Doug went to a nearby restaurant and brought back two dozen steamed crabs. After we ate all of them, we walked back to the restaurant and bought crab cakes. We lived near Baltimore when we were five years old and eating crab cakes in Baltimore on Saturday afternoon was one of our fondest memories of that time.

   May 23, Walk through Baltimore
We had the morning off and I slept late. At l:30 we assembled near the Methodist church for a five-mile walk through Baltimore. It was cold; a heavy rain had begun. With cold rain, relatively few local people joined us, but some two hundred still came. We had expected more on a Sunday afternoon.

Again Liz McAllister and others from Jonah House were there. Her husband Phillip Berrigan was still in prison for a CD action, and his brother Dan away. As we passed various government buildings, we would stop while Liz told us of that agency's complicity in war preparation. At the courthouse we were told that preparation for nuclear war was completely within the proper legal framework.

   May 24, Baltimore to Joppatowne
We walked 19 miles today. What distinguished this day for me was fasting on a walking day. We had neither food nor water. It was cool and cloudy, so we could walk fast. The weather also helped make not drinking water tolerable.

We were joined by a few more folks from Baltimore, one man saying he would join to New York but leaving at lunch. We were more than a hundred now.

We hadn't seen Michael since arriving in Baltimore; that evening I learned why. Someone saw him smoking pot Friday and reported it to Morishita. That evening, in the course of a long argument, Morishita told Michael he could remain on the walk if he promised not to use pot again. Michael rejected anyone's right to make such a demand and left without saying goodbye to anyone, not even to Jimmy, with whom he had arrived at Twin Oaks.

With the fast, there was no supper that night, and the evening service was attended by only about twenty. But the minister was friendly and supportive. I heard a radio report that 400,000 had demonstrated in Tokyo the day before against nuclear weapons.

   May 25, Joppatowne to Aberdeen
Cool, cloudy weather made the day's 16 miles relatively easy. The schedule meant something special to Doug and me, for we would walk by the Aberdeen Proving Grounds today, where the army tests much new military technology.

Our family lived next to the APG for a year when I was five. I don't remember much about the base except that soldiers would often come to our house for a drink of water.

This morning Morishita told me that our hosts in Aberdeen called last night to request we not hold a vigil at the Proving Grounds, saying it would alienate local people and harm the local peace effort. Morishita said we would defer to their request but would still walk to the base; he did not say what action was planned.

Our hosts bought us breakfast in Gino's fast food restaurant, which was completely filled with peace walkers except for a few local farmers who ate in silence.

Later in the day Mary Jane told me that someone had stolen two large American flags from the front of the church where we had slept. They were there at 6 a.m. but gone at 8:00, when we left. It was pretty clear that someone among us was responsible for the theft; the minister became unhappy now.

So there seemed to be someone trying to discredit us in local communities -- this was the second incident in less than a week. Mary Jane spoke with some of the monks about a government plant, but the monks thought it was more likely an undisciplined peace walker. In any case, this was the last such incident.

At lunch there was no talk of the army base. I wondered whether the monks had decided not to go there. I wondered also about the kind of peace group that would ask us not to pray at the gate of the base.

That afternoon we didn't have to walk far before turning off route 1 to follow the road to the proving grounds. It was a four-lane road going nowhere except to the base. During the morning there had been a lone police car driving back and forth to keep an eye on us. Now it was evident that all 125 of us were walking to the base, a two-mile walk along the road. Then I saw what master strategists the monks were. Yoshida motioned us to slow down and to walk in more disciplined formation. We were all chanting loudly, and our feelings were like those felt when marching on the Capitol building. Soon four police cars were driving past.

Yoshida stopped the march 250 yards short of the gate for a "rest break", though we hadn't walked far since lunch. We sat beside the road for about 15 minutes and did what we usually did at rest breaks, sitting in small circles chatting and passing around bottles of water. Meanwhile more and more police cars were pulling up to the gate. MPs had also arrived and were lined up across the road. It looked to me that Yoshida was setting up a confrontation rather than avoiding one. After the police were evidently in place, Yoshida got us back into disciplined formation. We again walked slowly and stopped at the gate. One MP approached, identifying himself as chief of base security. He ordered us to disperse and read all the federal regulations we would be violating by entering the base. After he had finished, Yoshida bowed slightly and led the walk away from the gate. But instead of walking back as we had come we turned onto a small dirt road running along the base fence. In this manner we kept the police and MPs guessing all afternoon about our actions.

One man told me at supper that evening that he had listened to his police scanner radio. He wanted to know what we had done because we had tied up every police officer in the county all afternoon. But we had done nothing illegal: just walked along the side of a road.

The dirt road beside the base eventually led us into central Aberdeen. We walked through the business section and through a residential area. All the monks except Sakamaki and Chanti, and most of the women and children, were hosted in private homes. The rest of us were split up between two different churches, each of which had its potluck supper and evening program.

Sakamaki and Chanti stayed at my church, along with most of the New Orleans walkers. Chanti, a few months younger than Sakamaki, was the youngest monk in Nipponzan Myohoji; from Sri Lanka, he was the order's only black monk. They joked a lot together, calling each other "brother". Sakamaki, senior now, led the evening prayer and next morning's prayer. It was the first time he had done so, and it was clearly an important event to him.

Our hosts had expected many more people, so we had lots of food at supper. I heaped up on my paper plate as much food as possible. A woman stopped me as I walked past, saying in a sincere manner, "You know, you can go back for seconds." In fact I went back twice for equally large amounts.

I wished the table conversation had matched the food for quality. Sandy was debating the Vietnam war with local people at one table. The man across from me worked as pharmacist at the Proving Grounds and had heard of our maneuvers at the gate. He described his job as studying the effects of drugs on animals. Doug asked whether the army was testing a chemical or biological weapon. He answered "no" but we wondered what he was testing then.

After supper, a few of us went to the parking lot. Almost every car had an APG (Aberdeen Proving Ground) sticker on its rear bumper. No wonder they had requested we not go to APG to pray.

Later we cleaned up the room and set up chairs for the program. The minister said he had announced to the church that the program would be a discussion on Buddhism. Sakamaki agreed, but we were annoyed because we had also talked about disarmament at our programs; but we were hopeful he would talk about Buddhism as it relates to world peace.

But Sakamaki allowed the minister to direct the content, and he asked for a demonstration of their prayer. So Sakamaki and Chanti prayed for ten minutes. Then the two of them answered questions about reincarnation, how their robes were made, etc., etc., etc. It got embarrassing to us.

After almost an hour of this, I walked up to the minister and whispered that we would like to spend a few minutes talking about disarmament. He said it was late and there was no time left. I told him I would like to speak for just five minutes and then began at the first opportunity. I acknowledged it was good to learn more about a different religion. But the purpose of our walk was to encourage discussion of disarmament. Then everybody got up to leave. go to page 48