Good morning, Vietnam!

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I have found my entry for Vietnam to be the hardest to write because of my utter inadequacy in describing this beautiful country and its people. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Vietnam. From the moment the ship began its journey down the river to our port the experience was a sensory overload—the smells of food from everywhere when we walked down the streets and traveled to the Binh Thanh markets, the beautiful colors on everything imaginable that was sold there (prepared lunches and raw produce, Polo T-shirts, North Face bookbags, lacquer work, embroidery, delicate fabrics, tablecloths, books, Buddhas, shoes, hair clips, jewelry), the diversity and beauty of the land. Cars were scarce; motorbikes were everywhere. In processing my experience (which is the one downfall of being a world jet setter—there is not enough time between ports to truly reflect on everything we’ve experienced) I realized my own assumptions about who and what I would find when I went to Vietnam. I imagined oppressive heat; and cold people, suspicious of Americans. Instead, I was greeted with some of the most loving and honest people I have ever met. People spoke very openly about their country—its poverty, its government—but also conveyed a pride comparable to that held by some of America’s most patriotic citizens. What differed from the pride held by the Vietnamese and the pride frequently held us the type of American pride worth emulating—was not a pride that ignored shortfalls or inadequacies, but a pride that made room for acknowledging what many would assume are its obvious shortcomings (its poverty; its decentralized, disorganized government; it’s weak infrastructure) AND also acknowledged Vietnam’s tremendous growth, it’s sense of community, respect for traditions, and love of family and country.

The heat in Vietnam was no greater than the heat we’ve endured in Charlottesville or Dover. For most of our stay in Vietnam there was a lot of rain, because it’s still technically the rainy season there. One really appealing part of our time in Vietnam was the fact that we had five days there—five days to truly experience and get to know the city. We learned to barter in the markets (you should typically always pay half of the price the merchant first offers) and to eat pho, a traditional Vietnamese noodle dish that is so tasty. We also ate some excellent shrimp that were wrapped around sugar cane and grilled. DEEEEEEELICIOUS. We sampled darien fruit, which are fruits the size of cantaloupes, but are covered in spikes. They smell like something rotting, but they are loved in Asia. We held our noses and tasted. They tasted liked onions to me, so I passed on picking up a huge bag of them, but others in our group really liked them. One of the things I also did while I was there was have two dresses made. I went online and picked two patterns that I liked and took them to a tailor. Each dress was $35 a piece and it was custom-made for me in only two days. It was my first real indulgence of the trip and I was in heaven when I put them on. Something else I didn’t expect was the fact that the American dollar was accepted in every market, restaurant, and store we went to when we were traveling. Everything was so cheap—so plenty of you will receive Vietnamese goodies from me upon my return to the U.S. One day we went to the spa at the Rex Hotel, whose bar the American generals used to go to during the war. I got a manicure, pedicure, and 60 minute massage for $23 (this was my second big indulgence of the trip).

One of the most touristy things we did in Saigon was to visit the War Remnants Museum. First known as the House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government (of South Vietnam) when it was opened in 1975, the museum was later known as the Museum of American War Crimes. Its most recent name is a reflection of the normalization of relations between Vietnam and the U.S., but the museum does not make an attempt to be politically balanced. What I most appreciated about the museum was the collection of photos taken by 134 war reporters (from 11 different countries) all of whom were killed during the Vietnam War. There were so many powerful photographs, many which were later prize-winning. As you might expect, many of the photos did not paint Americans in a favorable light. Some of the pictures showed American soldiers pointing weapons at villagers. There were also graphic photos of bodies being dragged behind US tanks and pictures of GIs carrying corpses and partial corpses. I know there are similar photos with American GIs as victims that were not on display. Numerous photos in the museum were dedicated to the victims of Agent Orange (over 72 million liters of this chemical was sprayed during the war in Vietnam) and even more photos just showed the dead, from both sides, as they fell. There was also a section of the museum dedicated to showing the physical and mental torture methods used during the war, which I opted not to tour. I viewed instead the Vietnamese children’s painting exhibition and left the museum soon after that. The two others I was traveling with didn’t say much either—overwhelmed by what war can ask one man to do his fellow man. During our travels back to the ship, we stopped at the Reunification Palace, preserved in much of 70s décor, which was the sight of the transfer of power from the South Vietnamese to the North in 1975.

