On The Horizon by Lois Lowry

 In her newest book, On The Horizon, Lois Lowry, award winning author of Number The Stars and The Giver, has penned a collection of poems about lives lost or forever changed in the bombing of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan.

These events are told through Lowry's own personal experience of having lived both in Hawaii and in Japan during the time they took place.  

Lowry was born in Honolulu in 1937. Her father was an Army dentist so this meant Lowry's family moved frequently. She lived in Hawaii until 1940 when her family moved to New York. Years later, Lowry watched an old home movie her father had taken in 1940 of her playing on the beach at Waikiki. In the distance, the silhouette of the fated USS Arizona could be seen. A little over a year later, on December 7, 1941, almost all those men would be dead. The USS Arizona would sink during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and 1.177 men would perish. Lowry moved to Tokyo, Japan in 1948 when her father was stationed in the city.

In various forms of poetry, Lowry begins her story with the sinking of the USS Arizona. Part I On The Horizon is comprised of a poetry Lowry has composed about the men on the USS Arizona. There are poems about seventeen-year-old Leo Amundson whose Scandinavian heritage is shared by Lowry. Other poems are about George and Jimmie Bromley, one of thirty-seven sets of brothers on the Arizona,  Everett Reid a machinist who lived off the ship and survived because he was at home celebrating his birthday, the musicians - Neal Radford, Alexander Nadel, Bill McCary and Curtis Haas in the ship's band, and Captain Isaac Campbell Kidd whose "Naval Academy ring was found melted and fused to the mast."

Part 2 Another Horizon is about the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in southern Japan. Lowry's poetry features the victims of the bomb, naming them and describing what they were doing at the time of the explosion. There is Koichi Seii in a town called Tabase, Takeo playing tag in a schoolyard, Shinichi Tetsutani on his red tricycle, Akira Ishida a high school student operating a tram, Chieko Suetomo and Shinji Mikamo. 

Part 3 Beyond The Horizons several events from Lowry's life in the post-war period in Japan are described. Lowry lived in Shibuya, a part of Tokyo. Her father had bought her a green bike when she first arrived in Japan. At that time Koichi Seii along with his mother and sister, survivors of Hiroshima,  had also moved to Shibuya. In a series of poems, Lowry tells about riding her green bike through the city and how with her blue eyes and blond hair she stood out. In the poem Girl On  A Bike Lowry recounts stopping outside a school to watch the children, and they watched her. In the poem, Gaijin, unknown to her, Koichi Seii was a student at the school and he watched the girl with the blond hair on the green bike.  In the final poem, a triolet titled Tomodachi, Lowry expresses how they could not yet be friends, as they needed to heal.

"We could not be friends. Not then. Not yet.
Until the cloud dispersed and cleared,
We needed time to mend, forget."

Discussion

On The Horizon is a touching tribute to the human spirit, the power of forgiveness and how our lives are often connected in ways we don't realize. Lowry who grew up during World War II and the post war period, weaves together the threads of her life to show a remarkable interconnection of people, places and events. This is done through a series of beautifully composed rhyming poems. 

Beginning with an old family home movie that captured a young Lowry playing on the beach at Waikiki with the outline of the USS Arizona on the horizon unnoticed at that time. Lowry weaves a thread that connects this beginning to many other events. A little over a year later, the USS Arizona sank during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  In the poem, Child On A Beach, Lowry wonders about the things we don't notice, the connections we miss...

"I think back to that sunlit day
when I was young, and so were they
If I had noticed? If I'd known?
Would each of us be less alone?...

I've learned that there will always be
things we miss, that we don't see

on the horizon. Things beyond
And yet there is a lasting bond
between us, linking each to each
Boys on a ship. Child on a beach"

When Lowry's family moved to Tokyo to join her father, she was given a green bike. Lowry stopped one day to watch the Japanese children playing in the school yard. Unknown to her, young Kochi Seii was watching back, the memory of a blond haired girl with a green bike to stay with him over the years. Unbelievably, years later in 1994, Lois Lowry and Kochi Seii now known as Allen Say, met at a library convention. They discovered their lives had intersected years before. In the poem, Girl On A Bike Lowry muses about how they had lived in each other's country, and from their own horizons had experienced war without realizing their lives had intersected,

"I'd lived in his country, then.
And now he's moved to mine, so when
we met (his name was Allen now),
we mused and pondered how

from our horizons we had viewed
a war begin, a war conclude.
We were young.We were alike.
Boy in a scholyard. Girl on a bike."

On The Horizon also offers readers the chance to reflect on war, on the innocent lives lost, but also how with time, two countries healing from war can come together both individually and collectively. This is shown in her poem Now which tells about Japanese tourists bowing as they look down at the wreck of the Arizona, while Lowry herself at the Hiroshima memorial bows and weeps too.

Perhaps Lowry's final words in her Author's Note say it best:

"It has taken many years for me to put these things together, to try to find some meaning in teh way lives intersect -- or how they fail to. I guess the important thing is also the simplest: to acknowledge our connectedness on this earth; to bow our heads when we see a scorched tricycle or a child's message to his lost grandpa; and to honor the past by making silent promises to our fellow humans that we will work for a better and more peaceful future."

Many of the poems are illustrated with the black and white artwork of SCBWI Golden Kite Award Winner, Kenard Pak.

Book Details:

On The Horizon: World War II Reflections  by Lois Lowry
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt      2020
72 pp.