Teruo Fukui is a retired flower grower in Morgan Hill. He lives
quietly and peacefully, on the farm that he purchased almost 50
years ago. He spends his days studying and practicing Sumie,
Japanese calligraphy. Teruo was a young 17-year-old that day in
Itsukaichi, a small village outside of Hiroshima, when he saw the
American planes flying over head, dropping leaflets. He picked up
one of the leaflets and read the warning not to go into Hiroshima
during the next few days.
Teruo Fukui is a retired flower grower in Morgan Hill. He lives quietly and peacefully, on the farm that he purchased almost 50 years ago. He spends his days studying and practicing Sumie, Japanese calligraphy. Sumie is an art form which is a combination of skill and imagination used to bring characters to life and endow them with substance which reflects the soul of the calligrapher. The characters must be written once, in one flowing motion. The calligrapher must empty his mind and open it to the flow of the character. Once the brush is dipped into the ink, the character is committed and there is no turning back and no second chances.
Teruo was a young 17-year-old that day in Itsukaichi, a small village outside of Hiroshima, when he saw the American planes flying over head, dropping leaflets. He picked up one of the leaflets and read the warning not to go into Hiroshima during the next few days. The police quickly gathered up the leaflets and told everyone not to worry. This was just a propaganda ploy of the United States to disrupt the war effort.
But Teruo was worried especially for his younger sister who attended school in Hiroshima. He warned his sister not to go to school the next day, but his mother scolded him for being taken in by the propaganda. So the next day, his sister went to school as usual and Teruo went to his work at an airplane parts factory which was in the opposite direction.
As he began to settle in at work he heard a tremendous explosion, which shook the windows of the factory. Everyone was wondering what had happened until an announcement was made over the loud speakers. The announcement said that the army was testing new explosives that would help to win the war, and there was no need to be concerned. Everyone should return to work. So like everybody else, Teruo stayed and finished the work day.
However, on the way home, when he began to see the survivors struggling out of Hiroshima, horribly burned, in shock and confusion, he knew that his worst fears had come true. He and his mother got a pull cart and struggled through the tortured crowd of survivors, into the devastation which was Hiroshima to find his sister. They searched for three days and had given up hope of finding her when they happened to hear her calling to them from a pile of bodies. They could only recognize her from the name tag on her school uniform. They brought her home only to see her die four days later.
Teruo was the only surviving son in the family. His older brothers had all died in the war in far flung places in the Pacific. In the following days he prepared himself for the last battle, the final holocaust. But suddenly, like the end of a brush stroke, the war was over. He came to the United States in 1956, under the refugee relief act, and over time was married, had a son Terry, and had a successful flower growing business near Morgan Hill. His wife passed away several years ago and he retired from the flower business. He suffers from a blood disease that may be related to his exposure to the atom bomb. Every year around this time he thinks about his sister and how things would have been different if he had been more insistent on that August day in 1945.
Today, he sits in front of a blank piece of paper. In front of him are his brushes, a black ink stick, an ink stone, and a water well. He puts a few drops of water on the stone and gently begins to rub the ink stick in the pool of water to create the ink. When the ink is created, he pause to prepare his mind and body. Finally picks up his brush and dips it in the ink.
Hubert Yoshida, Morgan Hill resident and cousin of Teruo Fukui