One of the numerous highlights for me in Vietnam was when I led a Semester at Sea trip to the Da Thien School for Handicapped Children. Our group of 12 students got to meet the school’s pupils and school administrators. We blew bubbles, colored, and played ball with the students who ranged in age from 2 to 24. The school was a private day school, supported by villagers in the area and wealthy Vietnamese living in America. I was so touched by how our language barriers didn’t prevent communication between our group. The students especially enjoyed the immediate gratification of our digital cameras and were insistent on posing for numerous photos. They loved our stickers and many, while initially shy, soon were inspired by the activity.





The last day we spent in Vietnam was truly magical. A group of eight of us traveled to the Mekong Delta and the Cu Chi tunnels with a private guide. Until the 16th century, the Mekong Delta was an area of marshlands and forest. Today inhabitants of the Delta cultivate rice, fish, soybeans, corn, tobacco, peanuts, and melons. The Cai Be area is famous for its coconut palms and fruit orchards.

By far, the best part of the trip is a boat ride on the Mekong River to observe the river life. This river is the longest one in Asia and stretches between five countries: Laos, Cambodia, China, Burma, and Vietnam. On our way to the delta we observed people working in the rice fields. Once there, we boarded a boat and traveled down the river. We stopped in a village to sample exotic tropical fruits like lychees, darien, pineapples, and coconuts, while the villagers played their traditional music.

Next up was a boat ride to a coconut candy making village and then a three-person ride on a large rickshaw of sorts to the next village. There we met Tommy, the resident python snake who claims to be friendly, and got to sample the local honey the area is famous for. (We passed on purchasing bottles of alcohol with small pythons inside.)

Next, we climbed into a small wooden boats that were propelled down the river by two villagers—one standing at the front of the boat and one at the back. The one at the front of my boat allowed me to take this photo of him.

It was incredible feeling to be floating down the Mekong River—truly a spiritual experience. Once back on our big river boat, our guide gave us coconut milk to drink (straight from the coconut) and we headed to the dock before making the 2 ½ trip to the Cu Chi tunnels.

Located approximately two hours from Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi is famous for its 200 km network of underground tunnels. These tunnels were created by the Viet Cong forces during wars with both the French and Americans. From the mid-1940s onward, the tunnels were used as a base from which the Viet Cong could launch strategic attacks and then disappear into thin air. The tunnels have well-hidden entrances and thick roofs which were able to withstand the weight of tanks and the impact of bombs. Unknowingly, the Americans even built a base camp on top of an existing tunnel network and suffered severe casualties before they realized their error. Our guide explained, with the aid of replicas, how the Viet Cong created smokeless stoves and inconspicuous ventilation holes to escape detection from the American forces. There were three different levels of tunnels at Cu Chi. After restoration for tourists, most of the tunnels are still only two feet wide and five feet height. During the war, the first level was for fighting, the second, deeper level was for living, and the third, deepest level was for fleeing.



Given that it was the rainy season, we only had the option to go 100 meters at the first and second levels. Despite the fact that the tunnels were lit up with electric lights, they were extremely cramped. Many of the pictures we have from the tunnels are of each other’s butts, because we had to walk and crawl through the tunnels while completely hunched over. These were not for the claustrophobic. I was nervous about going through them, but I wanted a small sense of what it felt like to live and fight from those tunnels. It is unimaginable to me. There was also a chance to shoot some of the weapons used during the Vietnam War—M-16s, etc. I had absolutely no interest in this, but I am afraid that many of our students who visited Cu Chi came away with thinking that they crawled through some cool tunnels and got to shoot an M-16. For so many of our students the war seemed to have no presence in their consciousness at all. I am grateful to my high school teacher, Mr. Maroon, who taught a semester course on the subject and to Pete, a Vietnam War veteran and my sister’s godfather, who once allowed me to interview him about the war for the same high school class. I have not forgotten.
Back at the ship, we thanked our guide, Mr. Phuong, and rushed to make it for "on ship time" (two hours before the ship is supposed to depart from the port).

