Part 3 Bearing Witness on Charnel Ground

Noble ancestor in Kyoto.

Home returning

This post culminates my personal journey, part pilgrimage, part odyssey. The third part of my yearlong journey takes me to Japan, my ancestral homeland. I began this journey a year ago to reconcile and heal ancestral wounds.  I felt a rooted connection in Japan; a homereturning in a most nourishing way. As with healing from wounds, they become scars, an intricate web of tissue and cells that serve as a layer of protection. I have learned to wear my scars with the concept of wabi sabi, a Japanese phrase that roughly translates to embracing the impermanent nature of all things and the beauty of imperfection. Simplicity, elegance, wisdom. Scars make us who we are as sentient beings. Imperfectly perfect.

 Wabi Sabi is wisdom, grace, courage, history, true elegance of form.  

pieces of broken pottery adorn the floor in the potter's studio

Potter's studio, Obama, Japan

So I continue to heal and feel as if I'm carrying kindred souls with me. 

Ryoan-ji Zen Garden, Kyoto, Japan

I carry the water, air, earth, sunlight for those who need to heal from injustice, discrimination, oppression. What is beginning to surface is the need to share healing and reconciliation, forgiveness and lovingkindness. I am driven to be one who continues to believe in hope and the deep effort it takes to forgive, to love and understand. What also continues to grow is the desire to open my heart for the benefit of all. This has been my experiment to bear witness to what I touched upon at Tule Lake and Hyde Park and opened to last year.

This journey began with a phrase that kept echoing in my mind: I am a descendant of incarcerated people. First it was necessary to let the words have a voice. My words took on more meaning when Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Marselean Manuel, read them out loud with her strong and empathic voice. As she approached the ancestor altar at a retreat for People of Color, a kind of energy arose inside of courage and the tendrils of healing.  Something was shifting. No anger or shame. I knew this opening was to continue. I knew it was bigger than my personal journey. I needed to continue for my ancestors, my 92 year old mother, my father who continued his journey 11 years ago, my siblings and my son and daughter. Today, I continue to offer it to future generations, to those known and unknown, blood relatives and spiritual friends, who want to enter a way to heal and understand, a path of healing and reconciliation. 

The experiences on the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, meditations for FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt in New York have led me to Japan. This is a path I chose, willing and open to move forward with hope and optimism through the practice of forgiveness and lovingkindness. 

Philosopher's Path, Kyoto

Part earth, part water, cedar and bamboo, part indigenous being from Japan.

a view from Miyajima Island

I belong to this part of earth. I came from these islands.

The vitality, hara of native Japan lives inside of me. The roots of my family of trees, mountains, water are a part of me. I feel I can replenish, re-nourish, reunite here. 

"Welcome back, Nakatomi-san, we have been waiting for you." 

Maple trees expressed their vibrancy in Kyoto, a kind of homecoming, homereturning.

 I was walking through a dream. Each day was like a homecoming after a journey of many lifetimes. I had arrived to meet my ancestors discovered in the forests, felt in the air, sensed near the ocean; the land and light of the rising sun. A deep sense of reverence arose. Looking up at the sky, opening my heart to reunite with the trees, the forests, the clouds, and sky.

  I recognized something nameless-felt in the late autumn air, the colors of the landscape of my ancestors, the cadence of native footsteps; so very familiar. I have returned to a source of my roots. 

 

Body returns to feel familiar ground. Separated for a longtime from the nucleus of ancestors and trees, boulders, air, water, sun-all a part of my ancestral DNA from Japan.  Heart softens on temple grounds in Kyoto as I walk across gravel pathways and wooden floors creak as I join the centuries of footsteps of my ancestors.

My feet are the roots that remember, we have returned to the sacred ground, soil, earth for a tender reunion with my relations.

 My hands long to touch, stay, wait, hold, reunite with the bark, the skin of my elder cedar, pine and fir family.

 

ancient ginkgo in Kyoto

Ginkgo leaves alight the ground

I continue to transform generational sorrow and shame as I reunite on sacred, charnel ground. 

   I had abandoned a significant part of me as a child from the pain of feeling other and oppressed by racism. I obscured myself, allowed myself to embrace my ethnicity and heritage at arms distance to protect from the pain of being singled out, of not fitting in. Here, I reunited with stability, vitality, inner wisdom and a connection to nature. Nature welcomed me back without discrimination but with trust, love and deep belonging. Welcome back Nakatomi-san. 

Feeling the pulse of my ancestors who made an epic journey across the Pacific over one hundred years ago, living beings I am connected to, who ventured to another continent, to begin again, to plant new roots, and create different lives of potential-  They survived and thrived from the conditions of poverty, hunger, out of a deep resonant hope for a different life. My grandparents, like so many immigrants and refugees, were the ultimate risk takers, adventurers, those willing to take a leap.



In a way, I'm here to honor and express gratitude by cleansing, renewing myself to this sacred home.

Incense wafting through the air invites me back to the prayers and spirits in nature, from the indigenous Shinto tradition on Miyajima Island near Hiroshima, my father's homeland.

Shinto Temple, Miyajima Island

Pouring fresh water over my hands from a carved stone vessel, a cleansing ritual- homereturning, to my ancestors.  

