He took me to the walkers, who were having lunch by the road. I opened the car door and sat there a few seconds, to see how they would react to my arrival. I had not been able to get in touch to let them know I was coming back. Carole was the first to recognize me, then all the old walkers jumped up to give me a warm welcome. Morishita wanted to know if Rev. Kato and Pamela knew that I was rejoining. I assured him that they did.

There were now four new walkers: another monk, Ishiyama; Kurimori, a young man from Tokyo but originally from Hiroshima; Bill McCormick from the Center for Creative Non-Violence in DC; and Andy Secrest from Massachusetts. They had just finished lunch and soon were ready to start walking into Anniston.

A noticeable change was evident in the walk. There was more discipline. People walked in rows of two, a set space between each walker. The chant was much slower and seemed much sadder. After a friendly reception at the church, we returned to the Salvation Army for supper, which was a plate of beans. I remembered our friend of the Biloxi vigil. After supper, Mercury gave me some highlights of the walk since I had left: a teach-in at Auburn University; receiving the key to the city of Birmingham from its Black mayor; meeting an elderly man on an isolated road outside Birmingham, who wept as he said that he had waited all his life for something like the peace march to come. He went off and came back with two quart jars of honey from his own hive.

There had also been some trouble: a man who stopped his car and threw rocks at them; someone who didn't stop and hit Carole in the face with a water balloon, at 55 miles an hour. Mercury told me that the walk was definitely changed from the one I'd left two weeks earlier, mainly because of Rev. Ishiyama, a large man, a black belt in judo. Mercury thought he had been sent to enforce discipline and that the non-Japanese were being tested for their sincerity and dedication. Ishiyama had called Mercury down several times for walking too close to a monk. (Interestingly, the walk would later undergo another change toward relaxation of discipline after Ishiyama underwent changes.)

Bill, Andy, and I also talked. They were anxious to hear my explanation of "the big drug bust in Montgomery." One of the Salvation Army employees came into our room and reported that the monks were praying in the TV room, disturbing the TV-watchers. He wanted one of us to go in and tell them to stop praying. I thought this funny, coming from a Salvation Army hostel, where the common complaint is of being forced to pray. After a couple of people asked the monks to come back to our room, it turned out they weren't praying after all, just conversing in Japanese.

    February l4, Anniston to Heflin.
The monks got up early as usual, for prayers. Immediately someone in the next room pounded on the wall. "Shut up! People here are trying to sleep!" The monks continued chanting, very quietly. After breakfast the manager told us we must attend their worship service. Ironic. But we had to leave to walk 15 miles.

An employee advised Bill as we went that we were hurting our cause "by mixing with the coloreds." Four of us had decided to join the civil rights march from Selma and were driven there by SCLC members. First, all of us went to the army base in Anniston for a prayer vigil. Not knowing what was happening, the non-Japanese followed the monks to the entrance gate, where they read a special prayer as we stood in silence. During the l5-minute vigil, four cars of MPs pulled up.

I knew that it was illegal to demonstrate on military property and thought we would be arrested. But the MPs did not even get out of their cars. That night the non-Japanese told the Japanese that while we supported the prayer vigil, we thought that all of us should be consulted before other acts of civil disobedience were carried out. We tried to show them the necessity of open meetings and open decision-making.

After the vigil, the remaining six walkers began the walk to Heflin, arriving in early afternoon. With unclear directions, we took a few wrong turns. Two patrol cars and two pickups stopped to tell us we were off our parade route, threatening to arrest us. We straightened out the technicalities and proceeded to our reception at the Southern Baptist Assembly. Then we took our gear to a vacant rental house, left it, and came back to the Assembly for supper.

After supper we were special guests at a local SCLC rally supporting the Selma-Montgomery march. Conections between the arms race and social program cuts were clearly made. Now our four delegates came back from that march and reported that they walked out of Selma with more than 5,000 people and crossed The Bridge. They beat their prayer drums and chanted; emotions were high, many clapping in time with the drums.

   February l5, Heflin, AL to Carrollton, GA
It was cold and rained the entire day. We walked 20 miles. At first, we saw just the "Welcome to Georgia" highway sign. Then we saw about ten people gathered by it to really welcome us to Georgia. One was our national coordinator, Pamela Blockey O'Brien. We had talked on the phone so much that I felt as if we had met already though actually Morishita was the only one to have met her before.

