GREENVILLE, Calif. — I arrived in Hiroshima looking for a party on Aug. 6. I was 23 and starved for American jokes, American English, American company. For the past year I had been living with a Japanese family and teaching English in Wakayama, where the only other American women I knew of were an older teacher and a pair of middle-aged nuns.
Hiroshima seemed to be the elixir for my loneliness, a relief from the awkward mannerisms I had assumed in an effort to fit in with my Japanese hosts. I knew the city would be crawling with foreigners coming to observe the anniversary of the event that had made Hiroshima an international household word.
I, too, wanted to pay my respects to the city we had blown to smithereens. I was too young to remember the bomb but had grown up with Quaker pacifists who could not forget it. Most of my parents' friends were conscientious objectors who chose prison and government work camps over fighting "the good war."