Breathing fast and slow

Firm ground is not available ground.   --AR Ammons "Dunes"   When Tomin Harada returned home to Hiroshima from where he had been fighting in Taiwan at the end of World War 2, he found nothing to greet him. No family. No friends. No ruins of any sort to indicate that Hiroshima once existed, and that once upon a time Harada had a life there. Instead of leaving, Harada stayed and became a doctor and participated in Hiroshima's rise, literally, from the ashes. He dedicated his life to restoring human dignity to the survivors of the atomic bomb. Throughout his career, he watched more than 3,000 of his patients die. In the midst of so much death, Harada decided that he needed to cultivate beauty and fill his small corner of the world with it. So, he grew roses.When he died in 1999 at the age of 87, Dr. Harada's Hiroshima roses had been sent to peace activists and citizens in the United States, China, Germany and other parts of the world. At the time of hi