Hong Kong

Friends, Romans, Colleagues, Countrymen and women (as Ish would say) I have missed you so! This stretch of the trip has brought a little stretch of homesickness and I have missed my family, my wonderful friends (both the ones reading this blog and the others that rely on others to read the blog and tell them what’s happening), Take-it-Away, my UVa football, the ONSP crew and quote board, Oprah (new episodes—Tab, are you watching? Learney and That Jeff can’t be trusted), my dissertation…nope, not really, just making sure you were paying attention! I think I’m experiencing just a small taste of the frustration that can build when you live and work and eat and sleep and work-out (occasionally) all in the same place. It’s just so frustrating (that’s for you, V Hawes!)
A case of the blahs is probably not very well aided by the fact that I’ve developed a nasty head cold and had to cancel the trip I was leading through the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam (I’ve come a long way in my relationship with nature) because the medical clinic didn’t think exposure to a 200-kilometer network of underground tunnels formerly used by the Viet Cong would help my sinus infection. They did think it was appropriate to charge me $135 for a five day antibiotic, however. Eeek! Good thing I noticed the charge and opted instead for the Linda Andres approved remedy of nonasprin, Delsym (gross and disgustingly vile cough medicine), and Neosporin. The supplementary upper respiratory drugs I got talked into at a Hong Kong drug store were also deemed not in my best interest. Something about it not being good to take medicines when you can’t read the language on the box to identify the contents of the medicine…surely it was just the Cantonese equivalent of Anacin. I think the nurse in the ship clinic wanted to give me an IQ test for purchasing and taking a medicine I couldn’t identify, but if she thought it, she kept it to herself.

But I digress…Hong Kong was wonderful and lovely and fabulous and amazing; I would go back in a second. I would just try to plan for that second to occur when it was monsooning, which it did for much of the two days I was there. Despite the rain, I was eager to looking forward to the city giving all the talking up Justin did about the place he used to call home. If the truth is told, I was feeling a little wistful that I hadn’t taken the plunge and made arrangements to head with one of the many groups of Semester at Sea students and professors heading to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Doing so would have not only cost me a good deal of denaro, but I would have lost one day (out of two) in Qingdao and one day (again out of two) in Hong Kong. One of the professors on the voyage, an emeritus UVa faculty knew that I was second guessing myself, assured me that while it was likely I’d experience Beijing in my lifetime it was much less likely that I’d return to the port city of Qingdao and get to explore China in a complete different, which was wonderful in it’s own way even without all of the big tourist “must-sees.” The experience was certainly authentic; there wasn’t any of that hollowness that sometimes can accompany rushing from site to site.

The group I traveled with in Hong Kong initially included three resident directors and two professors for most excellent dim sum. Dim sum actually translates to the “heart’s delight” and is technically a variety of foods—little fried and steamed dumplings, veggies and meats prepared in little bite size pieces, frequently with a little and airy pastry-like dough. Plus, there was hot tea. Always there was tea. Delicious! After our fabulous meal, I headed to the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which was three floors of art that included Chinese calligraphy and landscape drawings, as well as the feature collection on loan from Great Britain—art from over 25 different countries. It was really quite impressive and fun to do on my own. I also hit craft fairs, Hong Kong’s Walk of Fame, complete with stars’ names and hand prints, the gelato café (I had red date and lotus seed gelato in honor of the Mooncake Festival), the city skyline laser light show, the night markets (where you barter with the vendors to get the best deals).

Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the Temple Street night markets it was raining so hard that we couldn’t enjoy the appeal of the open-air markets. Instead, we headed for a dinner of Peking duck (hoo knew?) and it was delicious, if a former vegetarian can be so bold in making those claims. Betsy, when you come to Hong Kong you will have to include duck in your food reviews! Despite the rain, we courageously went back to the ship, changed into our third outfit of dry clothes for the day and headed out again to a bar called Felix which had been billed by many as the best in the city. What I learned is that when you are talking about a city like Hong Kong—“the best in the city” means something! Located at the top of the Peninsula hotel this restaurant and bar had panoramic views of the urban skyline and the harbor on its two longest sides. The drinks and dessert were just out-of-this-world delicious. I highly recommend the summer passion fruit martini and the chocolate air-whipped mouse. Just bring your graduate student aid for the year; it was not cheap!
The next morning fellow faculty member and UVa all-star, Patty Wattenmaker, and I met our group of 58 students (some twenty less than the confirmed number of paid participants) at 8 AM to lead a Semester at Sea trip to Lantau Island. We attribute the small numbers to the fact that many students were exhausted from their 1 AM Beijing-return flights that morning. Lantau is the largest outlying island of Hong Kong and home of the Po Lin Monastery, the main center of Buddhism in Hong Kong. On our way to the monastery we stopped at the Tai O fishing village, which is built on stilts in the river and was the home of Hong Kong’s salt panning industry for over 100 years. The village was nestled in the mountains and quite beautiful to explore even in the rain—the small homes standing tall in the water and the numerous residents selling their wares—mostly live and dried seafood in the streets.


