Wise Woman Travel

All together now: Finding community in Inuvik, Northwest Territories

Pamela Young

July 28, 2026

It’s a Saturday evening in early July, and I’m walking along Gwich’in Road in the town of Inuvik, Northwest Territories, towards Cynthia’s Bed and Breakfast, where I’m staying to attend the 2026 Great Northern Arts Festival. The dusty road, lined with stalks of bright pink fireweed and vetch tangled together, is empty of vehicles. It’s after 10 p.m., and broad daylight, the effect of Inuvik’s proximity to the Arctic Circle, and silent except for the scrunch of my runners.

As I let myself into Cynthia’s place – people don’t lock their doors here – I notice the white board in the vestibule where guests can learn each other’s names:

A delicious sense of “mine, all mine” settles over me as I realize I’m the only guest this evening. Cynthia and her husband Kurt, the Inuvialuit owners of the house, don’t seem to be around either so the quiet follows me into my bedroom for the night.

Before I left Edmonton to attend the festival, friends and family looked and sounded a bit quizzical when I said I was going on yet another solo journey to Canada’s North. This is my fourth trip “up here,” which has included two visits to Yukon, including Whitehorse and Dawson City; Tsiigehtchic, NWT, a small Gwich’in community, where I interviewed artist Margaret Nazon for a Walrus article about her cosmic beading; and now Inuvik. One of my journeys took me to the Yukon Quest Dog Race in February, when most people were travelling to tropical destinations. I’d never thought much about why I was attracted to the North: it always just seemed like a cool (pardon the pun) and unusual place for an adventure. But on this trip to Inuvik, it hit me. In a word – community.

Ever since the pandemic, I’ve noticed more and more incidents of “Me first” where I live and throughout North America. Yes, ours is an individualistic society, but the incidents I’m talking about are characterized by its most extreme manifestation – selfishness and self-entitlement. When I talk to my friend in Japan, who is used to living in a collectivist culture, she’s bewildered by the actions of people who care little, if at all, about the health, safety, rights, and well-being of those around them. I’m always at a loss to explain to her the self-centred behavior of some people in North America.

In Canada’s North, especially its smaller communities, people have a long tradition of working together, dating back to times when their survival and health depended on it. Try saying “Me first” in a hunting/fishing/trapping community in the middle of an Arctic winter and see how long you last. As the result of colonization and globalization, some community spirit has disappeared, but on my travels to the North, I’ve found that many residents still look out for each other and find joy in mutual help and support, which often extends to me as a visitor.

So, if you’d enjoy a place where the warmth of community still flourishes, try visiting Inuvik during the Great Northern Arts Festival, and dip your travel toes into the following experiences.

Cynthia’s Bed and Breakfast

I’ve always loved staying at a hosted bed and breakfast when I travel on my own. Compared to the sterility and isolation of a hotel, B and B hosts are hospitable and happy to provide advice and recommendations about their community. Cynthia also cooked full breakfasts that had me saying, “Oh, I really shouldn’t eat all that” (eggs, sausages, pancakes, toast, potatoes and, on my final morning there, Eggs Benedict) before I wolfed down everything on the plate. I met all kinds of other travellers: two German environmental researchers; seven people who had just rafted down the Firth River; a retired Air Canada pilot and his flight attendant wife, who were revisiting Tuktoyaktuk with photos to reconnect with the people who had posed for them more than thirty years ago.

The Great Northern Arts Festival

The little festival that could has been running in Inuvik most years since 1989. Visual artists, singers, dancers, song writers and spoken word performers gather from across the North, southern Canada and this year, New Zealand, to show off their talents. I participated in three artist-led workshops, volunteered a few shifts to help out, attended concerts, performances, spoken word events and a fashion show. BTW, if you have deep pockets, the Festival would probably appreciate a donation. These types of events are expensive to organize and run, and grants for the arts are increasingly scarce and competitive, putting the Festival at risk of disappearing.

Inuvik Community Greenhouse

When I visit a new-to-me community, I often think about what activities I’d participate in if I lived there. The Inuvik Community Greenhouse has been in operation for 20+ years, growing produce and flowers to sell to the community, and offering residents the opportunity to tend their own garden plots. It also provides a venue for community activities and teaches people about gardening.

