Hey DeWester-

Thanks very much for your post. I attended an annual Hiroshima remembrance in Seattle tonight at Greenlake- a very popular North Seattle park close to my house. This event has been taking place here since 1985. It's very closely connected to Seattle's Japanese-American and Buddhist communities but attended by a really diverse group of my fellow Seattleites. I even saw a Sikh family there tonight. The ceremony consists of speakers and music and ends with a buddhist priest chanting a prayer and then the launching of hundreds of candle-lit floating lanterns on the lake after dark. It's a beautiful sight.

This year my wife and daughter and I were joined by my wife's father. Harlie is an 83 year old combat veteran of the Pacific theater. He was flying a bombing  mission over the Sea of Japan searching for Japanese ships when he heard through his headphones that a bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and that the city had been destroyed. He convinced his commanding officer to turn around, telling him "the war is over".

I was taken tonight by Harlie's openess to the ceremony. It included a lot of  Japanese perspective and a lot of anti-war talk. He could have easily shut down or become defensive. He was quiet through a lot of it but when we returned to the house and had a glass of wine he shared a lot of his combat experience with me. He clearly made a decision to but those times behind him and move on.

I'm glad he was here tonight. You're right; we don't pay much attention to this anniversary. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima. I was more than a little uncomfortable going there as an American, wondering how I'd be received, but quickly realized that Hiroshima has become a city dedicated to the concept of global peace and a non-nuclear future. Visited by people from all over the world Hiroshima has become a symbol, like the German concentration camp memorials, of a future that must never happen again. The people were welcoming and gracious. There is a bell in Hiroshima park that may be rung by anyone who wants to ring it. It is a bell that both remembers the citizens of the city on 8/6/45 and that calls for peace in our own troubled times. It is impossible, I think, to ring the bell without experiencing the weight of history and our own connection to the people of the city and the rest of the world. If any of you make it to Japan I hope you will make the trip to Hiroshima. It is an emotionally grueling journey but one that will quite perhaps change you.

Thanks again for the post.