Episcopal Press and News
Browning Leads Pilgrims to Hiroshima Memorial
Episcopal News Service. May 21, 1987 [87114]
HIROSHIMA, Japan (DPS, May 21) -- Led by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, people from eight countries made a pilgrimage to Peace Memorial Park here, the site of the world's first atomic bomb attack on August 6, 1945.
In a steady rain which persisted throughout the day, they stood under the trees, holding umbrellas, to pray a special liturgy prepared for the event by the Episcopal Church and the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church of Japan). Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning led portions of the liturgy in Japanese.
Curious onlookers among the masses of people visiting the Peace Park that day stopped to stare, then joined in the prayers.
To make the pilgrimage, the group had gathered in Osaka a day prior to the opening celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai and traveled to Hiroshima by train and special bus. The visit began at the Church of the Resurrection. Founded in 1915 as the Church of Pentecost, it is the oldest Anglican church in Hiroshima. In 1941, the Japanese government had tried to force the congregation to become part of a single Protestant church for the entire country. While some clergy and members resisted this effort, the church ceased to exist legally. Its priests were classified as spies, the church was closed and eventually the land was sold.
After World War II, as survivors of the 1945 blast eventually returned to Hiroshima, former church members began meeting in each other's homes. With the help of Anglicans throughout the world, the congregation was able to build a new church in 1960, renamed the Church of the Resurrection.
Here, as at every stop in the city of Hiroshima, the pilgrim party was asked to pray for peace. While kimono-clad women of the congregation served ceremonial green tea, Rector Andrew Y. Nakamura asked the group to "pray for us, pray for peace and seek, as we seek, to know the true meaning of Jesus' peace."
Then the party visited the Peace Museum located near the hypocenter of the bomb which ravaged the city, killing more than 140,000 people. They viewed bits of misshapen metal, tile, glass and even stone which had been melted in the blast; charred wood remains of houses; scorched bits of cloth that had once been clothing; photos of burned people and of the wasteland into which the city was turned.
Before taking semi-shelter under the trees for the liturgy, the group paused while Browning laid a floral wreath at the memorial to the bomb victims and prayed quietly before a shrine which contains a book of the names of all those killed by the bomb.
Browning led the group in prayers centering on the "Peace Prayer" attributed to Francis of Assisi and on Jesus' promise of peace in John 14:23-29. The service included an ode composed by Emperor Hirohito which read: "I only earnestly wish that the wind will soon puff away all the clouds which are hanging over the tops of the mountains."
Afterwards, the group visited the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint U.S.-Japanese scientific foundation which, since 1950, has studied all known survivors of the A-blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to determine the effects of radiation on health. Here, again, they were reminded that there is no safe haven from nuclear warfare unless the people and nations of the world cease to pursue their own self-interests and instead work together for peace.
At a dinner provided for the entire group by the local YMCA, Tazu Shibama, an 81 year-old survivor, spoke to them about the day of the blast. Shibama was an English teacher in a girls' school and was just preparing to leave her two-story wooden home for school when the bomb struck that August morning. She was buried in the rubble of her home, probably thereby escaping severe burning. After digging her way out and walking miles into the country to safety, she was unable to explain her own survival, when half her students -- indeed half the city's people -- were dead. She has devoted the rest of her life to the cause of achieving world peace. To the pilgrim group, she noted that to ask for their prayers for peace, she must first ask their forgiveness for the surprise Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor which triggered U.S. entry into the war.
The bomb which destroyed her city was nothing, Shibama said, compared to those which the world has today. Begging her listeners to work and pray for peace, she said, "Bigger bombs will just bring bigger tragedies for us. Only good understanding hearts and love and friendship can bring world peace for us."
Just before the group re-boarded their bus, Browning told them and their Hiroshima hosts of a visit he had paid to the Peace Museum early in the decade. "That visit was a conversion experience for me," he said, explaining that he had returned to the Diocese of Hawaii, where he was then bishop, to spend much of the next two years in prayer and in study of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts and of the nuclear arms race in general. "I became convinced that nuclear arms, chemical warfare, any plan to destroy creation and bring to naught that which God has intended, was simply incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Given that we live in a "society of death," the Presiding Bishop said, "Christians have no choice but to work for peace. It is our role to preach hope to the world in which we live."
Among those accompanying Browning to Hiroshima was a delegation of some dozen persons from the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, led by Bishop Charlie McNutt and his wife. These included Joanne Blyler, who is presently a Volunteer for Mission in Bangladesh. Central Pennsylvania is involved in a three-way Companion Diocese relationship with the Diocese of Dhaka (Bangladesh), and the Diocese of Kita Kanto, Japan.
Other countries represented on the pilgrimage, beside the U.S. and Japan, included Canada, Sudan, Egypt, Australia and Bangladesh.
Browning's personal party included his wife, Patti; the Rev. Charles Cesaretti, Deputy for Anglican Affairs; the Rev. Patrick Mauney, Church Center Officer for Asia and the Pacific; and Mauney's wife, Mardi.