First came a press conference at St. Joseph's AME Zion Church. Morishita and I found ourselves with all the groups working with the Durham freeze movement -- they had never been in one room together before: chalk one up for our walk. A dozen groups or so were represented, in two broad categories: single-issue freeze groups and disarmament groups wanting to connect the freeze with militarism and militarism with other social issues. The second category folks reasoned that peace would be achieved only by working for social justice. The first group emphasized practical politics.

Before that day the two alliances had been working separately, even circulating two different freeze petitions. Now each group was given a chance to read a statement, and a chance to talk about their recent activities and projected plans. Later I was told that the peace walk indeed succeeded in bringing a good measure of unity, especially for their effort to build support for the June l2th rally. Their members attended some of our programs in Durham and saw a handful of people from different countries and cultures walking 2,000 miles to the United Nations to work for the success of SSD-II. Our programs and our example helped awaken people to the fact that all must be serious about peace work. We had to set aside differences to work to disarm nuclear weapons.

The stakes were too high to allow ourselves to be divided along organizational lines. So, despite the fact that the unity of the walk itself was at a low level during our Durham visit, it was apparent that the peace walkers made up a close unit.

At 5:00 we all came to the Quaker House for medical check-ups. I was surprised to find that my blood pressure and pulse rate were normal despite my tiredness. Everyone else also checked out okay. The doctor, a PSR member who volunteered her services free, spoke with Sakamaki about his diet:
"What about chips?"
"No, chips are bad for you."
"No chips," he repeated sadly. "What about coke?"
"No, cokes are bad for you too."
"No cokes??" he repeated with evev more sadness. "What about cookies?"
"Cookies are okay."

This cheered him up somewhat. From that time on, I did not see him eat another potato chip or drink another coke. He did not even mention them again. All the monks were proud of their discipline.

The potluck supper was brought in and served. During this Carole, "the mad hatter", made us all paper hats from newspapers. As people came in to join us, they were given paper hats too. This effort to reduce tension worked brilliantly; all of us sat cross-legged on the floor, laughing at our appearance as we ate.

Molly Brown arrived in the midst of this craziness to join us for a month. A sophomore in anthropology at Emory University, she had attended our program there six weeks ago. After some thought, she had decided to drop out of the spring quarter to join us. Nineteen-year-old Molly could not have arrived at a more welcome time and turned out to have a big influence on the walk's character.

Peace activists from across the state were gathering at the Quaker House that night. We had met most of those from west of Durham. Many people told us that the walk had a big impact on their localities, strengthening support for disarmament. Soon the room was packed, and the first of two meetings got started.

We walkers went into the kitchen for a private meeting, which lasted two hours and was sometimes full of tension. The main issue had to be the renewed division between the Japanese and the others. It had been worse before, because the divisive forces now were largely from outside our group and we realized we couldn't change them much. But we thought the monks should know how we felt and take steps to correct the situations which arose. Most of the monks pretended not to understand. Finally Kajo (Ishiyama) spoke up in our behalf. He restated what we had said: the walk was initiated by the Buddhists but was now an interfaith walk. So that issue was once more resolved. But it would reappear in Washington and be with us from there to New York City.

We turned to the Norfolk schedule. We had been promised ten days to rest in Atlanta and then in Norfolk instead. We were willing to compromise with the monks on the number of days; but, just yesterday, we learned we would get probably only one rest day. Nine days of activities had been planned, including a three-day prayer fast (Kurimori's idea). Morishita had requested this without consulting any of the non-Japanese. Most of the activities had been publicized so it was too late to change them -- all we could do was request that Morishita not add any more activities and that all be involved in decisions.

About ll:30 came a call from Vicki Casey, a friend coordinating the walk through Goldsboro, N.C. She said we would have to leave Goldsboro by ll:l5 a.m. to arrive in Norfolk for our 4 p.m. press conference: we would have to miss the bimonthly vigil at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base with nuclear bombers. I told her the walkers would try to work out an arrangement in order to take part in the noon vigil.

   April 7, Durham to Raleigh
The weather was warm and everyone's health better, apparently. It felt good to be walking at a fast pace after the hectic rest day the day before, even if a man in a pickup with a loudspeaker drove past several times, telling us he wanted a war.