We said goodbye to Jeannie from Anniston Seventeenth Street Baptist Church. She had driven our support vehicle for the past three days. Her parting words were, "Man, you all are just about the prayingest people I've seen in my whole life!"

   February l6, Carrollton to Villa Rica
There was heavy rain all day long, with lightning and thunder added in the afternoon. The highway and streets were flooded, almost impassable for cars. We assembled at a shopping center where we were joined by many people. Five students decided to walk with us to Villa Rica even in this bad weather.

We arrived at the Villa Rica town hall at 3 p.m., exactly on schedule, and were welcomed by the mayor and a few town employees. Since our hosts had not yet arrived, we transferred our gear from the Carrollton cars to the meeting room in the town hall. While we were running in and out of the rain, the town employees were serving us pots of hot coffee and trays of doughnuts.

At our hosts' house Carole, Mercury, and I discussed what we felt was one more division among the walkers -- that between the Japanese and non-Japanese walkers. I still felt prejudice against me. Carole and Mercury sensed bad feelings against them because they slept together and also because they lived a hippie lifestyle. Morishita was still friendly and cheerful toward us. But we felt his leadership role was being challenged by Ishiyama. Morishita had been a monk for twenty-seven years, Ishiyama for fifteen, and both had been involved in significant peace walks recently. We felt that Morishita was being pressured by Ishiyama to make this walk more Buddhist.

Kurimori, the most recent arrival, could speak very little English. He was friendly to us, but understandably stayed closer to the other Japanese. He said that he was a "seeker", and not necessarily Buddhist: he drew from Christian beliefs as well. He was dedicated to disarmament and had left a high-salaried job as an architect in Tokyo to join the peace march after a childhood friend from Hiroshima died of second-generation radiation. We wished that we could have communicated with him better.

Carole, Mercury, and I decided that we could not continue to New York in this manner. If pacifists from the East and the West could not come together to work for nuclear disarmament, then our beliefs were a lie. We decided that we would talk to Morishita the next night.

At the meeting that night, Carole asked the Japanese to sing a peace song in their language. This is the first time that we heard "No More A-Bombs" (which we would all learn later). It was written in l958 and was the Japanese equivalent of "We Shall Overcome"; it ends, "People of the World take care that the third atomic bomb never comes." My mind flashed to the words on the monument in Hiroshima Park which is dedicated to those who died in the fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Rest in peace, for we will not repeat the sin."

   February l7, Villa Rica to Douglasville
The rain continued.

We took our first break at l0 o'clock at the court house in Villa Rica where we were welcomed by the mayor and county employees. The mayor read a short statement. Morishita presented him with our booklet of photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and with the peace declaration of the mayor of Hiroshima.

Before we left the courthouse, the police told us that the judge was not as receptive of our visit as the mayor had been. The judge said that our chant had disturbed the jury and he would hold us in contempt of court if we continued to chant as we left. We heard the news, but did not have to discuss it. We left the courthouse chanting our Buddhist prayer for peace.

We arrived at the host church in Douglasville about 3:30, proceeding to another church for showers. While Morishita and I were waiting our turn for the shower, we engaged in a rare discussion on religion. Morishita and the other monks never tried to convert us to Buddhism. In one city, a newspaper reporter had tried to focus the interview on Buddhism. Morishita had stopped him, saying "The monks and nuns of Nipponzan Myohoji could be walking around the world to convert people to Buddhism. But what would it gain us if the world was destroyed by nuclear war? We walk around the world to talk about the dangers of nuclear weapons." But now we talked about religion. Morishita said that it was necessary that people in the peace movement draw strength from sources other than themselves. This was especially true of peace walkers who walk two thousand miles in six months. I listened to him, but silently questioned his ideas. By the time we reached New York, I had come to agree.

After supper that evening, Carole, Mercury, and I asked Morishita to meet with us in private to discuss what we believed to be splits within the walk. The four of us assembled in a small room for an hour meeting, which at times was tearful. We knew that the only thing that could prevent our reaching New York was internal division and vowed that this would not happen. We told Morishita that we felt our efforts had not been appreciated by the monks, simply because we were not monks. The walk itself was the best part of our day; after the walking we felt we were treated as second class. We felt that our commitment to peace was always in question.

