Los Alamos

August 2005

by June Tanoue

I just returned from six days at Upaya, the Sanskrit name of which translates as the craft of compassion or skillful means. This Zen community in the beautiful hills of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is run by Roshi Joan Halifax.  Her Zen community is matriarchal, strong, and kind.  Joshin and I went there for the Interfaith Bearing Witness Retreat to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

When I first heard about this retreat, I must say that I did not want to go.  Why go to a place like Los Alamos – the birthing ground of the atom bomb? Why not just stay where I was, comfortable in my own home and life in Chicago?

But something compelled me to go. 

Perhaps it was the fact that my mother’s family is from Hiroshima.  I am yonsei: fourth generation living in Hawaii. I have never been to Japan and don’t really know my family there.  Still, this may have been a small—albeit invisible—pull for me. 

Perhaps it was because my maternal grandfather was abruptly taken one day from his home on the Big Island by FBI agents to an internment camp on Sand Island, Oahu, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for no cause other than that he was Japanese and the head of a Japanese school. (My mother turned sixteen years old on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.) My aunts tell me that he had an hour or so to gather his things and say goodbye to his wife and to them, his nine children. It was a confusing time.

My grandfather had high blood pressure, and about nine months later he died of a stroke in that internment camp. I never met him. All through growing up I never heard much about my grandfather nor thought to ask.  I just knew that my gramma lived alone, ran a country store, and maintained a 5 acre coffee field by herself.  This was a deeper and stronger pull for me to go to this retreat.

Perhaps it was because my father enlisted in the WWII 442nd Regimental Combat Team as a medic, while at the same time, his sisters, brothers, and their families in Los Angeles were being rounded up and sent to internment camps in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.  I heard my father’s stories about going to visit them and being astounded by the barbed wire and armed guards up in the watch towers surrounding the camp.  He could not reconcile the fact that he was fighting for our country, yet his family was interned like an enemy.

Perhaps it was because of the very few stories I heard from my aunts and uncles who were reluctant to talk about that internment experience except through my prodding.  I heard a few deeply painful memories.  Not only were all of their material possessions taken away, but more importantly, their self-respect.  When the reparation money finally came with a formal apology from the United States Government, I tried to help my uncle write a statement so that he would be eligible for the $20,000 per person who had been interned in a camp.  He was steadfast in his feelings of anger and anguish, feeling that there was nothing ever, ever that the government could do to apologize for what had happened to him and to his family.  It took awhile to convince him, but in the end, we all persuaded him to take the money. 

And this gathering commemorated the 60th anniversary of the bomb.  Sixty years is a significant number in Japanese culture.  It is considered the age when humans become elders and are wiser. Are we wiser? In the busy-ness of life today, with emails that keep me glued in front of the computer all day, I have almost forgotten about my desire to stop the building of nuclear weaponry and end wars.  It was time to reassess my priorities.

So knowing nothing about the retreat schedule except for the visit to Los Alamos on August 6th, I signed up.

Upaya is located at a 7,000 foot elevation in the high desert.  The buildings are adobe-style and fit in gently with the surroundings.  It has been a rainy year in New Mexico, and the fruit trees on the land were loaded with apricots, apples, pears, and plums.  The herb garden offered many different types of sage: purple, variegated green and white, big green leaves. There were wildflowers and graceful grasses, sunflowers, and the sacred datura.  A bright double rainbow greeted us the afternoon of our arrival.  I saw at least 15 hummingbirds zipping in and out for sweet water from feeders alongside us, as we ate our meals in the dining area outside the kitchen.  It was a gift to be there amidst such abundance.

The retreat began at 5 pm on August 5th with a Buddhist service in Upaya’s spacious zendo. Roshi Joan Halifax and Sensei Hilda Ryumon Baldoquin were officiants. Over one hundred people had arrived.  We were joined by two Hibakushas/victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Mrs. Hashida from Nagasaki and Mr. Uyeda from Hiroshima.  At 5:10 pm (8:10 am Japan time), the zendo’s bell began ringing, marking the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima sixty years ago.  As atonement, everyone began to perform 108 prostrations/bows steadily to the sound of the temple bell.

I was a little concerned about doing 108 prostrations at an altitude of 7,000 feet.  However, that thought left quickly as I threw myself fully into the bowing. Huikala is what the Hawaiians call it—to forgive all faults, a ceremonial cleansing.  This marked the beginning of a powerful weekend of atonement.

