JAPANESE FRIENDSHIP GARDEN

Although President Franklin Roosevelt declared Pearl Harbor Day a day that “will live in infamy,” we celebrated the common wish for peace of children in the US and Japan with a tour of the Japanese Friendship Garden. Before the tour, we read a report of this day in history, as well as a heartwarming news story entitled, “Japanese attackers, U.S. survivors of Pearl Harbor attack reconcile in Hawaii”. The Garden is the product and shared cultural vision of the Sister Cities of Phoenix and Himeji, Japan. It’s name - Ro Ho En - is a combination of three Japanese words. Ro means Heron, a bird symbol of Himeji City. Ho is the Japanese word for the city of Phoenix bird. En means garden. Himeji became a Phoenix sister city in November 1976 and is one of nine sister cities around the globe. Phoenix and Himeji participate in business, governmental, cultural and educational exchanges that promote international goodwill and understanding. Our guides told us the garden has a “seek and reveal” design so that at each point of the garden you discover something new because of your new perspective. This applies to both sights and sounds (of the several waterfalls). The children’s favorite part was looking at the Koi fish that gathered when we were on a bridge. We also shared the 1,000 origami cranes, photos and letters from the R&S group in Kanagawa, Japan, where we sent 1,000 cranes for R&S International Day of Peace in September (see 9/14/06).