To continue the story about the town of Fredericksburg…

Fredericksburg is the birthplace of Admiral Chester Nimitz (and if you don’t know who that was, shame on you for not paying attention in history, go google it now!), and they are very proud of their native son.  There is a Nimitz museum housed in an old hotel building that his father (I think maybe it was his grandfather) had founded and owned from the founding of the town in the 1860′s.  I took a picture of the hotel, but for some reason, it didn’t turn out.

After you complete your tour of the Nimitz museum, you walk outside along a pathway that will eventually lead us to the Museum of the Pacific War (more on that in tomorrow’s post).  But just before you get to the Pacific War Museum, you pass through a huge courtyard surrounded by a stone wall that probably stands 4.5 to 5 foot tall.  This is the memorial wall that Admiral Nimitz requested be built behind the hotel building, a place to honor the men, women, units, and ships that served in the Pacific War with him.   As you can see in the slideshow coming up, this place has the feel of the Vietnam Memorial in many ways.  There is a plaque for each unit, a plaque for each ship (stating when it was commissioned, decommissioned, when and if it was sunk, how many crew died during the war, etc).  There are also individual plaques for many of the men and women that died during the war.  The pathway that leads you around the courtyard is made of bricks that carry the names of the individual service men.  At the far end of the courtyard is a beautiful fountain, made from some sort of screw from an aircraft carrier (I can’t remember the exact name of the piece).

It was a very moving place to be, in that courtyard, surrounded by the names and faces of so many heroes of our past, literally walking on a path paved by their deeds.  If I lived closer to that town, I would go back there often, and someday I would read every one of those plaques.  Because the truth is, time did not permit us to read each and every one, and that left me feeling like I was doing a disservice to these people.  They deserved to have me stop and read their plaques, every single one of them.

At the far end of the courtyard, off to the side, there stands an opening with a wooden gate.  This leads us to the Japanese Peace Garden.  To understand the full meaning and impact of this garden, you need to know a bit more history.  Admiral Heihachirô Togo was one of Japan’s greatest naval admirals (I originally thought he fought during WWII, but further research taught me that he lived much earlier, and died in 1934), and he was greatly admired by Admiral Nimitz.

After World War II, Admiral Nimitz helped to spearhead a movement to save admiral Togo’s flagship in order to preserve it as a museum.  He published an article in the Japanese magazine Bungei Shunju saying, “I do hope that appropriate measures will be taken for the ship, so that the accomplishments of Admiral Togo, whom Sailors all over the world admire, can be remembered.”  The payment he received for writing the article became the first donation to the Admiral Togo memorial fund, and thus started a movement that saved the famed ship. (Reference: Navy News Stand).

Now, this action, his donation to the memorial fund, greatly moved the Japanese people.  It was a honorable act, and one not really expected from the American victors of the War.  In honor of this act, the Japanese people donated a sum of money to Fredericksburg to build a Peace Garden (see the slideshow below).  It is a beautiful, serene place that feels as though you have stepped outside of our own country for a moment.  There is a zen sand garden area that is properly raked.  There is a replica of Admiral Togo’s study that was built in Japan, disassembled, and shipped to the US, where it was reassembled by the original Japanese builders.  I was touched by this garden.  This symbol of peace and goodwill between two countries that had little to no reason for peace and goodwill.  Again, another place I would spend hours just sitting and reflecting. (Although I have to admit that the little kid in me kinda wanted to hop the chain and go mess up the perfect zen sand garden rows!)

After spending quite a bit of time in the courtyard, and in the garden, we headed into the Pacific War Museum itself. Stay tuned tomorrow for pictures and more to this story!

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