Almost ten years ago, I went to my first bearing witness retreat at Auschwitz with Roshi Bernie Glassman.  On my first night there, in the midst of a horrific place of death and destruction, in great fear as I struggled to keep my dread at bay, I asked, “what am I here to learn?”  The word “forgiveness” popped into my mind.  Now here it was again.  Not just an intellectual exercise of forgiveness, but an active physical body exercise of atonement.

The focus of this atonement was what had happened sixty years ago to all of the men, women, and children killed or maimed by this experimental atom bomb dropped by Americans.  I am an American and share in this responsibility: this karma of killing. Though this thought was not conscious for me during the bowing, I feel that I was also atoning for all the violence and destruction of life that America is involved with around the globe and how I am a part of it.  It was atonement for how I do not take good care of the environment in which I live.  I was atoning for living my daily life with thoughtless violence: going too fast, too much judgment, anger, and disrespect to others and to myself.

The prostrations were simple and remarkable to experience. The first fifty were more difficult, as I struggled with thoughts of not being able to complete them.  Then I put myself fully into the bowing, and the second fifty-eight breezed by.  We sat still for ten minutes following the prostrations, and I was acutely aware of my panting and of my slightly sweating body.  A cool breeze gently entered the zendo and I felt the presence of my deceased grandfather, Joichi Tahara, and of many other spirits coming into the zendo through the open door behind the altar. Our collective atonement had opened up a space for them.  I felt a sense of deep peace.

On August 6th about 50 – 60 retreatants traveled to Los Alamos, the place where the atom bomb was created.  The sky was dark on the drive up, an ominous feeling pervaded.  We arrived a little before 8 am. 

Los Alamos is a quiet little town in an isolated part of New Mexico about 45 minutes from Santa Fe.  It is home to some 1,200 laboratories with an economy of $2.2 billion plus dollars from mostly government contracts flowing through.

The day before our visit there, I called friends of my Chicago hula student who live in Los Alamos.  They are a couple originally from Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, where I was born and raised.  He is a scientist, and she is a school teacher.  Unfortunately we did not get the chance to meet, since she was going to be in Albuquerque on August 6th.

“Do you like living here?” I asked her. 

“Oh yes,” she said.  “Will you be going on a tour of the laboratory?  Then you can see that we also do many humanitarian projects and not just building bombs.”

“Oh, I don’t know what is planned,” I said as we ended the conversation with a final “aloha.”

The site of the original laboratory where the bomb had been built is now graced by a beautiful round pond called Ashley Pond. Rally organizers had lined the circular pond with buckets filled with bright yellow sunflowers every five feet.  Ducks swam around lazily.  It was hard to imagine this idyllic sight as the place where the brightest scientists of the time had gathered to create something so destructive.

The rally began at 8 a.m. with members of Pax Christi New Mexico, a Catholic peace group, putting on sack cloths and carrying bags of ashes.  According to the book of Jonah, God spoke to Jonah twice, telling him that the city of Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days if the people did not repent violence.  When this news reached the king of Nineveh, he promptly laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.  He then proclaimed a fast of food and water by all humans and beasts in the city, and ordered that they cover themselves with sackcloth and call loudly to God that they would turn away from evil and violence.  The people did as the king bade.  God saw this and did not carry out the destruction.

Father John Dear of Pax Christi told us that Nineveh is in Iraq and has been totally destroyed in the current war.

Our retreatants joined the members of Pax Christi, put on burlap bags marked with words like “potatoes and products of the U.S.” We each took a small bag of ashes and walked silently for thirty minutes toward the Los Alamos bridge.  We stopped, put the ashes on the ground next to the sidewalk by the main road, and sat on them as had the king of Nineveh.  For another thirty minutes, a few hundred of us meditated and prayed for peace. 

We then returned to Ashley Pond, and the retreatants sat silently under a large tree facing the pond. In front of us lay fifteen kimonos with Jizo panels sewn on to them.  These were a gift to Upaya from survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Jizos.  I had just became acquainted with Jizos about six months ago upon hearing about the Jizos for Peace Project that Roshi Jan Chozen Bays from the Great Vow Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon began.  They describe jizos in this way:

A Bodhisattva is one who devotes his or her life to freeing others from suffering. Bodhisattvas are not worshipped, but are an inspiration to awaken to the qualities of an enlightened being that are inherent in everyone.

