ramblin rose Sunday,March 2

AT SEA, OFF THE COAST OF JAPAN - The skies opened up, and cried with me. I knew I was going to do it. I had shed tears, just reading about it, planning for it.
When I actually got to the site of the Peace Park, that marks the site of greatest devastation when the Fat Boy atomic bomb smashed into the city of Nagasaki all those years ago, I felt the sorrow of all wars bear down on me.
I am not trying to sound dramatic. It is just that I feel very greatly, always have felt, the horrors of war, of man's inhumanity to man. And particularly so now that another war is looming.
I have always been ambivalent about the US decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Japan in the late summer of 1945. Like everyone else, I rejoiced that it meant that terrible war was coming to an end. But I hated it, I hated it, that the bombs indiscriminantly rained death and suffering on thousands of innocent children, women, old men long since past the warrior prime.
Sure, I know that in the end it was a tradeoff of lives -- the hundreds of thousands killed in the two cities and the million or more on both sides who would have died insufferable deaths in the coming invasion. Still----

The Peace Park is not a broad plain of greenery as might be imagined, but an oasis crowded in between housing and buildings of all descriptions in modern-day Nagasaki, which arose like a Phoenix on the incinerated ruins of the old.
I was disappointed not to be able to walk the grounds, and revisit that awful week in my mind. But rain was peppering the spot, and it was chilly, especially so after all the hot weather we had been experiencing just days before in the Southern Hemisphere and the Tropics. I was lucky to have a few minutes to stand before the mammoth bronzed figure (now painted an astonishing pale blue.) It looks like a Buddha, a fat Oriental, with one arm stretched toward Heaven as if decrying the horrors of war, and one arm outstretched over the area, pointing to the devastation. On either side are two pointed arches, under which were strings of colored swans, folded in Origami style by Japanese school children. These streamers were the only color in the rain-drenched park except for the bright umbrellas of my fellow tourists.
We went below to the museum, which depicts the events of that day and the aftermath. And here I really sobbed. As Martha pointed out to me, it was heavily loaded with pictures of deformed children, bewildered children, mangled corpses of children, especially to play on my emotions. So? It succeeded.
There were about 50 of us going from exhibit to exhibit in the museum, most of us American, British or Australian, all of whom had our own memories or stories of suffering in that war -- on the other side. It was quiet, so quiet, as we wrapped up in our thoughts and our emotions.
I could only wish that all the world's leaders who are so hell-bent toward fighting again could be in that memorial with us, to be reminded again that war is not an answer, that war is a failure of diplomacy, that it is the final obscenity when men and nations cannot come to reasonable terms.

Nagasaki, today, is not all dedicated to the memories of what happened almost six decades ago. Far from it. It is a modern city of more than half a million, built in, on and around the low hills that descend to the sea. It is a clean city, a bustling one.
It is not solely Japanese. The Chinese have a large presence here. In fact, we visited one Chinese temple, a memorial to Confucius, that wise man of many centuries ago. It was all decked out in brilliant reds and golds, with those curving arches on the roofline so typical of Chinese architecture. The walls were lined with Chinese characters that spelled out the 73 aphorisms attributed to Confucius. There were white stone figures of Chinese wise men in various stages of contemplation.
And of course there was incense gently burning to perfume the air.

On our tour we also ascended a hill, on top of which is a beautiful Polish Catholic church, established many years ago and recently visited by Pope John Paul II. At the foot of the hill, squeezed in between little shops selling souvenirs, was the three-story house in which Father Maxmillian Kolbe first lived when he came to Japan in the Thirties to establish a school and monastery. Father Kolbe, some of you may remember, was the priest who died in a German prison camp when he traded places with another Pole selected for punishment in retaliation for some general offense or other. He was later canonized a saint in a ceremony at the Vatican that I was privileged to attend.
Also at the top of the hill was the home and gardens of a Scottish gentleman of the 19th Century who had brought trade and prosperity to Nagasaki. And there also was the house popularly believed to the site of the fictional Japanese heroine Madame Butterfly, star of Puccini's opera of the same name.
Unfortunately, my poor old knees would not let me climb that far, and I browsed the little shops while others went up. I bought some porcelain teacups without handles made in Nagasaki and some kaleidoscopes for the children, made in Taiwan.
We had lunch in a contemporary hotel that sits atop one of the highest hills in Nagasaki. It was American food, tuna as a first course and chicken as the second, but with a Japanese flavor in the breadcrumb topping and sauces that covered them. We had a choice of Japanese wine, Japanese beer or Japanese bottled orange juice to drink. I tried the white wine, and it was lightly fruity and refreshing, but a little bland.
The view from the hotel porch was breathtaking, looking out over a narrow valley packed with buildings of all sizes and descriptions, and a small inlet of the sea in which sat our ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2. (The locals are always delighted when this ship sails into port. They greet it with bands playing, flags flying and ceremonial visitors. In one day its passengers greatly elevate the economy of the area.)
As we loaded into the coaches to reboard, the sun finally came out. I wanted to go back to the Peace Park and walk it, but alas, we sailed in half an hour. I had to content myself with watching the shoreline as we slipped past and out again to sea.
Next stop: Kobe.

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