filkertom | Hiroshima

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filkertom

Sixty-one years ago today.

May all our world know war no more.

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From:

ravelwoods.livejournal.com

One Thousand Candles, One Thousand Cranes, by Small Potatoes

My grandmother had three sons;
She dreamed about her children's children.
Then came 1941,
Only one son would see the war end.

Joseph died marching in Bataan,
Frank on the sands of Iwo Jima.
The day the bomb destroyed Japan,
She thanked God and Harry Truman.

She blamed the godless Japanese,
For having crushed her sweetest dreams.
One thousand candles for my sons,
Every day I will remember.

In Illinois, far from her past,
Miss Nakamura still remembers.
She was six when she saw the flash
That turned the world to smoke and ashes.

Mother taught her daughter well,
Run from the fire to the river.
There she found a living hell,
But not a mother or a father.

Though she survived with just a scrape,
Her family vanished into space.
One thousand suns, a thousand cranes,
Every day I will remember.

My grandmother had three sons,
She never dreamed she'd have a daughter.
But at the age of eighty-one,
She met a nurse named Nakamura.

It was a question only meant
To make some talk and pass the hours,
About a picture by the bed,
A photograph of two young soldiers.

Hatred and anger stored for years
Slowly melted into tears;
One thousand candles, a thousand cranes,
Every day I will remember.

I've a picture in my mind
Of two women slowly walking--
August 6th, 1985--
Walking to church to light a candle.

And they once asked me to explain
Why grown men play such foolish games.
One thousand candles, a thousand cranes...
Every day I will remember.