kotatsu table in the center and walls that were decorated with only a few hanging paintings and Yoshi's framed high school diploma. As J.D. changed into his yukata, Yoshi approached the small altar placed on a shelf in a corner of the room. A framed black and white photograph of his father was set next to it. Yoshi shook the bell, draped the wooden beads over his clasped hands, then bowed his head. After raising his eyes again, he lit an incense stick then rang the bell again while J.D. watched transfixed. Yoshi, no matter how late he stayed out Saturday night never missed church on Sunday morning. Yoshi, noticing J.D.'s surprise, explained, "I do it for my mother. It's my father's ashes. He died of cancer when I was young."
Yoshi's mother slid open the paper shoji door just wide enough to thrust her head into the room and announce that the bath was ready. Yoshi insisted that J.D. go first, and joined his mother in the kitchen. While his mother jabbered on, Yoshi considered what a foreigner would enjoy seeing in such a boring, countrified town. Most of his high school friends had already escaped to school or jobs in to Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka.
Meanwhile, J.D. sat in the steaming bath, his muscles relaxing and the fatigue of the day's journey dissolving away in the hot water. In six months living in Japan, this was his first trip away from the ever-flowing crowds and noise that permeated Tokyo. He was enjoying just sitting in this bath, being with his friend, and relaxing in a real Japanese home. His mind drifted to Yoshi's prayers for his father, reminding J.D. of his own father's words at San Francisco Airport, "Remember Pearl Harbor."
When they finished eating the entire huge tray of fresh sushi as well bowls of sara-udon noddles, the sun had long ago set. They changed back into their clothes and as they were nearly out the door, Yoshi's mother inquired where they were going. She seemed uneasy about them going out at night. Yoshi, embarrassed by his mother, tried reassuring her that it was safe outside, then stammered that they were going to visit a friend, hurrying out of the apartment before she could stop them.
They walked down the hill, across a stone bridge that forded a winding stream of what seemed in the moonlight to be flowing black sumi ink, then up another slope to a similar apartment complex. Yoshi explained that he wanted to visit his best friend from high school. He knocked on the door that echoed with the same "kon-kon" sound and soon an old lady, much sturdier than Yoshi's mother greeted them. She seemed as glad as his own mother to see him, leading Yoshi by the elbow through the kitchen and into the living room, beckoning for J.D. to follow. She stared into Yoshi's face as if she hadn't seen him for decades, chanting, "Yo-chan, hisashiburi, ne," then explained that Tatsuo wouldn't be home from Osaka for a few more days as she wandered off into the kitchen.
While they sat on the floor at the kotatsu table, J.D. noticed the sturdy wooden bookshelf, the top shelf of which was overflowing with foreign books. He looked closer, expecting the usual English conversation texts and dictionaries but found it filled instead with English and German medical textbooks.
The old lady, returning with a plateful of sliced fruit - white peaches, apples, nashi, kaki, and melon, all peeled and glistening with sugary juice, noticed J.D. squinting towards the books. Her daughter was studying dentistry at Boston University, she explained - she was planning a visit there herself the following autumn. J.D. encouraged her to go - "There's nothing quite as beautiful as Walden Pond in October when all the leaves have turned color, except maybe Ueno Park when the cherry trees are in full bloom."
She laughed, saying she had never been to Ueno Park, never even been out of Nagasaki Prefecture.
While she and Yoshi talked, J.D., despite a full stomach, munched on the fruit. He hadn't seen so much fruit in months nor tasted anything as delicious as those white peaches, but soon Yoshi motioned to J.D. The old lady followed them as far as the stairway, imploring him to come back when her son returned. She bobbed up and down in a continuous bow as she watched them from the railing and didn't stop until they turned the corner and were out of her line of sight.
"She seems really sweet," J.D. remarked.
"When we were children, whenever I went over there, she was so happy that Tatsuo had someone to play with that she wouldn't leave us alone. I guess it's because she was an orphan; both of her parents were killed in the war - her father in battle and her mother by the bomb."
When they arrived back at the apartment, all the lights were out. His mother was already asleep snuggled inside her futon in the living room, softly snoring. It was only ten o'clock. Yoshi considered turning on the baseball game, but thought J.D. might become bored. He changed back into his yukata, brought a large bottle of beer and two six ounce glasses decorated with Kirin Beer emblems from the kitchen, placed them between the two futons that had already been set out in the bedroom, then climbed under the blankets. "Kompai," Yoshi said. Their glasses clinked together, and they quickly downed their beers, then filled each other's glasses again. After a few cups, Yoshi's face began to flush.