The biggest eel I have ever seen calls Tai O his home, although I’m sure he is no longer among the living, having graced someone’s dinner plate not long after we departed.


Back on the bus, we stopped once more…this time at Cheung Sha Beach, famous for its white sand beaches, which were perhaps not fully appreciated by everyone given the steady downpour There we visited the world’s largest outdoor Buddha—approximately 26 meters high.


We also enjoyed a multiple course meal at the monastery, which was the heartiest and best multiple-course vegetarian meal I’ve ever had. Even those who were uneasy when they found out the meal was going to be a vegetarian one, left sated. Our hour and half ride back to the dock, brought many views of the government owned livestock that just roam the country roads acting as mowers—huge steer just standing in the road with no concern for our haste to get home to the ship and get dry. It was truly a magical day and one that was easy on the wallet, given that our fees are waived in exchange for our trip leadership. The ship sails again; Saigon here we come!

Qingdao

Slate gray, rainy skies greeted us upon arrival in Qingdao, China, thanks to the typhoons that had recently vacated the area. The port we docked in was much more industrial than any of the ports we had been to previously. In getting through the port we dodged big, heavy-duty trucks carrying massive of steel and lumber; this was certainly not a Carnival Cruise Lines stop. Our group’s first order of business was to find money, which was a lot harder to do than in Japan. We headed out into the soggy streets, attempting to use ATMs at bank after bank, but we were unlucky in finding machines that would accept our foreign cards. Our group of ten or so finally made it to one bank which was already crowded with Semester at Sea students as this was a bank that allowed us to do a U.S. cash exchange. Unfortunately, most of us were not traveling with a passport, which was required to do the cash exchange, so my poor friend, Lara, got stuck exchanging stacks of money for at least five different people. The bank was very cautious in handing over their currency and several U.S. bills were rejected because they were deemed too wrinkly or too old or even too new. Money safely in hand, though, our group of seven headed to a Chinese hot pot restaurant for lunch. At the restaurant we ordered a bunch of different foods that we cooked in a pot of boiling water in front of us—think the fondue restaurant, The Melting Pot, but much faster and cheaper. The seven of us ate lunch for what amounted to a total of $5 in U.S. bills. The whole experience was enhanced by Jessica, one of the ship’s resident directors, who grew up speaking Chinese and, thus, ordered everything for us.

Next stop for us was the Tsingtao Brewery and Beer Museum, which was actually quite interesting even for someone like me, who doesn’t care for beer. The museum was really visually stimulating with video displays in each showroom detailing the history and timeline of beer production in Tsingtao, which all began with the German occupation of Tsingtao over a century ago. Through the windows, we could see the many people who were hard at work bottling beer and packing it for shipment. The trip to the brewery was also cheap, about $7, which was considerably less than the Semester at Sea sponsored trip to the same spot. The special bonus was that the beer was really, really good; who knew? Glasses emptied, (Tim, you’d be proud) we could think of no better way to cap off our afternoon of drinking than with a trip to St. Michael’s Catholic Church. Built by the German architect Pipieruch in a Gothic and Roman style, the church could have been located in any European town so white were the Baby Jesus and Virgin Mother! If Some Chinese characters inside the church, were the only indication of the church’s Asian heritage.

While the monsooning weather kept us on the ship that evening, we were unwilling to let the rainy winds keep us inside the next day. Our group diminished to five, we hailed a cab and made it to a Japanese mall, conveniently located right next to, you guessed it…Wal-mart. Now, this is not your Dover, Delaware, Wal-Mart! There was fresh seafood as far as the eye could see, both your eye and the eyes of all of the huge fish packed on ice there. Going to Wal-Mart was such a sensory overload experience, with tons of smells and brightly packaged everythings.

We had a good time combing the aisles to see what brands were recognizable simply by their labels (Coke, Lays potato chips, Sunmaid raisins to name a few) and then headed out for our true sensory experience of the day—lunch. Since Jess speaks Chinese, but doesn’t read it, she asked our waitress to order for us their most well-known dishes. Since one dish was a fish dish, the waitress returned to our table with a fish, alive and flapping in its net, to get our approval. Not long after we met our fish, we proceeded to eat it and another huge soupy, spicy dish of prawns and rice. At the advice of the ship’s doctor, we popped Pepto pills, put on the gloves, and went to work at the food and the beer! The food was so incredibly tasty, but extremely messy. Exhibit A is below:



Needing to be wheelbarrowed out of the restaurant, so bloated were we from our feast, we were greeted by warm sunshine, which was such a nice change from all the rain. After several more hours of walking and shopping, the group that was now three, headed to Qingdao’s famous pagoda, beautiful in its color and architecture. Also from the Pagoda we could see a huge, red mushroom structure on the mountainside, a post of sorts built by the Germans to signal to ships coming into the port.


