Mother in law

My mother in law

Look at that photo again; that is a Life Magazine special; we should serve that up to the New Yorker - I mean really - we are on roll - I know it.

We can pull the files on Hiroshima - and get this narrative down.  I mean that's a real story - a story waiting to break.  

Start with the drafts my friend; start with laying out the story.

Here's you lead:

The phone rings on Sunday nights - very regularly - at 9 pm.  I know who it is - and many times I pick it up - partially as duty of a mature son in law - and the other by curiosity.  I can get her to laugh; she is quick to respond to some teasing.  

That teasing; as brief as it is; speaks across an ocean of unfathomable solicitude.  From John Hersey to Oppenheimer - the rise of a thousand horrific images - the incomprehensible; the Sunday night - the day of atonement - and then the giggle coming off an 82 year old Japanese woman still pushing through her native accents and linguistic inflections.  

Not your typical mother in law salutations I guess; and we move on.  

Yuriko - Maya - etc.  Born in the old city of _____ Japan.  Born into peasantry - born into chance and hardships in a feudal politicsphere - embarking on empire expansion.  Fate, destiny, pre destination, risk, and mind boggling karma.  

The Hersey book is on the shelf; I read it once and cannot bring myself in my older years to go back to it.  It would set me off.  Iris Chang, RIP - she went off.  

Looking into that chapter of history with the voice of my mother in law 11 digits away - I would be hard pressed to focus on the task at hand.  

In 1948 - the scene around - 

I remember reading that had forsaken bombing Kyoto; one of the Harvard educated military brass - steered the uneducated away from that; even though the passions were there - the will and the US having suffered so many casualties wanted to put an end to these foreign wars.  

It as spared; and so was she.  It was fate that a soldier about to become a sargeant major - wounded in battle - and flung into the theater as a young kid from Lynn was about to deal with this.