"Can I ask you something?" J.D. said. After Yoshi nodded, he continued, "What would your mother say it she knew you went to church every week?"
Yoshi sucked in air through his teeth - tough question. "She would be happier if I also went to a Buddhist temple sometimes. But I go to church just for English practice and to meet people. None of my friends really believe in any religion, but my mother believes in the Buddha and tells me to go to temple. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the other religions, too." As an inheritor of a culture with a long history of repression and wars between Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim, J.D. had difficulty understanding Yoshi's thinking. There seemed to be a flaw in the logic somewhere but it would take at least a few more glasses of beer to pinpoint.
As he poured the last of the beer into the two glasses, the telephone rang. From Yoshi's excited voice, J.D. figured that Yoshi would be on the phone for a while, so he retrieved his travel journal from his bag and began writing about the day's events and impressions.
"What's that - your diary?" Yoshi asked when he returned.
"Something like that." He continued writing in the spiral notebook even though he noticed Yoshi trying to read it.
"What are you writing, a poem?"
On the opposite page were the lyrics of "The Sound of Silence" as transcribed by his students. J.D. reread the passage. "Here's the best one," he said. "Do you know the line, 'the vision that was planted in my brain'?"
J.D., reading ahead, was laughing so hard he could barely choke out the words. "Well, my students heard it as 'the pigeon that was plenty in the rain.'" Yoshi grabbed the notebook and read all the lyrics out loud, pausing to stop laughing enough to continue.
"Instead of 'J.D.', I'm going to call you 'Pigeon.' It's perfect for you."
J.D. grimaced. "Ugh. Don't call me that - it's an ugly bird."
"But it's a symbol of peace."
"Huh? That's a dove!"
"Same thing - hato."
J.D. pulled out his well worn, blue pocket sized Japanese-English dictionary and found hato. "Dove. Pigeon."
"How can they be the same? Doves are graceful white birds. Pigeons are fat, dirty, flying rats that eat the garbage that humans leave behind in parks."
"Both hato."
J.D. gave up. "Just promise me you won't call me 'Pigeon', okay?"
"Drink up and let's go to sleep." Yoshi lifted his glass, chinked it against J.D.'s and swallowed the last drops of foam. "Shall I turn off the light?"
It was still too early for J.D. to sleep. "Leave it on for a while."
Yoshi rolled onto his side, pulled the blanket up to his eyes and within a few minutes, his breathing turned soft and childlike. J.D. reached into his bag and retrieved the book that he had brought, Mishima Yukio's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but before he finished even the first chapter, his eyelids slipped down like the theater curtain at the end of a play and the book fell onto his chest.
J.D. awoke to Yoshi's voice laughing into the old, black telephone that he carried as he paced about the living room, dragging the cord behind. J.D. yawned, stretched his arms out behind his head, then threw the blanket off him, sending the orange covered book flying across the room. He stuffed it back into his bag, exchanging it for a fresh set of clothing.
Yoshi laughed again, said "hai, hai," then replaced the receiver on the cradle. "I'm glad you're up. Mom had to go to work this morning but she left breakfast for us."
On the kitchen table was a feast - grilled fish, sweet red beans, tofu, herring roe, crispy green nori, and croissants. Yoshi spooned out two cups of red miso soup with bite-sized squares of tofu bobbing about inside and ladled out two bowls of white rice from the steaming rice cooker, then prepared the light green tea. J.D. ate until he was full, then a bit more until he could eat no more, then ate just a couple bites more.
During the day, they wandered about the tourist sites of the city, starting at the fish market where hundreds of little shops sold all manner of fresh seafood, from strips of red tuna to giant whole octopusses. From there they walked to Dejima, once a small island in the bay where Dutch ships were allowed to anchor, the only spot of land in all of Japan open to foreigners, but with the water filled in and built over, it was now just another part of the city.
They climbed up Holland Hill and walked over to Glover Gardens. Although a few high, thin clouds marred the perfect blueness of the sky, the sun was strong and the day had gradually grown hot. They walked about the gardens eating sugary soft cream cones. At the gift shop, J.D. purchased a box of pastries and a pecon, a piece of stained bulbous glassware named for the twangy pecon-pecon sound it produced.
In the late afternoon, they rode a street car over to the cable car station and boarded the deserted vehicle. Huge motors began whirring, pulling the two inch thick cables, carrying them up the side of the mountain, soaring over the pine trees that covered its slopes. From the small park at the summit, they could see forever. Behind them was the city, and from high above, it seemed totally at the mercy of the surrounding mountains. The Urakami River meandered down into the bay from the north. In the distance, they could see a park in the river valley which marked the epicenter of the blast.
