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Episode 93: The Rising Sun

Writer's picture: Kristin LindstromKristin Lindstrom

Over several years, Perry and I took a number of trips to France. Our friends asked us if we wanted to go somewhere else, but the response was that each and every province of France was completely different from its cousins.


One year we decided to go to Alsace-Lorraine in eastern France on the border with Germany.

Over many decades, Alsace-Lorraine passed back and forth from France to Germany. The area was ceded by France to Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. It was returned to France after World War I, occupied by the Germans in World War II, then again restored to France. The German dialect known as Alsatian remains the lingua franca, and both French and German are taught in the schools.


Strasberg is a pretty city with more than a touch of its Germanic history in the design of its buildings.

Strausbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, France. It is the home of the European Parliament.


One night Perry and I went to dinner at a pretty restaurant on the second floor of a building overlooking a canal. The place was full, and a woman was singing for entertainment.

The first odd thing was a menu item called ‘spies broiled.’ The waitress couldn’t explain what it was, so we decided to pass.


Then we realized there was a bit of a commotion brewing. A very drunk Japanese man was asking the chanteuse to sing a particular song. The only problem was that he couldn’t remember the title.


Pretty soon he was shouting out different song titles, trying to remember which one he wanted while she desperately thought about what he could possibly want. Soon, he was warbling in a poor attempt to carry out the tune. In a matter of minutes, nearly everyone in the place was calling out song titles or whistling different tunes.


Eventually, the title was discovered, the people in the restaurant clapped, the singer sang it for him, and he leaned back in his chair, smiling and contented.


What has always struck me is the good nature of total strangers to help this poor fellow find his song.

***

Perry was attending a conference in town, and I came to meet him for the cocktail party held afterward. As we sipped our wine, we noticed a Japanese man talking to several people across the room. It looked pretty painful; he didn’t seem to have very good English. People began to drift away from him, no doubt seeking another drink.

Eventually, the Japanese fellow wandered over to us. His English was terrible, but a lot better than our Japanese. He was an interesting man who had lived in the states with his wife and two daughters for several years but was facing a return to Japan. He said none of them wanted to go back, especially his wife and daughters.

“They have a free life here. It will be hard to go back with the rigid social norms of my country.”


The atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima killed 90.000 to 146.000 people. Little Boy was a gun assembly fission bomb made with uranium. It was dropped from the B-52 Enola Gay on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m.


Finally it occurred to us to ask him where he was from.

“Hiroshima.”

Perry’s Haiku: Where you from I asked. He answered Hiroshima. Then deadly silence.

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