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Rowing Past the Cherry Trees

Story by Joe Ferry

Purple, color of the sky after sundown, and so the river also, but a shade darker. Some wind tailing me upriver, then against me home. I rowed up as far as the top of Peters Island. As I came around the turning point the Great Blue Heron glided over me, not more than twenty feet off. I heard his wings pushing the night air.

A few years ago at this time there had been much in newspapers and TV about the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The “big” question was whether or not Japan was sorry for attacking us without warning. The Japanese, some say, were wanting the USA to apologize for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Commentators went on endlessly on this issue. With all the death,destruction and suffering that has been brought about during this, most murderous of centuries, I think that there should be no scarcity in the economy of shame and remorse available to us all. We needn’t spend much time demanding apologies of each other.

I can remember well the morning that I let go the hatred I held against the Japanese for the war. It was in late April 1963, a Sunday morning. No one else was about. I came around the Columbia Bridge turn in a single and broke free of ” the bonds of earth”. The cherry trees, just past their blossoming time showered petals onto the river. They were pink and they covered the river from the East bank to further than the middle. As I came through them there was only the pink, the narrow black line of my shell’s passing and the swirl of water and blossom that marked my oars touch of the river. I felt I was gliding on a dawn sky. All was infinitely quiet, no noise from me or the boat or the water. As I rowed down this carpet of petals, there was no wind, yet I knew that there must have been some small wind, at least, to release all these petals to the river for just my coming there. I have been waiting ever since for such a gift to come again.

Two, three hundred yards and it was over. In that small time, I forgave the Japanese for what they did to my cousin, Ed Keller, for having killed the buddy of my cousin Jack Crossan, and for all the Marines that died on Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Tarawa. Ed Keller’s submarine was sunk sneaking in toward the coast of Japan. He was rescued from the water by the Japanese; three years, almost, imprisoned- lost a hundred pounds, Aunt Mary grieved his death (”Your son’s ship was lost in action, no more is known”) until he walked in the door one day; nothing but rations of rice, day in day out; beri-beri, malaria. And so with other cousin , Crossan - foxhole on Okinawa, water chest deep, his friend up, to get out of the wet, bullet, death, and Jack Crossan’s vengeance. Memory of that soaking foxhole has Jack changing his socks two, three times a day still. By the time I was old enough to know anything, it had all become as legend.

Only old enough that Sunday morning to know how righteous we were, before Kennedy then King went down, before MyLai laid waste to innocence. Before the growing up and down that had me kneeling at friend Joejoe Gallagher’s casket asking a bitter, Why?

On that Sunday morning an earlier, quieter, more peaceful note. The cherry trees that showered me, that made this carpet of dawn, had been donated to the city of Philadelphia by Emperor Hirohito and the Empire of Japan in 1935. A new variety of flowering cherry had been developed in Japan. Round the tidal pools of Washington D.C., and here along the East bank of the Schuylkill the Kwanzan Cherry flourishes as at home. Now, many are dead, some remain still, graceful as old men sometimes are, in twisted weeping trunks. No more a grove along the river but one here and there, 56 years since the planting, 28 since my passing there the morning they gave me their blossoms.

Tonight, passing those old trees by the rivers bank, above me dark limbs drawn by purple sky, standing before winter I want to let the river wash away the sadnesses of all these years; the Pearl Harbors, the Hiroshimas, the Chosin Resevoir, Quang Tri, the video destruction of the people of Baghdad, and the land mine that took Joejoe. Yet I know were the river to take all that, it would have to take the joys as well. Best I can do take in this December night, and each night given; note grave cherry trees; for April’s blossoms, wait.

Rowing Past the Cherry Trees was written by Joe Ferry and published with permission.