On the other side they could see Nagasaki Port, from where the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch had long ago traded their wares and Jesuit missionaries had converted the locals before Christianity was banned and the Catholic traders expelled. J.D. squinted into the orange globe of the setting sun, counting the huge barges coming in through the channel and the tiny fishing boats leaving for their nightly runs.
After the sun was extinguished by the sea, the winds grew strong and the temperature quickly dropped. Shivering in their spring clothing, they waited for darkness to envelope the city, watching the lights of the city come on one by one, shimmering in the dusk glow.
Back in the apartment, J.D. joined Yoshi and his mother at the kitchen table. J.D. thanked her for her hospitality and told her how much he was enjoying seeing Kyushu Island. She asked him about his life in Tokyo, family back home and how often he called or wrote to them. "They must worry about you in Tokyo as much as I worry about Yo-chan," she said, puckering up the wrinkles on the tight side of her face. "People in Tokyo, they understand money but I'm afraid they don't understand the importance of life."
While they talked, they munched on the manju pastries from Glover Gardens that J.D. had given her. At a lull in the conversation, Yoshi went for his bath. With the interpreter gone, a silence ensued that seemed all the more awkward when she tried asking him to watch over her son for her in Tokyo, but he couldn't understand her all. She also wanted to tell J.D. that she was glad that he came, but she had to wait until Yoshi returned.
Early the next morning, dragging J.D.'s bag along, they headed to Peace Park. They went into the museum, watching the video and exploring the display cases illustrating the destruction and death - melted sheet metal and ceramic tiles, photographs of corpses covering the streets, the zombie-like survivors, the progression of radiation sickness.
All of the museum attendants seemed disabled in some way - scared features and missing limbs. "The employees of this museum are all survivors of a nuclear bomb," a plaque near the door explained.
Outside, they sat down on a wooden bench. The mist still clung to the distant mountains, mixing with the trees to produce a light, citrousy color while a dark storm cloud approached from the other direction. J.D. looked at the flowers, in bloom in the late spring, vibrant in reds, pinks, and sky blue. A lone group of elementary school students, complete with yellow shorts and matching hats placed wreaths of multicolored origami cranes around a granite monument to those who died.
The sun was still shining in a corner of the sky when the downpour commenced with rain drops the size of five hundred yen coins. Yoshi opened his umbrella. The swarm of blue, purple, and white pigeons that had been strutting about, begging for food saying, "kakkuu-kakkuu," suddenly took off and flew towards the thirty foot high bronze statue of a man pointing up at the sky. J.D. followed the bronze man's arm and looked up into the rain, white in the sunlight, falling towards him, hitting his cheeks, stinging his eyes.
He tried to imagine the instant when a new sun, a sun a thousand times stronger filled the sky, then metamorphosized into a sulfurous cloud that dropped its black, burning rain on those still alive enough to attempt to flee the holocaust.
Yoshi's umbrella was only large enough for one, but he held it over J.D.'s head. "I want to feel the rain," J.D. said, but Yoshi didn't move it, couldn't move it. J.D. took the umbrella from Yoshi's grasp and held it over Yoshi's head.
For the first time in his life, J.D. understood what it meant to be American, not just a solitary person responsible for his own actions but an inheritor of two centuries of actions and decisions by leaders and common people alike, a legacy of both the brilliant and the short-sighted, benevolent and narrow-minded, honorable and shameful. He wanted to convey his feelings to Yoshi, but he couldn't honestly apologize; given the conditions at the time and without the benefit of hindsight, had he been President during that frightful period of history, he couldn't honestly say what decision he would have reached. "Thank you," J.D. finally said. "Thanks for being my best friend. For seeing me as a person and not a nationality."
Yoshi touched his arm. He didn't need to say anything.
A small newsstand selling papers, souvenirs, cigarettes, and umbrellas stood on one end of the park. Yoshi walked over to it and J.D. followed. Two old women in white and green uniforms manned the booth. "Hi, Mom," Yoshi said.
While his mother introduced Yoshi and J.D. to the other woman, who seemed unable to move one arm, J.D. noticed again the scars across the left side of Yoshi's mother's face. She made a fuss about J.D. not having an umbrella and made him accept one of the clear plastic disposable umbrellas that they sold for such emergencies.
"I'm taking J.D. to the bus station," Yoshi said.
As they started walking towards the road, Yoshi's mother called after J.D., "Kiotsukete. Mata irasshatte, ne."
"She says, 'Be careful. And come back again.'"
J.D. turned around and bowed once more to her before they stepped into the waiting taxi.
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