This is where my childhood connection to nature began in my bones, vessels, cells. Heart connects with the warmth of kinship, of family

Our roots and bodies lived and worked on this land. It's natural to feel an affinity here. It permeates my skin, through my bones and courses through my lungs and vessels with every breath and heartbeat. We share so much DNA, bloodlines felt in the weight of air, the sweetness of water.

 I am looking with the eyes of my ancestors, walking with their feet to offer incense at shrines, feeling sacred ground in Hiroshima. This is my father's family home. 

At age 8 or 9 or 10, I had an unnameable curiosity and affinity to study history books of the atomic bomb site in Hiroshima. In December, I met my father's second cousin for the first time in Hiroshima.  I discovered that my third cousin was a Red Cross nurse. She perished in Hiroshima while working on August 6, 1945 never to return home, her remains never recovered.  Perhaps she is who I was looking for when I was 8 or 9 in those photos? I knew her, I was connected to her.

I am descendant of Hiroshima Atomic bomb survivors and victims.

Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima, Japan

There is palpable heaviness. Pilgrims young and old, come to learn, to make sense of something senseless.Statistics range from 90,000-226,000 people perished in Hiroshima. Millions of animals and plants perished too.  I believe it takes great courage to come here to witness the devastation and the capability of human beings. Deep sigh, deep sadness, deep silence. 

Feeling the devastation, the remnants, and the very real the pulse of my relatives who still live here. Was there a great deafening noise when the bomb impacted the city center?  Was there a great silence following it? Is that my imagination or can it be my way of connecting to something that touched my heart as a very young child? Difficult returning, harsh homecoming to the land, the islands, the ocean.  

This is part of my family's charnel ground. I was confused as a child and felt a double responsibility for how I was connected to lives in California and Japan, to nature and earth in both places, to loss, devastation seared in my memory. Sorrow felt but rarely spoken. Felt in my body and bones and here in the soil, the air, water, wide open sky. I hope I carry some of my cousin's sweet kind heart, some compassion of a Red Cross nurse.

 This journey grew out of my need to bear witness to my familial truth. The truth of forced incarceration at Tule Lake and Gila River and the conditions 120,000 had to live under for years. The truth of learning racist beliefs held by FDR, who some consider one of our greatest presidents. The truth that Eleanor Roosevelt tried to sway her husband's mind in signing Executive Order 9066, her subsequent trip to Gila River, during my mother's incarceration. The truth of the devastation of war, the atomic bomb and the scars it leaves for the Japanese natives, for many still too painful to visit. 

The truth of learning I have a relative who perished on August 6, 1945. I know why I was drawn to the photos of devastation in Hiroshima as a child. I came to know my suffering and through it the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people here in America of forced incarceration, loss of homes, property, livelihood and rights and something deeper, our humanity. We lost a part of humanity when America dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think many of us are still recovering from the unimaginable trauma.  

 This journey has let me exhale  in a way I have never exhaled. It's as if I've been holding my breath for a very long time to protect myself or to hide deep shame. I held my breath, my power, my words, my story inside to protect and to survive. Shedding light through writing, investigating, and fully exhaling, a kind of openness has emerged and a kind of fearlessness. I have a growing capacity for peace. I feel like I have the strength and capacity to stand as one of the tall cedars in the forest.  








I am a descendant of incarcerated people 

and

I am a descendant of Hiroshima and Fukuoka and atomic bomb victims
I am a descendant of survivors
I carry a legacy and gift of compassion and energy to heal from my ancestors.

I rise from strong and resilient island people.
I rise with stability, clarity, and an open peaceful heart.
I have the capacity to embrace all relations.


I offer the energy of love, generosity of spirit, and the courage to heal with openness and understanding. 

I am grateful to have the opportunity, resources, and community who support me and makes my writing possible, that in turn make my life possible. Expressing my thoughts and deep feelings into words have been healing for me and for my 92 year old mother. I honestly feel I have healed some generational wounds. I don't know how future generations will heal but perhaps I've opened a small window of hope, through my experience that will remain open, let more light in, more warmth of the sun.  Thank you for encouraging me to tell this story, thank you for supporting me with your kind words and most of all for your warm energy that propels me forward. 

 The theme of offering peace and reconciliation was inspired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela and the courageous survivors who came to tell their stories of the brutality of apartheid at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa in the 1980s. I was touched deeply listening to women and men who walked miles to speak their truth.  I was also inspired to learn about the Zen Peacekeepers led by Tetsugen Bernie Glassman for many years bearing witness at retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I wanted to see if I had the courage and capacity to heal, to grow and meet peace and reconciliation.

And to Dear Thay, Dear Thich Nhat Hanh. I am grateful to you for opening a dharma door 17 years ago, to mindfulness, to practicing and learning to cultivate the insight to forgive, to be grateful for "my appointment with life". You are the teacher I didn't know I was looking for. A deep bow to you.

To my parents, Bette Nakatomi and James Nakatomi and the Nakashima and Nakatomi lineage, pioneers in California, who worked as growers, farmers, florists, early California artisans. What beautiful roots you have planted, what beautiful seeds you have watered in your continuation of children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, four generations of Californians, and soon to be a fifth generation in September!