Nakashima Foundation for Peace - Montgomery County Record 1987

New York—Into this city of the well-known and the much-acclaimed, a bus from Pennsylvania rumbled quietly amid the glitter and electricity of New Year's Eve.

Without fanfare, it deposited its 44 passengers in front of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in the Upper West Side, where hundreds waited in interminable lines, chattering excitedly, in hopes of gaming admittance to the fourth annual free Concert for Peace.		"He (woodworker George Namashima) wrote me when he had this dream about the tree and the altar. He realized it was a special tree...I think when George says an 'Altar for Peace,' he means equally an altar to life. Life and peace are synonymous. Unless we continue toward peace, we will lose life."
		George Wald —Nobel laureate

Had the bus contained Leonard Bernstein, the composer and conductor whose music would be played at the concert, or actress Ellen Burstyn, who was to give a prayer for peace, there would have been screams, a rush of the throng, requests for autographs.

Instead, probably the most shining star of the night, George Nakashima, 81, world-famous woodworker, stepped out, quietly and with dignity but with no special attention from the crowd, and entered the church to participate in what would be one of the supreme moments of his career.

"I don't think it was the culmination (of a career) at all," Nakashima, whose home and studio are in Solebury Township, would say later, at a post-mid-night party back in Bucks County. '' that incident is part of the chain. I'm already at work on the next project"—a room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be filled with Nakashima furniture for an exhibit to open April 20.

Even so, the evening, during which time Nakashima's American walnut platform was dedicated as an Altar for Peace, was a milestone made even greater by the sharing with friends and family.

"It was very inspiring for me. It was a once-in-a-life time event," said Roy Kita, a friend from Yardley. "The cathedral was so big, it was awesome, and to be so close to and knowing the honoree, and going up by a chartered bus, it was something."

Following a procession with trumpets and incense, the dedication was consummated as Nakashima lit a single candle that had been placed on the altar.

A Ponderosa pine bonsai tree from the Chase Rosade Studio, New Hope, was also atop the altar, which was surrounded with a wide range of spiritual symbols —including menorahs, Shinto vases and a Moslem prayer rug.

The ceremony, before about 5,000 people in the cathedral, was highlighted by Nakashima's speech in which he quoted in Russian from a poem by Nekrosov, a great poet of the Soviet Union:
"Lead me away from those who rejoice, who talk idly, whose hands are washed in blood, to those who have perished in the great cause of love."

The concert itself included music from Bernstein, Beethoven and Schubert. In addition, Bernstein, performing an original "rap" song mocking the Reagan administration's Iran crisis, drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

Bernstein and Ms. Burstyn helped light candles for everyone. The candles were then raised in the name of peace, and the folksinger Odetta led choruses of "Amazing Grace" and "This Little Light of Mine."

"I felt it was a spiritual happening, a unity of one that happened in there," said Thomas P. Roso of Solebury, a woodworker for Nakashima who came up on the bus. Other friends from the Bucks County area at the event included painter Ranulph Bye and his wife Glenda Lange Bye of Buckingham, Joseph J. Mikita of the New Hope Historical Society, Elizabeth R. Augenblick of Lahaska, Franca Warden of Solebury, and Anthony and Ruth Burton of Upper Makefield.

Family included daughter Mira, son Kevin, Mira's husband John Yarnall and Mira's four children from her first marriage, Ru, Maria, Shanti and Misha Amagasu.

"It just seemed to come together beautifully," said Nakashima's wife Marion. "To have all our friends around and on the bus, it was a warm wonderful feeling."

In addition to those on the bus, other friends came on their own to New York, filling the 11O-seat reserved-for-Nakashima section at the front of the cathedral.

Those included Nobel laureate George Wald and his wife Ruth of Cambridge, Mass., United Nations Director Ralph Edward and T. Komoriya, former president of Hitachi America, Ltd., New York.

