As it happened, Park Board Commissioner Nancy Anderson felt a particular pull for Marj's cause; Anderson was born on August 6, 1945, the very day Hiroshima was bombed. Nancy motioned to accept the proposal immediately so the stone could be dedicated by the fortieth anniversary of the bombing. (Later, Ms. Anderson would become even more involved in peace work and would represent Donald Fraser in the World Conference of Mayors for Peace in Hiroshima.) The Board voted, and the proposal to put the stone in the rock garden was accepted that evening.
Mary Lerman, the Park Board horticulturalist, worked hard to find an appropriate setting for the stone between February and the commemoration in August. She had been studying designs of Japanese foot bridges and came upon one that incorporated a stone post similar in size and shape to the stone Minneapolis was receiving. The foot bridge was designed with two ninety-degree turns in the middle, which according to Japanese lore, prevent evil spirits from following a pedestrian across the bridge. Evil spirits, apparently, travel in straight lines only.
Meanwhile, Mary and Marj were also busy raising money to have the bridge built, and figuring out how the stone was going to get to Minneapolis to begin with. The City of Hiroshima graciously offered to inscribe the stone with the word "peace" in both Japanesese and English, but the transport of the stone was Minneapolis's problem, or more accurately, the problem of the scattering of people now involved in placing the stone in the park. Fortunately, Roger Kramer, an executive with Japan Airlines and a member of the Japanese American Society in Minneapolis, offered to arrange for the shipping of the stone.
Gradually things came together. Mary obtained a matching fund through People for Parks, and Marge matched $1,000 with donations from the peace community. The stone was shipped, the bridge installed, and on the day before the commemoration, sod was rolled out in this newly renovated section of the rock garden. Thanks to pro bono work by a Minneapolis public-relations company, the event was well covered by newspaper and broadcast news.
On August 5 at 6:15 p.m. Central Time, exactly forty years after the bomber Enola Gay dropped a uranium fission bomb on Hiroshima, Mayor Fraser and Park Commissioner Patricia Baker officiated at the ribbon cutting of the rock garden peace bridge. A stone dislodged from the balustrade of the Motoyasu Bridge by the blast in downtown Hiroshima posted the entrance to the footbridge.
Thanks to Marj and many other behind-the-scenes activists, the relationship that began in 1985 with the placement of the relic stone has developed into the formal connection known as the Minneapolis/Hiroshima Friendship Cities Inc. Through cooperation of the St. Paul/Nagasaki Sister City Committee, the park has also received a relic stone from Nagasaki, which has been posted on the opposite end of the bridge from the Hiroshima stone. Marj likes to remind people that what has come forward with the gift and placement of these stones is as much about a shared vision of a peaceful future as it is a reminder of past horrors.
In 1988 Marj and her husband visited Japan again. This time they prepared two albums of news coverage, and Minneapolitans' personal reflections on the peace bridge and the events surrounding it. They brought one album to Hiroshima and one to Nagasaki, and were warmly received in both cities.
Mayor Motoshima of Nagasaki gave letters for Marge to deliver to the two Twin City mayors inviting them to participate in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Conference of Mayors for Peace. Since then, both Minneapolis and St. Paul have sent representatives to the quadrennial conference in 1989, 1993, and 1997. In 1997, Marj helped represent Minneapolis at the convention. As she told Hiroshima citizens representing the Japanese contingent of the the Minneapolis/Hiroshima Friendship Cities, "We're all just 'ordinary' people attempting to do 'extra-ordinary' things."
This August, the rock garden will be officially renamed The Lyndale Park Peace Garden. It is the only park in the United States that has relic stones from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The park has become symbolic of not only peace, but the ability of ordinary people half a world apart to come together for a common goal.
Dave Griffin is a frequent contributor toMinnesota Parent.