Let’s Eat!

Sharing food provides a delicious opportunity to build community. I’ve already told you about the breakfasts at Cynthia’s, which were accompanied by conversation with my fellow residents, but I was well fed at the Festival as well because artists and volunteers were provided with all their meals for free. Inuvik doesn’t have many restaurants and their food is relatively expensive, so I estimate the Festival-provided food saved me several hundred dollars. We enjoyed traditional foods like lake trout, bannock and Eskimo doughnuts (don’t clutch your politically correct pearls here at the mention of “Eskimo”: the locals use this term to describe their very popular, deep-fried bannock with multiple holes.) The catering company also brought in turkey dinners, spaghetti and meat sauce, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and homemade fruit pies, which had us all lining up for extra helpings. One of the professional soapstone carvers brought in muktuk (whale blubber) for festival goers to sample when his brother harpooned a 12′ 9″ Beluga whale. On a bus trip to Tuktoyaktuk, my fellow travellers and I, all associated with the Festival, visited a Gwich’in woman in her home for lunch, which featured reindeer soup, dried fish, and bannock with homemade cranberry jam. The Festival also hosted two community feasts, where everyone in Inuvik was invited to a hamburger and hot dog BBQ, and a turkey and ham dinner.

Everyone is welcome here

Before I landed in Inuvik, I knew relatively little about this town of 3000 in Canada’s Western Arctic. Yes, I realized that Canada’s Inuvialuit and Gwich’in First Nation people called it home, but I wasn’t aware that the Metis are also well-represented. When I shopped at the weekend Arctic Market at the town’s recreation centre, I discovered a diverse immigrant community doing brisk business serving food from their homelands. I talked to two women from North Sudan, and a family who’d immigrated from Nigeria, whose daughter I recognized from the opening ceremony when the Inuvialuit Drummers and Dancers invited audience members to dance with them. Inuvik is home to the Midnight Sun mosque, which bills itself as “non-denominational” and “warmly invites individuals, organizations, and allies committed to community wellbeing to collaborate with us in shaping a brighter future.”

It wasn’t just the mix of cultures that impressed me. Elders are well-respected, and their wisdom guides the younger generation. The woman who oversees a local youth jigging group not only taught high school students to dance, but also whipped up a pair of moccasins overnight for a young man who didn’t have any and wanted to jig the next day at the Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse. The Inuvialuit Drummers and Dancers includes all ages: the 6-year-old daughter of one of the male dancers was celebrating her birthday the night I saw them perform, and had chosen dancing with the group over a birthday party. Even Canadian North Airlines shows its respect, inviting “elders and families travelling with small children” to board first.

Good one!

During the opening ceremony of the Festival, the NWT’s commissioner welcomed us all to Inuvik, encouraging us to see the mosquitoes as a “gift.” Did I detect an inner eye roll from some members of the audience who were already scratching their bites? “So, for those of you with campers,” he continued,” please open the doors wide and take a bunch home with you!”

Enjoying a laugh with others connects – and sometimes corrects – people no matter their age or ethnicity. A young male volunteer at the Festival asked an older Inuvialuit artist if he could sit next to her at lunch, but didn’t wait for her response. As he sat down, she nailed him with a look and said, “Five bucks.” A young woman at the table in Tuktoyaktuk where a Gwich’in woman served us lunch in her home, refused seconds of the main meal, saying she was saving room for dessert. “What is a traditional dessert for your people?” she asked. The woman said, “Well, I’m not much of a baker. Today’s dessert is a yellow cake mix with a can of fruit cocktail stirred in.”

Some jokes need to be seen to be appreciated. There is no such institution as Tuktoyaktuk University, but say it’s shortened version a few times, and you’ll get the joke.

Himeyuri and the Battle of Okinawa

Pamela Young

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April 11, 2024

The black and white photo at the entrance of the the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Naha, Okinawa, shows the graduating class of 1944.

The 50 or so young women, aged 15-19, are grouped around their principal, smiling brightly into the camera and their own futures. They are the most promising female students in the Okinawa Prefecture, chosen to attend the schools collectively known as Himeyuri, a teacher preparation college and a girls’ high school.

