On the Horizon

As an adult, author Lois Lowry watches a long-forgotten home movie of herself playing as a child on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Passing in the background, ON THE HORIZON, she sees the USS Arizona. Carrying more than 1,200 men, it would be sunk on Dec. 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, killing almost everyone onboard. On that day, brothers George and Jimmie Bromly from Tacoma, Washington, would both die on the Arizona. John Anderson would survive but his identical twin, Jake, would not. All 21 members of the ship's band ran to their battle stations, only to perish. Frank Cabiness survived and returns to the Arizona at age 86, when his ashes are placed in a gun turret so he can rest with his shipmates. On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States drops an atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, that kills 80,000 people that day, and thousands more will die from radiation sickness. The American plane that carries the bomb is named after the pilot's mother, Enola Gay. In a small town outside of Hiroshima, a boy named Koichi Seii feels the earth shudder. A 4-year-old boy in Hiroshima dies, still holding the handlebars of his red tricycle, and a little girl who loves to fold paper cranes will die from radiation poisoning. When Lowry is 11, she moves with her parents to Japan. She learns a bit of Japanese, including the word for friend, and wonders if it's wrong to try and make friends with a young boy who's playing in a schoolyard.