We knew that the monks considered the walk as their prayer; the place where we stayed for the night was considered their temple. We were always on guard lest some action of ours would be offensive to them. Any insult to them was only accidental, arising from our ignorance of their customs.

Morishita said that he too was aware of the tensions between the Japanese and non-Japanese. He saw the tensions as the result of personalities rather than culture. (It was hard to believe that these personality differences just happened to develop along the lines that they did.) He said that he was caught in the middle of the conflict. After this meeting the Japanese would prematurely, to begin a group meeting, but asked that Morishita convey our feelings to the other Japanese.

It was a business-like meeting, chaired by Morishita. Debate was slowed by the fact that Morishita had to translate from English to Japanese and vice versa. But this was one of our most beneficial meetings. We decided that Bill and Morishita would be our treasurers. We had a treasury of a little over one hundred dollars. Any expenditure of over fifteen dollars would require group approval.

The most emotional issue concerned Mercury's status as an "illegal alien". Sakamaki was the most vocal in demanding Mercury's nationality. Mercury said that he considered himself a citizen of the planet but that he understood Sakamaki's concern. He had considered going to the German embassy for proper visas. If the question of citizenship was not clarified by the time we left Atlanta, he would leave us, from fear of arrest and deportation. We could not engage in any "peace action" at a military base without the fear of the deportation of one of our members.

We were disappointed to find that we'd have only three rest days in Atlanta -- none a total rest day -- instead of the week planned.

The topic of food was also discussed. Up to now, Carole and Mercury had bought food, often with their own money, when food was not provided by our host community. We reaffirmed our pledge at the beginning of the walk: if food was not provided, we would fast; if shelter was not provided, we would sleep by the side of the road. Also, since food was the basic sustainer of life, it was important that everyone participate in its preparation.

The remaining agenda item was the need to have a rotating group leader -- someone who would be responsible for liaison between our group and the local hosts. It was emphasized that the group leader was not to make any major decision affecting the group without consulting us all first.

The meeting was adjourned. Feelings had been strong again; overall, people were pleased with the meeting's results. Levels of responsibility had been well-defined.

I stayed up past midnight preparing my presentation for Atlanta.

   February l8, Douglasville to Austell
This was the fourth straight day we walked in cold rain. Almost all of us are sick. The prayer drum was accidentally broken. I talked with a reporter from the "Atlanta Journal" for over an hour. She had spent most of the morning talking with Pamela and left with over thirty pages of notes. The paper decided not to run a story but did publish a photo of our arrival in Austell. It was printed on the page opposite the comics.

   February l9, Austell to Atlanta
The sun finally shone, but it was still cold. My father was driving through, we had sat up late in his motel talking, and he drove me to the assembly point to begin today's walk. He joined us in our prayer circle, but he was not physically able to walk with us. We said good-bye and he continued his trip to New Orleans.

We were joined by about forty people for our walk into Atlanta. Pamela was with us, as well as many activists in the local disarmament movement. We were to be met by a representative from the mayor's office (perhaps even Andrew Young) at the inner city park at 4:00.

It would mean a lot to receive support from this other Andy, the United States ambassador to the United Nations during the first Special Session on Disarmament (SSD-I).

We arrived at the park a few minutes before 4 o'clock and were met by a representative from Mayor Young's office. He read a statement from Young strongly supporting our goals, and our march. He also made us honorary citizens of Atlanta. We appreciated his official endorsement, remembered SSD-I, and thought wistfully of what might have been accomplished there had the NATO and Warsaw Treaty countries really supported it. Instead both held large war games in Europe and drew world press attention away from the U.N.

After supper, host Mark Reeves drove us to Pamela's, where we had our first and only meeting with our route coordinator. We talked mostly about who was going where (which press conference, which church service, etc.) and about other events for the Atlanta area.

Pamela requested that each of us have a short presentation for our program at Emory University. Different topics for the program were selected and assigned. I was to prepare a statement on civil defense.

Carole talked with Pamela privately about the still existing friction between the Japanese and non-Japanese. Mercury also talked with her individually about how to solve the problem of his passport.

We took turns reading letters from people we had seen and spoken with. We especially enjoyed reading letters from school children. Their letters sometimes began, "Dear Sore Feet." Primary school students sent us pictures they had drawn expressing what peace meant to them. All of the letters were forwarded to the United Nations. go to page17