Across the bay I could see the mountainous island of Miya Jima, green and beautiful in the bright May sun. Over there, in her famous shrine which at high tide seems to float upon the surface of the sea, sleeps the goddess, Itsukushima-hime-no-mikoto, famed and feared for her jealous nature. I could only hope she would not begrudge us our brief moment of glory.
When the priest had finished, I made a short speech, and then mochi—pink and white rice cakes of ceremonial significance—were tossed to the crowd. The moment had come: it was high noon. I caught Yotsuda-san’s eye, and nodded. He smiled, bowed, and signaled to a workman. I suddenly thought, Well, Yotsuda, if this launching is a bust, I’ll be busted, too—but you’ll probably have to revive the good old custom of harakiri.
“Ikimasho!—Let’s go!” I shouted. Then everything happened very fast. Jessica, standing on tiptoe, cut with a tiny golden ax the ribbon which symbolically bound the Phoenix to the shore; Barbara swung mightily and broke the traditional bottle across the bow, cutting her finger in the process; a workman knocked out the last block. We paused for a breathless moment, and then began our slide, picking up speed as we descended rapidly, until we hit the blue waters of the Inland Sea with a grand and noble splash.
From the boat Ted and I could hear mingled American cheers and Japanese banzais floating out across the water, as our Phoenix glided, riding free on the placid bay—where she promptly rammed into the side of a Japanese sampan, and spilled the too curious occupants into the drink.
So now we had our boat, and she floated. It was another stage in a long-term dream, a dream which had been born in my seventeenth summer. With my first pay check from my first job I had bought a book: Joshua Slocum’s account of the building of the beloved Spray, and of his singlehanded voyage around the world. That was the beginning.
But between a dream and a deed often lie decades of doldrums.
During the next two decades I lived what might be called a normal academic life, acquiring three degrees (all in anthropology), one wife, a daughter, two sons, a growing waistline, and a suspicion that life was pulling a fast one on me.
It was not until 1951 that my dream of ocean cruising returned in strength. At this time I was associate professor of anthropology at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio—where the nearest body of water is the local pond, three feet deep—and head of the department of physical growth at the Fels Research Institute.
That year the National Academy of Sciences asked me, as an expert in the field of human growth and development, to set up a scientific study in the atom-bombed city of Hiroshima. I accepted and went to Japan, together with Barbara and our three children: Tim, now fifteen; Ted, thirteen; and Jessica, seven. For the next three years I studied the effects of atomic radiation on the growth of the surviving children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Now, for the first time in my life, I lived within sight and sound of the sea, even though it was the relatively gentle Inland Sea of Japan. Every day, as I drove to the laboratories of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, I passed busy shipyards, where wooden ships, both large and small, were being built with age-old skills. Oyster boats, fishing sampans, and trading schooners dotted the blue waters of Hiroshima Wan. Gradually, as I settled into my research and got my bearings, I began to look about with a very specific purpose in mind.