After I got off the train, the sweat dripped off my chin and made some irregular dots on my clothing and even on the ground.   The train station was located in the center of beautifully cultivated rice fields.  Right, left, beyond and behind, green ears of rice covered every piece of land my eyes could see as white scarecrows stood there like ghosts guarding against birds.  It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the beautiful contrast of the different shades of green against the white fluffy clouds. When the wind brought the smell of soil and grass, I really felt I came back to Kagawa, Japan. 
Although Kagawa is not as well-known as Tokyo, it is beautiful place.  If Tokyo is described as a place where the time passes twice as fast as other places, Kagawa is the place where time passes twice as slow as other places.  I realized when I was there that I have indeed missed Kagawa, and memories make me think, "I do not want to leave this place because I love it.”  Kagawa is on Shikoku-island and it is one of the smallest rural prefectures in Japan.  Today, it is developing little by little although the rice fields are still covering the area.  It has been two years since I visited last, and I did not see any changes around the train station, and I hope it will never change ever.  After I gave the ticket to the station staff, I stood there for a while.  I remembered that I used to hate the humid weather, the high temperature and the noise of cicadas and bullfrogs, but during this trip I enjoyed those sounds.
After a few minutes, I found an old man standing in front of the gate of the station.  He was wearing a check-designed shirt and light brown long pants, and he was wiping the sweat from his eyebrows.  It was my grandpa!  I ran to him and hugged him tightly; I didn’t want to let go. 
"Welcome back home, Shoko." He said.
My grandpa smiled at me and hugged me back tightly.  I did not care it was hot nor that he was sweaty.  I just wanted to keep hugging him until I no longer felt lonely nor the strong lack of his presence in my life.  It had only been two years, but it was really long two years for me.



A few days passed and I had stayed at my grandparents' house all that time.  My grandpa, my mother and I left Kagawa and got on the train to visit Nagasaki and Kagoshima, which are located on Kyusyu, the big island located in southern Japan.  It was the first time for me to visit those prefectures in my life.  As many people know, Nagasaki is the last city in the world to experience the second atomic bomb, "Fat Man", in 1945.   But this city is not as popular as Hiroshima because of the number of victims was less than in Hiroshima.  Although the city is on flat land, it is surrounded by high mountains; this is why ferocious heat oppresses its inhabitants.
The Nagasaki Atomic Museum is in Hiromachi city, Nagasaki.  The museum was built in memory of the victims of the atomic bomb that occurred on August 9, 1945, at 11:02:35 am.  At the museum, the replica of the atomic bomb is there, and it is not difficult to understand how the tall bomb could destroy the city in a moment.  Other areas of the museum sheltered artifacts that were destroyed by the power of the atomic bomb such as: working clothes, countless drinking glasses that had melted together, human shadows that etched a shade on a door, a lunch box that became coal, the pictures and photos of injured people, and a clock which had stopped at 11:02. They revealed that the atomic bomb obliterated those lives on Nagasaki in a moment and were shut out from the future. 
After I left the museum, I told my grandpa "I already knew about the atomic bomb and have seen some of the exhibitions from pictures in school textbooks, but I did not know that the atomic bomb had been so cruel to so many innocent people.  I almost cried when I saw the shadow on the door."  I could hear the sound of soft breeze but it did not make me cool at all.
For a while, we did not talk about anything.  No one opened his or her mouth until we caught a cab.  The taxi driver took us to the place where the atomic bomb had been dropped; there was no trace of the lives taken nor of the things that were destroyed.  A tall memorial pole standing over the site was pointing towards the high cloudless summer blue sky. 

Early the morning, we left Nagasaki and moved to Sakurajima, Kagoshima.  Kagoshima is the second southern Japanese prefecture surrounded by some small islands.  Sakurajima ("sakura" means "cherry blossom", and "jima" means "island" in Japanese) used to be one of them; however,  a volcano on the island was erupted on January 13th, 1914 and the lava made it connect to Okuma Peninsula, which is placed western part in Kagoshima. 
