A-Bomb and Self Introductions

Today was an exciting day at the school.  For those that don`t know, today is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.  Thus, even though it is a Sunday, all the students and teachers were required to come to school.  Up until this point I had only met a few teachers and student since they had been taking advantage of summer break.  I was quite surprised this morning to find a piece of paper on my desk announcing that I would be giving my formal introduction to the school following the memorial ceremony.  Fortunately I was smart and left a tie in my desk in preparation for such a situation.

Around 10:30 all the teachers and students gathered in the gymnasium.  Schools in Japan lack air conditioning and the gym tends to be one of the hottest buildings on campus.  Furthermore the students don`t have chairs, so they alternate between standing (to bow) and sitting on the ground.  The school that I am at is about 10 minutes from ground zero and at the time the entire school had been destroyed.  In attendance was a group of 50 or so bomb survivors who are all alumni of the school.  One of them gave a speech and from what I gathered, he had come in on that day for examination and left early in the morning after finishing his exams.  Within a half hour the school was gone entirely.  He then talked about his life since then and the importance of nuclear proliferation.  Then at 11:02 the city sounded the air raid sirens while everyone observed a moment of silence.  Even for me (someone who finds the people latch onto the idea of `Japan as a victim` far too often) it was an especially somber moment.  This is a truly beautiful city and to imagine it all disappearing in an instant is overwhelming.

After that presentation, I was brought up onto the main stage along with the school principal.  I probably would have start to sweat from nervousness if I hadn`t already loss every drop to the heat.  I`m not very experience in the public speaking arena and far less so in Japanese.  Even so, I managed to get a few laughs out of students (hopefully due to my attempted joke and not poor Japanese) and quickly hustled out of the gym with the rest of teachers while feeling the pressure of 800 pairs of eyes locked onto my person.  On the whole it was a great experience that I can`t even get in other parts of Japan.