Kansai Girls 2 (Maya)

HIJMS Maya thought she had always been a Kobe girl. The third of the four Takao class heavy cruisers, she laid her keel at Kawasaki shipyards at Port of Kobe and was christened with the name of Mount Maya, both a sanctuary and Kobe residents' popular venue right north of the downtown. Although apparently a farer of the high seas, Maya never lost her association and place of remembrance with this cozy port city. When she entered the harbor with the special fleet review, at the brink of the outbreak of the War, people flocked atop her namesake mountain and cheered the return of their Kobe's own.  So it was also natural that, after Maya sank in the sea of Philippines, taking with her the captain and 335 men onboard, her cenotaph be erected on the hill that shared her name. It still stands this day, and time has never weathered her epitaph. 

But today, it wasn't about her. She stands at the Monument of Reconstruction (a few blocks from Sannomiya Station toward the docks), which commemorates the 6,000 plus casualties from the1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. Located within a slick metro park, visitors may appear to divert little attention to the exhibit shaped like an open-air theater. People read in the April sun, exercise their dog, let their children enjoy the lawn - whatever weekend activities they so feel like performing. The memories of the smoke, rubble and ashes that consumed these city blocks seem far away. Nevertheless, occasional stray visitors do come do stand in front of the cased Eternal Frame and pay tribute, nodding, praying, and some just pondering, recalling that crisp January morning that took the lives of their precious ones forever. Why - why wasn't I there to help? What else could I have done? Or what will I want to do from now? 

Maya smiled. Kobe is a city that moves on. But it does remember.         

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