The vigil drew a lot of attention today, especially from tourist groups. Lots of foreign press were present. I did an interview with a Tokyo radio station. Around noon, the park was filled with people eating their lunches.

This was Friday. Sunday would be a rest day. Doug called a friend from Chapel Hill, Pat Grady, who now lives in DC. We arranged to visit with Pat and Sue on Sunday. Doug also made arrangements to work with Bill Sunday morning at the Community for Creative Non-Violence, helping cut up vegetables for the noon meal at the soup kitchen.

It felt good now to be able to look beyond the fast. Fasting heightened my senses but also left me weak

_ We were annoyed that the DC press had completely ignored our arrival. Worse, the Washington Post had grossly misrepresented our prayer vigil. Only a small reference was made about our presence at the White House -- in an article about Nancy Reagan, who had planted a tree in front of the White House yesterday. The article said she could attend the ceremony only briefly because the Secret Service thought she might be threatened by a "noisy group of demonstrators". The press asked who we were, and the White House staff press spokesperson told them we were a "bunch of dancing Hare Krishnas". I'm sure the White House police knew who we were; it would have been very simple as well for the Post reporter to have come to us to see who we were.

The New York Times picked up the story and ran it the next day. The Times reported also that Reagan's tree planting was disrupted by a "bunch of dancing Hare Krishnas". One would think that you could expect more accurate reports from two such prestigious newspapers.

The day's vigil went by quickly and smoothly. We had heard that nearby government office workers were complaining to park police about the constant drum beat. We were more than happy to have disrupted their work routine and reminded them that people were very concerned about the presence of nuclear weapons.

At seven o'clock, we ended our vigil for the third and final time. This time we were all driven to the Nipponzan Myohoji temple. This was my first visit.

From the outside it looked like a modest brick house except that in the front yard was a gigantic slab of granite as tall as the building. In the granite was carved, in Japanese, the Buddhist prayer for peace._ We took off our shoes as we entered the temple. More than sixty pairs of running shoes were left on the front porch. We chanted "Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo" three times before entering. We also chanted this before entering each of the two small front rooms and finally the worship area itself.

Then we were before the altar and immediately began the prayer and the Lotus Sutra. I had been looking forward to visiting their temple but was not at all prepared for what I saw. It was like a scene from the movie "Shangri-la". The altar covered the entire front of the room and was ornate and overpowering. Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo was written in large gold letters at the top. The large Buddha statue was surrounded by gold ornaments, fresh fruit, and fresh flowers.

Two small elderly nuns were standing on each side of the altar, each beating a very large drum with a stick in each hand. The sticks were heavy but somehow they kept striking the drumheads regularly. We beat our hand drums._ After half an hour, this prayer was over and Yoshida talked with us a few minutes. He said that now we had finished a three-day prayer fast in front of the White House and there was no obvious immediate result. But "we have chanted Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo in front of the White House for three days. Many seeds for peace have been planted. We must wait for them to grow." The Buddhists really did believe that simply chanting the prayer was itself a powerful act

_ Then small tables were brought into the room. The Japanese served the rest of us. We had bowls of soup. It was delicious and there was plenty. Many of us stayed at the temple only a short time after the meal.

I had not had a chance to talk with Morishita at any length since arriving in DC. We talked at last for a few minutes that night; he was very interested to hear about yesterday's Senate hearing. He did not know anything about our schedule beyond DC. Tomorrow we would have a program in Lafayette Park, then a five-mile walk past embassies of coutries which have nuclear weapons. Sunday was still to be a rest day.

Doug tried to get through to Kurimori that Sunday would be a rest day. Finally, Kurimori's face broke into understanding, and he fell promptly to the floor, kicking his feet in the air and laughing uncontrollably. He kept repeating, "Rest day! Rest day!" Kurimori had worried about how he would hold up under the three-day prayer fast but had come through it quite as well as the rest of us, as far as I could see.

More than half the walkers returned to the Methodist Church, among them Kajo, telling me he had "escaped" for the second time in three days. He and I talked some about the Nipponzan Myohoji temple. He spoke of it with much pride.

Then he told me about a Cherokee Indian who had come to DC to protest the construction of the temple, saying the temple was being built on Cherokee burial ground and staying to talk with the monks for a few days. Kajo said that the man left the site chanting Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.

This evening I thought of Patrick O'Neill, a good friend from Greenville, NC, because today he was to have two trials for civil disobedience. Earlier this spring he had been arrested for blocking traffic into Ft. Bragg, NC. On Good Friday he was arrested for pouring his own blood on the walls of the Pentagon. I later learned that both trials were postponed. His trial for CD at Ft. Bragg came up first and he received ninety days in a federal prison. He did not get an active sentence for the Pentagon arrest.

   May l5, Walk through Washington, DC
This was really the last day of our activities in Washington. So far we had gotten almost no support from local peace groups. Our local office had estimated that a large number of people would walk with us today and that about 250 would join us for the walk to New York City and the United Nations. After the miserable support of the last four days, we had no hopes of achieving such a large number of new walkers. This afternoon we were to hold a rally at Lafayette Park, then walk five miles past the embassies of nuclear weapons countries.

The people who stayed at the Methodist Church fixed lunch for today, since those at the temple had prepared supper last night. We were driven to the park and had lunch before the rally.

Several hundred people had come -- more than I had expected -- among them some that we had met earlier. Rose Mary O'Connor from Norfolk and Jim Trowbridge from Kiln, Miss. were there to walk with us. There were several speakers, but most didn't talk long, and the rally was mainly music, which I enjoyed: one folk group was memorable not so much because of the good music they played but because of who they were. The four musicians were from the Catholic Worker house in DC. Two members, Chris and Marsha, would walk with us to New York. Another CW resident, not part of the band, John, also joined us to the United Nations.

We began the walk after the rally, walking slowly. It took several hours for the five miles, though there wasn't a lot of traffic that Saturday. The march was long, with almost as many marchers with us as in Chapel Hill. We passed many embassies --the British, Soviet, French, and Chinese of course included. Many embassy employees came out to wave.

Tonight supper was prepared by the community of the Center for Creative Non-Violence, CCNV. They prepared the entire meal from food they had gathered from dumpsters at area grocery stores. CCNV fed hundreds of the city's homeless daily in this way. The supper was good.

After supper many walkers left to spend the night at the temple. Less than twenty remained at the church. We relaxed to "A Prairie Home Companion" on the radio. Yolando ("Yo") Jordan, a West German woman on the L.A. walk, took our pledge -- to leave a building cleaner than on arrival -- very seriously. It was not enough that the floors be swept. She took several hours to clean the floors on her hands and knees. She woke up a few people who had gone to sleep early in order to clean the area where they were sleeping. Yo had sold her house in order to raise money to join the peace walk. Yo did everything with an unbelievable amount of energy and a sense of urgency. As she scrubbed the floor, I had the impression she thought that if she missed a dirty spot, disamament would not be achieved. go to page 45