As WW II raged on, the girls had become aware of the militarization of their education. English studies were suspended. They were taught to hate and fear Europeans and Americans, and to swear absolute loyalty to Japan’s emperor, to believe that death was a more honorable choice than to surrender. Their uniforms became simpler, made from cheaper fabric, as resources in Japan were depleted by the war effort.

In March 1945, the US began shelling Okinawa, determined to capture the island as a base from which to attack mainland Japan. The Japanese, equally intent on delaying the invasion of Okinawa to buy Japan more time to prepare for an American assault, dug into a series of underground tunnels, which would eventually house 4000 men.

A reconstructed tunnel at the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters

Artist’s depiction of troops crammed into tunnels at the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters

Hopelessly outmanned and outgunned, the Japanese army resorted to nighttime attacks on American positions, armed only with spears. They conscripted elderly men and young boys in an attempt to swell their ranks.

Photo of the elderly and boys forced to serve in Battle of Okinawa, on display at the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters

As Japanese casualties mounted, Japan also recruited the girls and women of Himeyuri, telling them they were needed as nurses in a field hospital. The students and teachers packed up their books and journals, believing they were being deployed to an official Red Cross hospital, and would still have time to read and write during breaks in their shifts.

Instead, they were led to a cave where injured Japanese soldiers were being brought for whatever help could be given under the most primitive of conditions. The women were assigned the filthiest, most dangerous tasks, which included leaving the cave to find food and water during the American assault. They had no breaks, and learned to sleep, quite literally, standing up.

As it became obvious that the Japanese were going to lose the Battle of Okinawa, the women were ” decommissioned,” told their services were no longer needed, and left to fend for themselves. They were barred from finding refuge in other caves being occupied by the Japanese military. Many were killed or took their own lives.

Back in the underground tunnels, Admiral Minoru Ota, the Japanese commander, realized not only that the battle was lost but that the sacrifices his troops had demanded of the Okinawans were unforgiveable. In a telegram to his own commanding officer, dated June 6, 1945, he acknowledged that ” ever since our Army and Navy occupied Okinawa, the inhabitants of the Prefecture have been forced into military service and hard labor while sacrificing everything they own as well as the lives of their loved ones. They have served with loyalty…but they will go unrecognized, unrewarded. Seeing this, I feel deeply depressed and am at a loss of words for them….And for this reason, I ask you to give the Okinawan people special consideration, this day forward.” A week later, he and his staff took their own lives.

More than a third of the population of Okinawa was killed during this battle, which took the lives of more than 200,000 people on both sides.

The women of Himeyuri who somehow managed to stay alive remained silent about their experiences for years, many wracked by survivor guilt. Eventually, however, they realized that the best way to honor their classmates and teachers was to tell their stories, and the Himeyuri Peace Museum was established in 1989. Today, visitors can tour exhibits, listen to interviews, and pay their respects with bouquets. Just before the exit, a piece of music called ” The Farewell Song,” composed for but never played for the Himeyuri graduating class of 1945 ushers visitors back outside.

The day we visited, most families had young people with them, who, I hope, will ensure that the futility of battles like the one that ravaged Okinawa can be avoided in the future.

The Peace Monument, backgrounding a replica hospital cave

Children lay flowers in honor of the Himeyuri women

Postscript: Today, April 11, 2024, an article from the National Public Radio entitled “Okinawa feels impact of U.S. and Japan military shifts” popped up in my news feed. Apparently, “Okinawa… is the focus of U.S. and Japanese efforts to beef up defenses in Japan’s southwest islands” to ward off potential attacks from China.

It apoears that the special consideration Admiral Ota requested for Okinawans almost 80 years ago is being ignored. The line “When will they ever learn? has never seemed more appropriate.

Desperately seeking sakura

Pamela Young

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April 10, 2024

Seeing cherry blossoms – or sakura as they’re called in Japanese – is one of the main reasons tourists visit Japan in late March.

And, of course, it’s not just tourists who anxiously await the iconic clouds of white and pink to drift into view. All over Japan, cherry blossom watches and forecasts, some of them updated daily, come in from one end of the country to the other. Japanese experts regularly examine “sample” trees in 58 locations around the country, and when 80% of the blooms on these trees have opened, the cherry blossom season in that locale is declared “in full bloom.” People then have a week to ten days to enjoy wandering among the trees, marveling at their delicate beauty and taking #cherryblossom selfies.