Positioned discretely in the coastal skyline of the city, the pagoda would have been a relaxing, contemplative spot if it weren’t for the mob of Chinese people that followed us while on the pier. The Chinese locals could care less about Jess, who, with her Chinese speaking skills was hands down the most valuable person in our threesome. Almost everyone on the pier seemed fascinated by Akirah and me, the Black woman and the chemically-enhanced blonde woman, some taking firm holds of our arms and dragging us into pictures. At first it was kind of amusing, but as people grew increasingly firm in their hold on us and their insistence that we pose, the situation grew more uncomfortable. We’d pose for one photo, but tons of cell phone cameras would go off as people rushed to get pictures of us. All the while, we were sporting the “dirty, drowned rat” look, which, although popular in some parts of the world, is far from my best look and will, of course, prove to be quite scary later when the photos are passed around to friends. After the pagoda, we made is safely back to the ship for a quiet sail to Hong Kong—so many students meeting us there since they chose to fly to Beijing to visit the Great Wall. I swear I can feel the extra buoyancy as we near Hong Kong. I appreciate all the letters I have to read on my way!

Kyoto

After an emotionally exhausting day in Hiroshima and my walking marathons in Tokyo, it would have been all-too-easy to relax a little during our last day in Japan. Given the fact that a Japanese marching band had made the effort to greet us upon arrival in Kobe with songs like Under the Sea and 76 Trombones, I felt like the least I could do would be to make an effort to live it up during my last day in port.


I am the type of traveler that is willing to be adventurous—and only need a push from someone to take the plunge in traveling that hasn’t involved pre-planning or color-coding. Two students I knew from the Hiroshima trip had talked about going to Kyoto, independent of a Semester at Sea organized trip, and that sounded good to me. In another display of her wonderfulness, our Hiroshima tour guide, Rumi, provided us with directions to Kyoto, leaving us without an excuse not to go. We met at 6 AM Sunday morning and after an hour-long train ride, we arrived in Kyoto. The former capital city of Japan for more than a thousand years, Kyoto is also known as the cultural center of Japan. The city is filled with Buddhist temples too numerous to count (we later found out that someone did count; there are over 1600 temples). We hit the Nishi-Honganji Temple, the Higashi-Honganji temple, the Shosei-en Garden, the Nijo Castle, and the Kyoto Imperial Palace—it was a hot, humid, muggy day, but the scenery, the time with the students who I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to know, and the chance to participate in a religious ceremony in a foreign tongue is something I will not forget any time soon. Japan will be missed!

Hiroshima

One of the trips I have been most looking forward to prior to coming on this voyage was a day trip to Hiroshima. While I feel odd saying that I was looking forward to going to a memorial for the 140,000 Hiroshima lives lost (a best estimate for the number of deaths through the end of 1945 and not including the unknown numbers of related radiation deaths) I was eager to hear the Japanese presentation of the Hiroshima bombing and its preceding events. Would the presentation of the events be entirely anti-American? How could such a memorial not be entirely depressing? What good would I take away from the experience? Buoyed by my belief that if society doesn’t learn from the mistakes of her past she is doomed to repeat them, as well as my desire to simply bear witness to Hiroshima’s history—to say, I came, I saw, and now I can never forget or deny my own responsibility in preventing such a similar tragedy no matter how uncomfortable or upsetting. At the same time I understand that with knowledge comes responsibility to act and perhaps part of that action is simply writing this blog to share with you.
Yesterday two coach buses of Semester at Sea students made their ways to Hiroshima and the Peace Memorial Museum. Upon arrival we saw the remains of what was once called the Industrial Promotion Hall, built by a Czech architect in 1915. It was one of the few buildings that retained some structural definition after the atomic blast annihilated this city at 8:15AM on August 6, 1945. There was a movement to completely demolish the building after the war, given the painful memories the building invoked for so many, but a schoolgirl persuaded the town to preserve the building. Today the building is known simply as the A-bomb Dome and is on the National Historic Registry. Not far from the building is a clock tower that always chimes at 8:15 in the morning in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the bombing.