About ten minutes after I landed, I saw a big, old fighter airplane on the ground.  I have never seen that kind of airplane in my life, and I liked the shape and color of the fighter airplane for no reason.  My grandpa told me that the Japanese navy (Kushira-Japanese navy) had been based there during the World War.  Who could imagine that this small idyllic island was involved in this fierce battle seventy nine years ago?
Surprisingly, he told me he used to be a member of the special attack unit.   On March 1, 1945, Kushira-city in Sakurajima became a sortie base for kamikaze attacks.  During the next six months, 363 young men died in kamikaze attacks after taking off from Kushira, and another 202 died in conventional attacks. Kushira was the third largest kamikaze sortie base, after Kanoya (829 deaths in kamikaze attacks) and Chiran (439 deaths). Kushira Air Base opened in April 1944, and it was first used for intensive training of crewmen, maintenance personnel, and navigators.  In October 1969, Kushira Town and the Association to Build the Kushira Naval Air Base War Dead Memorial Tower erected the memorial tower. The area around the tower is called Kushira Peace Park, and it was built with the hope to achieve eternal peace and to tell future generations about the tragedy of war.
At first, my grandpa took us to a private house.  There was a garden in front of the house, and big green forest behind it.  I had no idea why we were there and what his purpose was.  After getting out of the cab, he walked toward the house and pushed the doorbell.  After a few minutes, an old woman slowly appeared. When she saw his face, she said “Ah, okay, please wait a minute…” entered inside of the house, and came back with a key in her hand.  "Here you go." she said.
We kept walking, entered the forest, and finally saw a fort closed by a wire mesh-door. 
"During the war..."
The keyhole got rusty a long time age.  While he was opening the lock, he started talking slowly as if he was remembering his experience and telling it to himself. 
"I was here...At that time, I was communicating with the pilots who had left to attack the enemy. I was assigned to hear the 'sound' and check when it would stop.” 
My grandpa went on to explain that when the pilots were in the air, they pressed a button that made a ‘beeping’ sound, and when the pilots collided or were shot down, the ‘beeping’ sound would stop.  
“My job was to record that mechanical sound. I wrote the 'check marks' on the list everyday."
At that moment, words were not strong nor deep enough for me to make a comment.  I felt that silence was the best response I could give to him then.  After he opened the door, I saw what seemed to be an underground tunnel with steps and dirt walls.  Oddly enough, a cold and plaintive wind still blew from this subterranean world and brought with it the smell of musty soil.  He turned on the orange-ish colored light, but it did not help at all. I felt as if I was isolated from the real world and left alone to the hands of fear.  We continued to walk down the stairs until we ended in a rectangular shaped  room.  When I took one step forward, I saw many brownish big moths and a lot of black big centipedes crawling on the clay wall.  By then, I was afraid, and I grabbed my grandpa’s arm right away. I immediately looked up at the roof of the cave to make sure that no bugs were falling from there onto my head, but doing that gave me no relief.
We started a conversation, but our voices echoed inside the room and we spontaneously stopped talking.  No sound was heard but our breathing, and I could easily imagine what the soldiers, like my grandpa, felt after staying in that cave for days on end. I could feel how over the period of days, fear becomes a friend, bugs are no longer scary and darkness becomes ‘light’.  I could almost imagine the soldiers talking about death as part of their everyday conversation.  My grandpa’s face seemed invaded with grief and I hesitated to ask him what he felt inside the cave during the war. After a period of time, I heard footsteps from the back of the passage.  My grandpa was standing in front of me, and my mom was next to me; the taxi was to come soon so I assumed it was the driver. He didn’t appear.   How long had we been here?  I felt I had stayed in the cave for a long time.
"Mom, did you hear any sounds like footstep?"  I asked her timidly.
"Footstep?  No, I didn't.  When did you hear them?"
I called my grandpa and asked my mom if we could leave the cave, so we did.  After my grandpa closed the door, he gave the rusty key back to the old woman.  We said, “Thank you”, and she smiled at us and said, "You can come back whenever you want.  Take care of yourself." 
Now, I think that the steps I heard when the three of us were leaving the cave were the footsteps of the dead pilots and operators trying to remind us to not forget the war.   It was around seventy years ago that World War II ended, however, their spirits are still trapped in the dark cave.  Sometimes I wonder if my grandfather feels the same way.