Unfortunately, this year, Mother Nature kept everyone waiting, ripping up the cherry blossom schedules and forecasts and scattering them like so many petals in the spring breeze.

An uncharacteristically warm winter in most of Japan, followed by chilly weather in the last week of March and early April, meant the blossoms stayed cozily inside their buds. We saw about six trees with a blooming branch or two open in all of Tokyo. Hiroshima? No luck there either. Wakayama? Same. I joined other tourists and local enthusiasts as we strategically positioned our camera phones to zoom in on whatever blossoms we could find.

One branch blooming, March 24, Imperial Garden, Tokyo

One tree blooming, March 29, Wakayama Castle

One tree bloomong, March 30, Kiimidera Temple

By the time we left for Okinawa, which is so far south that their cherry trees finished blooming in February, I’d decided that we’d be among those tourists for whom cherry blossom season remained elusive. Sure, I was due back in Wakayama on April 8 for a visit with my friend Kazue but by then, it looked as though the cherry blossoms would be off the trees there. I tried to follow the philosophical advice of the 13th century Japanese author Yoshida Kenko, which I saw reprinted on an English language website: “Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?”

And, then, today, Ono.

Kazue had told me before I left Canada that she’d be taking me to see her mom in a small rural town called Ono, which is famous for a 5 kilometer corridor of cherry trees. On our way there, her mom texted her that the traffic was likely to be heavy because the trees were in full bloom. At last!

After lunch at her mom’s, Kazue and I walked across the bridge behind her family home in the bright sunshine, and there they were – as far as my gaze could reach, one blooming cherry tree after another.

A small section of Ono’s cherry tree corridor

The great thing about Ono’s cherry blossom corridor is that it’s not a tourist destination. I was the only non-Japanese person wandering the path. These trees are also special because each of them has been adopted by a local family who has posted a plaque beside their family tree or planted some spring flowers at its base to enhance its beauty.

” We tend this cherry tree like our child.”

Cherry viewing for many Japanese people is an event. We saw lots of people sitting under the trees on blankets with picnics and thermoses. A young dad held his fat- cheeked baby up to a blossom so his mom could take a photo. A grandad posed under a tree with his grandson. An elderly couple set up a photo of their whippet dogs in matching sweaters, positioning them in front of bright pink, red, and purple parasols. Young couples took selfies, flashing teeth and V signs.

As we walked, the petals were already starting to drift down. Kazue said we came at just the right time – in another couple of days, the trees will be mostly bare. In Japanese culture, the arrival of the cherry blossoms symbolizes the coming of spring and new life, but their fleeting beauty is a reminder to enjoy life and embrace its many joys while we can.

Tsunami?

Pamela Young

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April 7, 2024

Lorne left a couple of hours ago for an all day snorkelling expedition off the Kerama Islands, and I’m getting ready to walk over to a coral dyeing experience about 50 minutes from our hotel.

My Japanese phone number pings.

TSUNAMI, it says with a red exclamation point. The rest of the message is in Japanese and can’t be pasted into Google Translate.

Huh.

I wait a few minutes but nothing else happens so I head off.

Ten minutes later, I’m waiting for a light to change next to a young Japanese man and his mom. Our phones go off simultaneously.

” Tsunami? Here?” I say to him.

He points to where we are on Google maps then to the ocean. ” Yes. Evacuation maybe. Probably.”

Darn English as an additional language. Which is it – maybe or probably?

I look at the traffic flowing around me and the other pedestrians continuing down the sidewalk. Nobody seems concerned.

My phone pings again. A message from Lorne.

” We’ve been evacuated to a nearby rooftop. Should be safe enough.”

WHAT?

Maybe just dangerous for people right by the water? Why isn’t anyone reacting where I am?

I continue walking while keeping an eye on the conditions around me. A teacher is leading a bunch of giggling middle schoolers along the sidewalk. A field trip or an evacuation to higher ground?

Lorne messages again to say his trip is canceled and all the snorkellers have been returned to their hotels. Apparently when he arrived, the hotel personnel were telling people to go up to the 10th floor, the highest in the building.

But when I make it to the coral dyeing building, all is calm. The class continues as planned.