Jizo is the bodhisattva who plunges fearlessly into any place or situation to help those in need.

Jizo specializes in helping women, children, and those who travel, on both physical and spiritual paths. Jizo embodies the qualities of benevolence, determination, and unflagging optimism.

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chozen Roshi decided to make 270,000 jizos, one for each man, woman, and child who had been killed. She didn’t know how she would accomplish this, only that she needed to do it.  Her idea spread like wildfire throughout the country.  Our Zen Community of Oak Park joined hundreds of groups making banners of jizo panels.  Soon the Great Vow Monastery began receiving thousands of banners of jizo panels.

Her goal was more than met.  Chozen Roshi took these banners of peace to Hiroshima to hang on August 6th.  Visit their website to view some of these wonderful jizo panels: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jizo/show/. 

When I first saw these beautiful kimonos with jizo panels sewn onto them by Japanese Hibakushas/survivors as a gift for Americans, I felt a hushed excitement.  These gifts were like invisible hands embracing me.  Each kimono was exquisite: some antique silk, some brocade, and some cotton. Some were masculine kimonos, most were feminine. The white panels were full of smiling colorful jizos with messages of peace in English and Japanese characters.  Just like the panels we sent to them sewn onto large banners.

The survivors had also sent Upaya hundreds of individually wrapped little jizos: many smiling, tiny handmade clay jizos and more carved out of wood.  Others were little stones with painted faces; these had been mounted on wood. There were many “oohs” and “ahhs” as we unwrapped them and lay them around the feet of the large white Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, just outside the zendo.

There were many antiwar speeches at the rally, a few songs, and a couple of Aztec dances. We continued sitting silently together in the midst of this.  At one point many began a slow walking meditation around the pond. 

That afternoon, we made an hour stop at the Bradbury Museum of Science.  The museum intimidated me.  The entire place was dedicated to the technology and building of the atom bomb.  There was a replica of “Little Boy,” which had been dropped on Hiroshima.  I hurried by that, as an uncomfortable feeling grew with each minute there.  One small section of the museum displayed the human effects of the bomb with some photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This had been put together by the Los Alamos Study Group.  I had difficulty focusing on much in the museum and left feeling nauseous.  It was time to return to Upaya.

The next two days, August 7th and 8th, were devoted to a silent meditation practice to sit with what we had experienced at Los Alamos.  It felt good to practice and get grounded with a total of five to six hours of sitting each day just focusing on my breath.  I felt supported by the retreatants and comforted by the beauty of the land surrounding Upaya.

On Sunday night, August 7th, the two Hibakushas asked to speak with us before they left for Japan.  We gathered in the zendo.  They shared their gratitude and spoke again about their experience.  Mrs. Hashida shared her story.  She was fifteen years old and had been conscripted by the Japanese government to work in a torpedo building factory in Nagasaki.  She was .9 of a mile from the epicenter when the bomb was dropped.  She heard a very loud metallic sound and saw beautiful bright lights: red, yellow, and purple.  The next thing she knew, she was standing under a cliff outside of the factory, without knowing how she got there.  She saw a being—she didn’t know whether it was a man or woman—with a large swollen head, bulging eyes, and skin hanging like cloth from its bones.  She thought the skin was cloth at first, but when she looked closely she saw that it was skin.  It rose up, not seeing anything.

Mr. Uyeda circulated some photographs of Hiroshima taken by Joe O’Donnell.  He had many and chose to spare us from the more upsetting ones.  Most were shots of the destroyed city.  There was one in particular that moved me to tears.  It showed a young boy—maybe 7 or 8 years old—looking very brave and standing very straight; the only emotion showing was that he was slightly biting his lower lip.  He had strapped on his back his baby brother, who had died in the bombing. The baby looked like he was asleep with his head leaning slightly back so that you could see his little face. The young boy was bringing his baby brother to be cremated.  The photographer said that children were trained in the military very young in Japan.  He said that he had wanted to go over and give the boy a hug but was afraid that the child would crumple.