"George Nakashima is my closest friend," said Wald, who won the Nobel Prize in biochemistry and is also a retired Harvard professor. "He wrote me when he had this dream about the tree and the altar. He realized it was a special tree.

"I think when George says an 'Altar for Peace,' he means equally an altar to life," said Wald. "Life and peace are synonymous. Unless we continue toward peace, we will lose life."

The altar consists of two "bookmatched" (identical like two facing pages in a book) cross-sections from a 125-foot-tall walnut tree that Nakashima first saw in a dream three years ago.

Logger Frank P. Koziosky Jr. of Buckingham Township had found the tree 15 years ago on an estate in Long Island, New York, and had tried to buy it for years. Eventually, he succeeded, and the tree was cut down in the spring of 1983.

In order to saw the massive tree into slabs, a feat performed during a week-long process in January 1984, a professional sawyer from California whose specialty was walnut was enlisted. The sawyer did not have a saw large enough, so a new eight-foot chainsaw was built for $3,000.

After the wood was sawed, it dried for two years until construction of the altar started in September of last year by master woodworker James B. Radcliffe of Solebury, a Nakashima employee.

Radcliffe, whom Nakashima praised in his dedication speech, worked from Nakashima's drawings to complete the month-long construction project. A polyurethane finish was then applied by woodworker Roso.

The 3-inch-thick cross-sections, which together make a heart-shaped platform 10.6 feet by 10.6 feet, are joined by butterfly inlays of rosewood and rest 3 feet-high off the ground on a walnut base.

The pine bonsai tree was added to enhance the natural qualities of the altar and because "the Japanese feel bonsai trees symbolize peace," said a Rosade studio associate.

Nakashima, who describes himself as a Hindu Catholic, said the cost of the altar, which is his gift to the cathedral, has not yet been calculated, but he paid $12,000 for the massive log alone. Not all the wood from the log has been used in the altar, how ever, he said.

Not included in the $12,000 figure are any of the costs for sawing, for postage, telephone calls, printing of a fundraising brochure related to the project ($7,000 alone) and transporting the altar and wood (it takes seven to 10 men to lift the approximately 3/4-ton piece).

Using all the above expenses, Nakashima speculates the altar's cost might be more than $25,000.

St. John the Divine, an Episcopal congregation which is in practice non-sectarian, was chosen as the altar site by Nakashima after he first investigated putting it in the United Nations building. The U.N. did not have a suitable space, however, Nakashima said.

The altar, of which similar ones are planned for Nagasaki, the Soviet Union and Jersusalem,was transported from Bucks County to New York Dec. 29 on a 40-foot flatbed truck.

Nakashima, whose early training was in architecture but whose main body of work has been furniture-making, honed his trade during a dismal period after the start of World War II when he and his family as Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in an internment camp in Idaho.

A Spokane native, Nakashima brought his family.

to Bucks County because the law for "relocated" Japanese-Americans allowed release from the camps if they could find residence and work away from the West Coast. Nakashima knew Antonin Raymond, a New Hope-area architect, and came to stay with him.

The soft-spoken philospher/woodworker, whose self-built rustic furniture-making and residence compound in Solebury has since drawn the wealthiest and most prominent of clients, said he does not know how much has been raised so far by the Altar for Peace Foundation, but he hopes eventually just to recoup his own costs.

But infinitely more important than the financial part of the project, Nakashima wants the altar to be a symbol to latch onto for those who crave peace—a spiritual Liberty Bell, if you will. "I just don't know how much effect it will have," he said. "I don't know what the reaction will be of people in general. I can visualize it as an object of pilgrimage. It seems to have a spirit like Woodstock. The cathedral has a lot of music there."

Copyright © 2000 The Nakashima Foundation For Peace
www.nakashimafoundation.org
a 501C3 non-profit organization
1847 Aquetong Road
New Hope, PA 18938
E-Mail The Nakashima Foundation
Contact the webmaster