One more ping when I’m having lunch. All 8 diners in the noodle shop look at their phones simultaneously and keep eating. Apparently, the all clear.

Later, I hear Taiwan had its strongest earthquake in 25 years that morning. I guess Japanese people, who live with the threat of tsunamis all the time, have learned how to read and respond to the warning messages. I’m just glad that my years of solo travel have trained me to read the people around me so I stay both calm and out of danger.

In the cool, cool, cool of Fukushuen Garden

Pamela Young

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April 7, 2024

For two Canadian prairie people, more used to the “dry cold” of April in their home province, Okinawa’s moist heat comes as a bit of a surprise

Not that we dislike hauling out our summer wear to tour Naha, Okinawa Island’s business capital. But after walking around for a while, we’re ready for a cool down.

We find it in Fukushuen Garden, which celebrates Naha’s historic relationship with Fuzhou City in China. It dates all the way back to the 14th century and the Ryukyu kingdom’s prosperous trade era. The people from the province where Fuzhou City is located brought with them to Naha their interpretation and navigation skills, and influenced the establishment of the Ryukyu’s first public school.

Without further words from me, enjoy your ramble through what the Fukushuen website calls the “walkable art” of this serene garden.

The resilience of Shuri Castle

Pamela Young

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April 6, 2024

On the pathway leading up to Okinawa’s Shuri Castle stand the remains of a giant akagi tree, estimated to be more than 200 years old. It was heavily damaged during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, and further battered by a typhoon. Although the original tree is no longer alive, a tenacious akou tree has grown among the remaining branches, restoring some of the akagi tree’s former beauty.

The tree is a suitable metaphor for the history of Shuri Castle in Naha City, Okinawa. The castle was originally built in the late 14th century as the palace and seat of government for the Ryukyu kingdom, which ruled the Okinawan Islands for hundreds of years. Ryukyu was a major trading partner of China and other southeast nations until it was annexed by Japan in 1879. Its loss of independence still rankles Okinawans.

During Ryukyu rule, the Castle burned down three times – in 1453, 1660, and 1709 – and was reconstructed each time. In 1945, it was flattened by American bombers – and rebuilt again, opening to the public in 1992. In 2019, it burned to the ground once more.

But Okinawan devotion to its Ryukyu roots means that Shuri Castle would rise from its ashes a fifth time.

Journeyman and apprentice carpenters and Okinawan volunteers are collaborating on a massive indoor reconstruction program to restore the Castle to its former splendor.

As part of their stroll through the Castle grounds, visitors can watch these crafts people at work, using a mix of modern and traditional carpentry methods and building materials. The restoration project even involves replanting the trees used for rebuilding. Although it will take these trees 100 years to reach maturity, this process is seen as an investment in materials for future repairs to the Castle, or touch wood (pardon the pun), in case there’s a sixth reconstruction necessary sometime down the road. Shuri Castle will always represent Okinawan identity, and that can never be burned down, bombed, or otherwise destroyed.

Okinawa Adventure

Pamela Young

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April 5, 2024

The taxi driver in Hiroshima asks us where we plan to go next in Japan. When we mention Okinawa, he’s surprised. “Kyoto? Osaka? Very beautiful. “

Yes, I think, and also crowded with tourists. Besides, we’d been both places on other trips. Now it was time to explore a less well known destination, at least to North Americans and Europeans.

Okinawa, nicknamed the Hawaii of Japan, is a popular vacation spot for lots of Asian and southeast Asian tourists. It’s an island group closer to Taiwan than the Japanese mainland , 2.5 hours by plane from Osaka, and sporting a totally different vibe than any of the other places we visited in Japan.

Part of that is its tropical location. The temperature in March is already hitting 26C or above. As a result, there’s an island casualness here. You don’t see many men in Tokyo black suits and ties, striding off the subway to drive their corporate careers forward. Instead, business people more often wear a kariyushi shirt, sort of like a Hawaiian flowered shirt but more tailored and a bit more formal. Even the security officers at the airport wear them – fuchsia printed with white tropical flowers, which makes them seem a whole lot less intimidating than most airport personnel I’ve met.

And the flowers! Tropical varieties and some I struggle to grow at home between May and September – greeting travellers at the Naha City airport, growing wild by the side of the road, and lovingly tended in pocket gardens outside residences.