We walked down the main street of Raleigh, past NC State University and the puzzled faces of many students, thence to the United Church of Christ for our official reception, arriving almost precisely on time. We were seated in front of a full church; there were especially many school children. Officials from Governor Hunt's Office and from the mayor and city council welcomed us. The rest of the program was mostly in Japanese, with English translation following. Then school children came forward to read poems and short stories about peace which they had written, and to present us with gifts: flowers, candy, a thousand paper cranes.

Students from four junior high schools had worked for two months folding the cranes. One teacher had read the story of Sadako to her class and her students had then wanted to make the cranes as a gift to the peace walk. Other classes soon decided to help when they heard the story, which was explained during the program. It is told in Fellowship of Reconciliation literature:
"A Japanese tradition holds that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have a fervently-held desire fulfilled. Sadako Sasaki, only a young girl when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima in l945, knew the belief but had no wish pressing enough to fold the thousand cranes until ten years after the end of the war. Then, normally healthy all her life until then, she declined into radiation sickness and her remaining days were in a hospital.

"From her bed Sadako set out to fold a thousand cranes as a prayer for peace. At first it was easy enough but as the illness grew worse each fold became an immense labor. When she died in l956 she had been able to complete only 744. From her deathbed she held up one crane and said in a quiet voice, 'I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.' The story of l2-year old Sadako became widely known, much the way the story of Anne Frank became known in Europe and America. Others took up her unfinished task."

The monks were then asked to come forward to receive the children's gifts. The rest of the walkers looked at each other knowingly. The monks stood up, hesitantly. But Kajo smiled widely and gestured for all the walkers to join them. The gifts of a thousand cranes, poems, stories, and posters were sent ahead to the New York office, later to be presented to the UN General Assembly's second Special Session on Disarmament (SSD-II).

Following program, all were served Japanese tea. (The Japanese had once told us they actually preferred the taste of English tea.) There were also the usual media interviews. The TV crew now had the interviewer that they had sent for earlier. We also got to look at the local newspaper, with the article about the peace walk. On the same page was a report that Ronald Reagan would address the UN Special Session. He said there had been a "drum beat of criticism across the land" against his previous decision not to attend. We were happy with his choice of words, and happy too that he would be there. He had thus credited the peace movement with forcing his presence.

Now a five-mile walk included a powerful prayer vigil outside Central Prison with its gas chamber. We were gratified to see hundreds of waving hands at distant barred windows when they heard our chant, confirming human solidarity. I feel we are all on death row and even inside a "gas chamber" with nuclear weapons. We reached the Church of the Good Shepherd, with two hours until supper. We hung the chain of cranes from the cafeteria ceiling and talked for the first time with the others about the change in our Goldsboro-Norfolk schedule.

We thought it very important to be present at the SAC base vigil, one in the NC Peace Network series. This was to have been one of our major activities in Norrth Carolina. Peace groups here were demanding that nuclear weapons be removed from the base. Goldsboro may nearly have been victim of a 24-megaton nuclear weapon. On Jan. 24, l96l a B-52 bomber crashed in a field near Faro, 12 miles from Goldsboro. The Pentagon reported the accident and that there had been two unarmed 24-megaton hydrogen bombs aboard. In Dec. l980, Reuters news agency reported that five of the six firing mechanisms had tripped on one of the bombs; the Pentagon then said that the two separate mechanisms intended to prevent accidental detonation had worked as they were supposed to, but it was learned that considerable uranium from the other bomb was still missing, presumably deep in the dirt; the state of its firing triggers was never reported. NC Governor Jim Hunt and Congressman Charles Whitley had been concerned. The walkers were aware of all this.

Now our coordinators in Goldsboro and in Norfolk both wanted us to attend their scheduled events. We hated too to skip the 200 miles between the cities, but nothing could be done about that So we decided to divide our group and draw lots to determine who would stay in Goldsboro to vigil and who would leave early for Norfolk, hoping this would satisfy our coordinators. Before reaching Goldsboro we found it would not.

After this discussion we had yet a few minutes before supper to talk with the Raleigh people. Many were members of Pax Christi. We also talked with three NC State students who were from Europe, who informed us of the peace movement in their countries. go to page 33