peace mission
T
he ceremony in Hiroshima mirrored the one in Nagasaki, a town on the far western edge of Japan. It was just as emotional as more hibakusha and their families were in attendance. Also in attendance was the grandson of Harry S. Truman, the president who ordered the bombings in 1945. Afterward, the group went to the memorial of the Martyrdom of the 26 Saints of Japan, honoring a group of Christians who were crucified in 1597. Green immediately fell to his knees and started to pray. “This is phenomenal,” Sharpe said as he gazed at a detailed wall mural of the Christians’ journey and captivity. It was just one of a number of religious and cultural activities the group took part in.
In Hiroshima, they went to a temple where they joined activists who kneel in a circle and for 20 minutes quietly pray for peace each week. They leaned into the rivers that circle the city to send peace lanterns in remembrance of the dead. They even went to huge malls and shopping areas to buy trinkets for family and friends. The students quickly learned the phrase “sumimasen,” which is Japanese for “excuse me.” But some of the most interesting cultural experiences came in the simplest of tasks, such as eating and sleeping. Traditional hotels in Japan, particularly one in Nagasaki that the group stayed in, feature rooms that have few chairs, use communal baths and are a far cry from traditionally large American rooms.
“That’s it?” asked sophomore Donald Hayes when he peered into a room at the Nagasaki Hotel. “Okay, that’s kind of small.” Meals also presented challenges. The entire group dove into plates of rice, peas, vegetables and fish that were included in every meal, including breakfast, where sophomore Devon Crawford winced when he saw a small fried fish, with teeth bared, on his plate. “The rest of this is fine,” he said as he looked toward the noodles. “But I can’t do anything with this fish looking up at me like that.” But the entire point of the trip was to open the Chapel Assistants—many of whom hope to become ministers—to the idea that they are part of creating a peaceful world. “It really does have an effect on people when they come to the cities where the bombs were dropped to see with their own eyes the record of this bombing,” said Nagasaki Mayor Tomishisa Taue during a private meeting he requested with the students. “For you men from Morehouse to come here and to actually think about this and be aware of how you feel and be willing to take that back to America with you, that is a really extremely valuable thing to us here in Japan. So we warmly welcome you into the circle of people who are doing this work.” The trip to Japan was an important tool in developing global citizens, said Carter. “This trip was to make good on an aspect of the Chapel’s mission—to encourage our students to be ambassadors of peace and world citizens,” he said. “We want to make them conscious of the seriousness of the need for nuclear abolition. We also want to help them to understand that there are many different ways of being in the world, many different ways of being religious and to discover the universal language of music, laughter and a smile and to begin to get out of the boxes that keep us from loving the whole. “The ultimate goal,” he said, “was to help our students to become moral cosmopolitans.” n Members of the Morehouse group who traveled to Japan, including Dean Lawrence Carter (center kneeling) pose with Japanese students. s p r i n g
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MOrEHOUsE MAgAZinE