But it’s not just the weather that makes Okinawa different from mainland Japan. For 450 years, it was its own empire, the Ryukyu kingdom, trading with China and other southeast Asian countries. Its annexation by Japan in 1879, the abolition of its king, and its renaming as Okinawa Prefecture still rankles the locals, who identify as Okinawans first and Japanese second. Okinawans speak a dialect which my Japanese friend doesn’t understand, wear kimonos that are looser and lighter and include hats for both men and women, and feature dishes on their menus found nowhere on the Japanese mainland.

Commemorative photo taken at Shuri Castle in Naha

Okinawa soba and Okinawan red handled chopsticks

Every experience we had in Okinawa was characterized by the fierce independence of its people – watch for it in my upcoming posts. The prefecture has never shared in Japan’s economic prosperity, but its stubborn resilience and willingness to fight for its cultural differences make it a truly fascinating place to visit.

Guide in traditional Ryukyu outfit at Shuri Castle

Off the road in Wakayama

Pamela Young

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April 3, 2024

I met my friend Kazue in 2017 when she visited the University of Alberta as part of a delegation from Wakayama University. We initially bonded over a mutual passion for engaging teaching, and she invited me twice to Wakayama to work with their professors on enhancing their teaching methods.

Since then, we’ve discovered we share a lot of the same values, and the same things make us laugh. We’ve worked together on translation projects and swapped stories on Skype calls.

So when I let Kazue know we were coming to Japan on vacation, she invited us to stay at her apartment in Wakayama, even though she’d be traveling herself when we arrived.

The timing for our stay was spot on. We loved Tokyo and Hiroshima but we’d been so busy touring, we felt the need for a bit of a vacation from the vacation. We found that in Wakayama.

There’s just something about staying in someone’s well-loved home that is so much more relaxing than being in a hotel. We slept in and lingered over coffee in the morning. We did our laundry. We got takeout for dinner from the 7-11 down the road ( 7-11s in Japan have really great take away meals, not the post-bar hopping fare you get in North America.)

We even took the local bus to a couple of great tourist attractions. The nice thing about Wakayama is its a hidden gem, so the two places we visited were relatively quiet.

I’d been to Wakayama Castle one sizzling, cicada-strident day in July 2017 during my first visit to Wakayama, but Lorne was keen to go, and I’d never been there in the spring. With the addition of a few early blooming cherry blossoms ( they’ve been slow to open this year), the Castle was even more spectacular than I remembered.

Cherry blossom branch and mossy green wall

Attached to the Castle grounds is the Momijidani Gardens, a tranquil space of stone pathways, green ponds, and yes, a few more cherry blossoms.

The next day, we bussed a bit further afield to Kimii-dera Buddhist Temple. To reach it, you need to climb 231 steps ( or take a tram for a small fare), but the sights at the top are worth every puffing breath.

In a hall all its own, for obvious reasons, stands the largest wooden statue in Japan, an 11 metre tall representation of the Senju Juichimen Kannon, a Buddhist deity with a thousand arms and 11 faces, resplendent in lacquer and gold leaf.

Throughout the site, childlike statues wear red caps and bibs placed there either by grieving parents as part of their prayers for their children who passed away, or to give thanks when children recovered from a serious illness.

Kiimidera is also notable for its cherry blossoms, but as with Wakayama Castle, we see only one tree fully in bloom.

Just before we descend the stairs, we come face to face with the fiercely grimacing King Enma, the King of Buddhist Hell and the judge of the afterlife. Not a bad parting reminder to live life with love and compassion for others.

Hiroshima Peace Park

Pamela Young

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April 1, 2024

As we join the line to walk through the dimly lit exhibition space in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a sign warns parents of the disturbing content, and cautions them to prepare children for what they’re about to see and monitor their responses.

It’s good advice for all of us. I take only one picture, the first in a series of art depictions of and photographs taken on August 6, 1945. Then I put my camera away. Somehow, it doesn’t seem respectful to capture the other horrifying, heart rending moments of those whose lives were changed forever that morning.