The Children’s Peace Monument was the next part of our tour of the park. The stone monument is essentially a statue of a young girl holding a giant origami crane—which is the Japanese symbol of health and longevity. The base of the monument is encircled with garlands of hundreds of thousands of paper origami cranes in all different colors. These cranes are made by children from all over the world and until recently they were in the open air. However, they are now encased in glass because a Japanese college student burned all of the crane strings several years ago. In Japan elders worry that the younger generations don’t respect their country’s history, just like the reminders offered to America’s youngest generations by "those who have gone before."



Not far from this monument is the Flame of Peace, burning adjacent to a stone coffin bearing the names of all of the bomb’s victims—both direct and indirect victims. The flame will burn until the last nuclear weapon on earth is eradicated.

After snapping pictures of the oleanders in the trees, the first flowers to bloom in Hiroshima after the blast, we made our way to the museum. The museum entrance was backlogged with people; the entire building was crowded with people from all over the world, although the majority of the crowd was Japanese. The first half of the museum was a sterile look at the physics devoted behind atomic and hydrogen bombs, a chronological look at the significant economic, social, and political (ESP terms for you Mr. Riley graduates out there) events in Japan’s history. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, beginning of the “War in the Pacific” were also included, although the bombing of Pearl Harbor wasn’t discussed in proportion to its impact on the US. There were miniature models of the town prior and after the dropping of the bomb and mini-movies throughout the exhibits with news reel and cultural information about Japan prior to the bomb. They aftermath of the bomb was prevented in a straightforward way—the closest the exhibits came to an anti-American sentiment was stating that the Potsdam Declaration, which the US tried to get Japan to sign prior to the bombings, neither hinted at the possibility of America’s use of the bomb nor allowed for the continuation of an empire line in Japan, the latter a system of Japanese rule that had been instituted for centuries.
While the beginning of the museum wasn't particularly emotionally sirring for me, walking through the latter half was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. By far the most heart wrenching part of the tour were the rooms dedicated to accoutrements of the dead—melted watches, young children’s clothing, a lunch box, a water canteen, a tricycle, a shoe, even skin and nail clippings. Each display told the story of overwhelming grief and sorrow: the boy whose body was identified by his lunchbox containing food he told his mother that morning he couldn’t wait to eat, his body incinerated, his lunch turned to coal; the charred tricycle of a three-year old, who was buried with his beloved tricycle, only to have his body exhumed 12 years later for transportation to the family burial ground and his tricycle donated to the museum; the book of a child who never came home and whose body was never found, whose mother refused to let her stay home from work that morning when she complained of sickness, whose mother blamed herself until her death for her daughter’s passing; the left shoe of a child whose bones were never found, but whose shoes identified her to her parents given that she had sewn the sandals straps from an old kimono. Then there were the pictures of those who survived, but who bear horrible physical and emotional scars as a result. The entirety of these exhibits was just too emotionally intense for me to maintain my composure. City Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba called Hiroshima “a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.” I handed my headset over, signed the visitors’ book, and quickly left the museum.

What I took away from my trip to the museum, which I did not initially anticipate was a hope for peace. The message of the entire museum is hope for world peace and the eradication of nuclear weapons; it is not a museum interested in casting blame. There’s a sense that the museum can’t afford to divert energy from its peace mission in throwing stones. Every time a nuclear weapon is tested, the mayor of Akiba travels to the United Nations to make an official protest. The mayors do this out of respect for the roughly 300,000 hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), 95,000, of whom still live in Hiroshima today; they do this so this history will not repeat itself.
Back on the ship, I talked with a faculty member’s husband who fought in the infantry in WWII. He was and didn’t want to have to go back to the infantry; he did not want to be sent to Japan. He recalled being relieved when the bomb was dropped knowing that his nineteen-year-old-self would no longer be in danger of heading to the front lives. Whose lives were more important? The lives of our service-men not sent to Asia because of the bomb? The lives of the Japanese civilians who perished because the US troops were not sent? What happens to peoples, civilizations, and nations when we make such a distinction—when we elevate certain lives above those of others? What does that say about our legacy for our children and our children’s children?

Thinking about this reminds me of one of my mother’s favorite movies, Scent of a Woman, starring Al Pacino and Chris O’Donnell. In the movie a blind war veteran, played by Pacino, recounts a story to O’Donnell where a friend said to him, “When I was your age, I...” Pacino responded with anger, “You were never my age.” The quote reminds me that in seeing Hiroshima and trying to make my own sense of it, I must acknowledge that the context surrounding the decision to drop the bomb is one I never experienced.