PART 3.
Beyond the Horizons
After we left Hawaii, I lived with my mother and my sister and brother in a small Pennsylvania town throughout World War II. My father was gone for most of the war. For many of those months, he served on the hospital ship Hope. Then he found himself on an island called Tinian. He didn’t know this—it was very secret—but on that island, they loaded the atomic bomb into the plane that would fly to Hiroshima.
After the war ended, my dad remained in Japan, on the staff of the hospital in Tokyo. Finally, when I was eleven, we joined him there. We went by ship from New York—down through the Panama Canal, then up the coast of California, stopping for other passengers in San Francisco, and finally across the Pacific Ocean.
It was a very long trip. When we arrived, my father met us and drove us to our new home in Tokyo. On the way, he whispered to me that he had a surprise waiting for me there.
It was a green bicycle.
Meiji
So much had been destroyed.
Some places were rubble.
But near my home, in Shibuya,
I would ride my bicycle to the
Great Torii of Meiji Shrine.
Inside the temple grounds,
ancient trees still stood.
People walked slowly
and were quiet.
Beyond the walls,
the sounds of the city continued.
The rubble remained.
But within that gate,
everything was hushed
and unbroken.
After That Morning
After the August morning
when the bright light
seared Hiroshima
into nothingness,
Koichi Seii, now eight,
had left his home
where the sky and air
still shimmered with death,
and gone north with his
mother and sister.
They would find their way
to the city of Tokyo,
to the area called Shibuya,
and begin a new life there.
They would start again.
The war had ended.
Bon Odori
In summer, during Obon Festival,
the drumming began, and chanting.
I watched everyone—
grandparents, children—
moving, circling,
in the Bon Odori dance.
From the shadows
where I watched,
my bike against a tree,
I moved my arms as they did:
up, and forward, and then:
Clap. Clap. Pause. And: Clap.
Gracefully they moved,
honoring their ancestors.
So did I.
Hibakusha
In summer I went to the Inland Sea
and saw a hill with a stunted tree.
The jima—islands—rose with grace,
but wind misshaped things in this place.
Not far from the island where I stood,
where the tree displayed its twisted wood,
a ruined city curved the shore,
its name synonymous with war:
Hiroshima
Like wind-warped pine, its people, too,
were twisted, broken, scarred, askew.
But like the trees, they lived. They thrived.
Their name means “those who have survived":
Hibakusha
Invisible
Back in Pennsylvania, where I had lived,
there was a comic book
called Invisible Scarlet O’Neil.
I loved Scarlet. She could magically
make herself invisible.
And now: I could too.
I rode my green bike
through the busy streets of Shibuya,
where children ran and laughed,
babies cried, dogs barked,
shopkeepers chattered and called, and
oxen lumbered through the streets
pulling carts of fertilizer.
And I watched and listened,
feeling invisible
on my green bike,
until the day that a woman
touched my hair and spoke.
The Word For “Hate”
I rode the green bike home that day,
humiliated. I told the maids—
Ritsuko, Teruko, Aiko—
that a woman had touched my hair
and said she hated me.
They were shocked.
What word?
I repeated the word that meant “hate.”
“Kirai,” I told them.
They whispered among themselves.
Then they asked:
Maybe “kirei”?
Well, maybe.
Isn’t it the same word?
They laughed. No. Not at all.
She said you were pretty.
Such a simple shift of sound!
My mistake was so profound:
When the woman touched my hair
(though I’d pretended not to care),
I’d felt suffused by shame
and guilt. Reproach. And blame.
Girl on a Bike
Beside a school I paused one day
and watched some children run and play.
We were curious. I know that’s true.
Their eyes were dark and mine were blue.
I braked my bike and watched them there.
I saw them eye my pale blond hair.
They looked at me, and I at them. So why
were we so silent: mute and shy?
I smiled before I rode away
but never met Koichi Seii