Most visitors have made the same decision. As the line moves slowly along, and we lean in to look at the displays and their captions, the exhibit rooms are silent except for the occasional whisper or murmur. It’s not easy to look at the shreds of children’s clothing, their damaged school bags, a blackened, twisted tricycle, photographs of the horrifying injuries inflicted on people’s bodies by the atomic blast. Reading the survivors’ memories of what they saw and heard that day wrenches my heart: Parents looking desperately for children. The injured crying out for water.

So many of the victims were children and their teachers, out early that morning clearing away the remains of already bombed buildings to make fire breaks in the event of other attacks. Those children who miraculously survived shared memories of the day in journal entries, interviews, and drawings. Chieko Kuriake, who was 15 years old, had these words and an accompanying painting to describe the sky that night:

I monitor my own responses closely as I view the exhibits. A few times, I step out of the line, unable to continue imagining the atomic bomb aftermath. I see a dad with his arm around his son’s shoulder. The boy, about the age of my 8- year- old friend Isaac at home, holds his dad’s hand, and a sob clutches my throat.

After we leave the exhibit area, there is a long corridor with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Peace Park. Some people are sitting on benches, staring out the window. The father and son I saw earlier are having an earnest conversation. We wander the rest of the exhibits which focus on how the citizens of Hiroshima are preserving the memory of August 6 and trying to convince world powers to eliminate nuclear arms. As fewer survivors remain to tell Hiroshima’s story, high school students record their memories in drawings.

I’m glad that we are able to view the outdoor monuments in the Peace Park under sunny blue skies.

An inscription on the memorial cenotaph for the victims says it embodies “the spirit of Hiroshima – enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony and prosperity for all, and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace.”

Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph for the Victims

The cenotaph frames the remains of the Hiroshima Prefectual Promotion Hall, which was 160 meters from the hypocenter of the blast. This is one of the more controversial reminders of that day, with some residents calling for its demolition because of the painful memories it evokes. However, it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list as a reminder of “the horrors of the atomic bomb and as a symbol for world peace.”

The Prayer for Peace Statue depicts a mother holding a child playing a golden trumpet for peace ” in the search for a new future, as a crescent moon becomes a full moon.”

The Children’s Peace Monument, funded by donations from more than 3200 Japanese schools and donors from nine countries, honors all the children whose lives were lost that day and in the following years. At the top, a girl lifts a golden crane ” entrusted with dreams for a peaceful future.”

Under the monument in display cases, there are hundreds of strands of paper cranes, sent from around the world. A note of appreciation says how glad the Peace Park is to receive them as a symbol that people still remember Hiroshima’s grief and stand with the city in a call for world peace.

The loveliest crowds in the world

Pamela Young

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March 30, 2024

Before I came to Tokyo, I hadn’t realized it’s now the largest metropolis in the world, with a population of 37 million people.

That meant when we traveled around the city, we experienced crowds. But I never felt unsafe or claustrophobic or disrespected. I never got pushed or shoved or had someone openly lose patience with me because I got in their way. And believe me, as we were figuring out where to put our subway passes or how to get through the gates at Tokyo Station, we got in people’s way a LOT. But always we were met with smiles and tolerance of our mistakes. People weave their way through crowds with an unspoken orchestration, rarely bumping into each other. Bike riders on the sidewalks take precautions, slowing down and even dismounting if conditions get too congested.

There was even a certain jolliness in some crowds. One Sunday afternoon, we visited the Asakusa neighborhood, which is known for its Old Tokyo vibe, and the Sensoji temple, the oldest Buddhist temple in the city. Turned out lots of Japanese and tourists had the same idea. Posses of young women had visited kimono rental shops and were parading around taking selfies. Rows and rows of food stands were lined up with people purchasing treats ranging from meat on a stick to matcha ice cream to my personal favorite, melonpan, a giant domed bun, its sugar cookie crunchy top scored to look like cantaloupe skin, its inside stuffed with whipped cream. Our favorite discovery of the day was the Kapabashi kitchen tools street, shop after shop specializing in all thing culinary – knives and baking pans, lacquerware and chopsticks, even a store featuring the plates of plastic foods you see on display in front of many restaurants.

Were there crowds in all these places? Of course. Did we still enjoy them? Absolutely. Tokyo has a lot to teach the rest of the world about crowd manners, and being respectful of other people making their way through the world.