Mrs. Hashida said that she had survivor’s guilt for a long time.  The Hibakusha were shunned in Japan.  People were afraid that they would catch the radiation sickness.  When asked if she would come to America, she finally decided to do it in hopes that it would help to stop the dropping of more bombs.  One of the Zen priests, Irina from Holland, told her that it was good that she had survived so that she could be here with us.  Mrs. Hashida’s eyes welled up with tears at that statement. 

Our translator was Misako, one of the retreatants.  She is a young Japanese woman from Kokoro, Japan who now lives in the U.S.  Kokoro was originally the target for the second bombing.  On August 9, 1945, however, heavy clouds covered Kokoro, and the pilot could not clearly see the target.  At the very last minute, they decided to bomb Nagasaki because of a clearing in the weather over that city.

On Monday night, August 8th, during the last sitting period of the day, we held council to give voice to final thoughts and feelings.  After the council, six women stepped into the circle to share an interfaith service.  There was a young woman with beautiful red hair wearing a Jewish yamulke and tallis, prayer shawl.  Standing, she read in Hebrew with a soft sweet lilting voice from the Siddur, Jewish book of prayer, and sang softly a prayer for peace. 

Then two Dominican Sisters shared a story that depicted Jesus as a troublemaker.  We all laughed.  For instance, they told us, he called people who had set up places of enterprise in the temples vipers.  They shared that a few of their sisters were completing jail terms for doing civil disobedience.  The Sisters ended with a reading of the Beatitudes, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Next, a British woman who is half Indian and half English tied bells around her ankles, rose and greeted us with As Salaam Alaikum (Peace Be Upon You).  She shared a Muslim prayer and followed with a classical Indian Bharatanatyam dance weaving in and out amongst the retreatants. 

I then shared a Hawaiian chant Noho ana o Laka, asking Laka, the God/Goddess of the Hula, for strength and inspiration and then chanted and danced Kaulilua i ke anu Waialeale.  This is an ancient hula pahu/sacred Hawaiian drum dance that speaks of a woman deeply hurt, how she slowly heals herself and begins life anew.

Finally, a Zen priest from East Berlin did loving kindness visualization, extending peace and happiness to all the corners of the earth.

On Tuesday, August 9th, the retreatants left Upaya at 8 a.m. to drive to Tsankawi, an archaeological site overlooking Los Alamos.  Tsankawi was built by the ancient Pueblo Indians in the 1400’s A.D. During the 1500’s an extended drought forced the inhabitants to move on.  The San Ildefonso Pueblo, located just downstream from Los Alamos, say that their ancestors lived there and on the surrounding mesa.   Roshi Joan suggested that we imagine the desolation of Tsankawi to be like the desolation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war. 

On one part of the mesa, overlooking Los Alamos, Ryumon Baldoquin Sensei gave each of us a length of brown twine.  We tied four knots into it and faced a partner.  We looked deeply into each other’s eyes as we made four vows to work to end violence in our lives and in the world.  My partner was an elder gentleman named Carl. It was not so easy to look deeply into his eyes, especially since I did not know him.  But I overcame this hesitation and found Carl’s eyes to be kind.  The gaze was deep and heartfelt.

Roshi Joan told us that the San Ildefonso Pueblo has the highest rate of thyroid cancer in the country.  Their aquifer runs through Los Alamos before it gets to their pueblo.

We ended the visit to Tsankawi with Maia Duerr, the executive director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, presenting us with some options for action.  There is a large peace demonstration planned for Washington, D.C. during the fourth weekend in September.  Many people will be doing civil disobedience.  The Buddhist Peace Fellowship website, which will provide more information about this and other activities, is www.bpf.org.

Even after sixty years, deep anguish runs within my spirit concerning the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This puzzles me a bit since I was not yet alive when the bombs fell.  This makes me think that karmic actions, whether good or bad, reverberate within our bodies and spirits without boundaries of time or place.  And thus many of us have a lot of inner work to do to help release these karmic vibrations in our minds, bodies, and hearts.

May we all have the strength and courage to atone and work through our karma with patience and deep abiding love.  Deep bows of gratitude to all of the teachers and practitioners throughout the ages who have maintained this wondrous practice of zazen and helped me to be where I am today. 

I conclude this experience with a favorite Hawaiian proverb found in Mary Kawena Pukui’s book, Olelo No’eau:

E lei kau, e lei ho’oilo, I ke aloha.

Love is worn like a wreath through the summers and winters.

Love is everlasting.

June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue

8/17/05