I landed at Nagasaki in September 1945 with the 6th Regiment of Marines. Most of us shared, from experience, that "the only good Jap was a dead Jap".
We went ashore in full combat readiness to find ourselves standing in a dark silent scene of desolate destruction, for which there is no human description. But the smell of burned human flesh was still in the air, and everywhere about. As a part of Regimental Communications, I moved freely about in that first month and saw and heard all of what had happened and was still happening. Those memories are with me still. The terrible scenes of continuing anguish that I witnessed became a part of what I was and still am.
On "one particular day" at "one particular moment in time", I found myself standing directly in the center of this unspeakable, indeed unthinkable, devastation that had to have been caused by someone or something. At "that one time" I was filled with complete rage, a wrenching, seething, frustrating, insatiable need for revenge. But against what or whom? It had no point of location, no focus of causation - in effect, no one to blame, no one to hold responsible. It became a passion of intense revulsion for myself, for this world and for any and all members of the human species - a contained certainty from deep within me that all of us, everyone on this earth, all were totally guilty together. And then at "that one moment in time", the light of an inner peace enveloped me. It became "a space in time" where a new resolution appeared, and with it, the message, "Look at this as a new beginning."
Thus began a new continuum of time in which we have all begun to share. It emerged from the ashes of an atomic fire that marked an ending to an era now long since past. I have many happy memories of my 8 months of occupancy in Japan. It certainly includes my recognition and respect for the fighting spirit of an indomitable adversary with whom we had at last found an absolute necessity to truly live together in peace. But even more, a discovery of how much we have in common as simply, inhabitants of this earth – the communication of friendship of people with people, sharing together the resolution of common problems, through the recognition of common goals. This, most certainly, was the beginning of what has grown through the years to become the profound friendship and trust that our nations now share with each other.
And finally, as hackneyed as it appears in the voicing. I began to find with my Japanese friends, as former enemies, a self-evident truth, not in doctrinal, religious or political systems, but in an inner self-evidence that indeed all men
are created equal. A true inner self-awareness that each of us is totally endowed with an unalienable right to share the will of an eternally creative Universal Mind -- a sharing expressed in acts of forgiveness and love. We are the amazing uniqueness of our total similitude. We are singularly, and in our self-inclusions, the lives, the liberties and the pursuits of happiness that are the aspirations of all the peoples of this world.
From Nagasaki we moved to Sasebo and then on to Fukuoka. And sure enough, right there in that most beautiful city, at cherry blossom time, I fell in love.
Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.
I returned home in June of '46 where I began, as did many young/old veterans, my adult life.

10/4/2012