Congratulations on your Nobel, A-bomb survivors
Congratulations to Nihon Hidankyo, the group of atomic-bomb survivors speaking truth about the horrors of nuclear war and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for honoring their work.
The Saint Paul–Nagasaki Sister City Committee (SPNSCC), the oldest sister-city relationship between the United States and Japan, has a long connection with the hibakusha (A-bomb survivors). In Minnesota, we have a direct connection to one hibakusha in Nagasaki. In 2005, Sachiko Yasui made a peace mission to Minnesota. Her story continues to be told today.
Sachiko Yasui, who was 6 years old in 1945, came to Minnesota from Nagasaki to share her story. The SPNSCC was her host as she spoke at City Hall, churches, and on the radio. Her story so impressed Minneapolis author and Sister City member Caren Stelson that Stelson made five trips to Nagasaki to interview her with help from the Nagasaki St. Paul Sister City Committee. “SACHIKO: A Nagasaki Bombing Survivor’s Story,” was published in 2016 and won many honors.
Stelson was able to present a copy of the book to Sachiko herself, who was in a nursing home at the time. Every Aug. 8, on the anniversary eve of the bombing, we read the companion picture book, “A BOWL FULL OF PEACE,” at the commemoration at the Global Harmony Labyrinth in Como Park. The Saint Paul–Nagasaki Sister City Committee also sponsors the Sachiko Scholarship for Peace for college and university students in Minnesota. Sachiko’s story continues to be told today.
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We must never forget the power and impact of the nuclear bomb. The Sister City relationship, which will bring Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki to Minnesota next August, promotes people-to-people, person-to-person exchanges and friendship. We believe that learning about each other’s culture and making friends will help promote peace through one-on-one, citizen-led connections. After all, one does not go to war against one’s friends. This summer, seven young people came to play tennis with American students. A ballet school in Nagasaki and a Japanese dance group in Minnesota are planning exchanges in 2025, our 70th anniversary of the sister-city relationship. Over the years, exchanges of musicians, artists, and ordinary citizens have promoted long-lasting friendships.
Like the hibakusha, we say “never again” to atomic warfare, and pray for peace.
JoAnn Blatchley, Edina
The writer is president of the Saint Paul–Nagasaki Sister City Committee
But there are no leaves to sweep
It is very clever of St Paul Public Works to move the beginning of the annual fall street-sweeping schedule to such an early date that there are no leaves to sweep up. This should make the job go remarkably fast and avoid dumping fees. The same strategy was employed in the spring, when sweeping was completed before the boulevard trees had a chance to drop their blooms.
Unfortunately, this scheme defeats its own purpose. Street sweeping is designed to prevent the storm sewers being clogged and nutrients from making their way down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, where there is an ever-growing dead zone as a result of all those leaves, rotting and decaying, where they do harm.
Despite the inconvenience, the right thing for St Paul to do is to wait until the leaves fall off of the trees before commencing with street sweeping.
Salina Amey, St. Paul
Much to ponder about our declining birth rates
Regarding your article about declining birth rates:
A friend of mine will give birth to her sixth child this week. She is a stay-at-home mom. I am the fifth of five children to which my stay-at-home mom gave birth. When I turned 5, she took a job and a church lady babysat me when my sisters weren’t available.
These two families are characteristic of a culture that valued motherhood, nurturing children, delayed gratification, hard work, living for others. In those ancient days in which I was born (77 now) it defined family.
Today, replacement rates have plummeted. In the United States, families born here are not having six or five, or even two children. The “traditional” nuclear family has been denigrated instead of celebrated.
This conundrum, I believe, is a spiritual problem and only a spiritual answer can resolve it. But faith, too, is denigrated in our culture, mocked, and sometimes attacked. Maybe there is no way out except massive immigration. Much to ponder.
Dave Racer, Woodbury
Men are beside themselves with worry
Why is the birth rate declining?
Everyone is asking that question these days. Everyone male. Men are beside themselves with worry about what will happen to capitalism in a society where women don’t give birth to an adequate number of children — all these selfish cat-lady women who forget to keep the state of the economy foremost in their minds and seem unconcerned with the actuarial consequences of pension systems that need to be built on the premise that every generation must be bigger than the generation that came before.
I thought about all that loud male angst the other day when I read that a man and woman had died trying to make it across a road.
The article that described their deaths did not say how busy traffic was at the point of collision. The driver had a stop sign, the report said. He stopped, waited, and then tried to make it to the other side. I have no idea whether his decision to pull out made sense, but I found myself wondering if the vehicle traveling in a perpendicular direction sped up.
In the 1960s, in Madison, Wisconsin, my sister and I once tried to cross a busy street surrounding the state Capitol building. We weren’t at a crosswalk. We were kids, younger than 20. That memory came back to me as I read the article about the couple who died.
My sister and I saw a rare opportunity to cross, and we took it. There was time for us to get across at that moment. We would have made it without incident except that the driver of an oncoming truck took offense. He saw what we were doing and gunned his engine. His vehicle suddenly gained speed. He came within a whisker of killing us.
We ended up on the other side, safe but shaken, amazed that it had meant so much to him that we knew how angry he was that we had crossed in front of him.
That’s why we came within a few seconds of dying. His need to matter more. The incident remains vivid in my mind sixty years later.
Driving is the riskiest thing any of us do.
It’s not just that there are so many more people driving. It’s that so many people drive 70 miles an hour in a 55 mph zone, especially since the pandemic and its inflationary consequences got us all so riled up that it seems only speed will allow us to vent.
There’s an attitude out there: this road belongs to me. I wait for no one. I slow down for no one. I move across lanes when I please. I signal if and when I please. You stay out of my way.
Do we want such a world to get worse with more and more and more human beings consumed with where they are in the competition to be first and most important?
I am the oldest of eight children. I have one child. My one child has one child. Suppose many more women did that all over the world.
Guess what? They are.
Could it be? … I’m speaking here to all the guys scratching their heads about declining fertility rates resulting in declining consumer demand as well as declining labor markets and blaming women for it.
Could it be that, in addition to the oft-described difficulties of raising children in a society where two parents have to work to afford even the basics of life, where the cost of child care and education are through the roof, where government programs to help families are anathema to Republicans, could it be that in such a world, women are voting with their reproductive systems to live in a less crowded, less angry, less hierarchical environment?
If 8 billion becomes 4 billion and 4 billion becomes 3 or 2 billion, would that be so terrible?
Life would be less intense, less crowded, less frightening for those of us who are just trying to cross the road.
Jean Wulterkens. St. Paul
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