I wrote this piece while in Japan in 2015 for the PAND Annual Concert (Performers and Artists for Nuclear Disarmament) which was held on the 70th Anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While composing, I tried to empathize with the people who lived in Hiroshima when the city was bombed. As a Westerner, it is difficult for me to truly know what it must be like to live under a state of war being fought in my hometown. How terrifying it must have been to know that at any moment my home could become the front line, and my family -- and my way of life -- could be destroyed by a barrage of bullets or by a bomb. In my attempt to understand, I was reminded of a book by John Hersey; the book "Hiroshima" chronicles the aftermath of the dropping of the H-Bomb through field observations and evocative descriptions of the wreckage. Through reading this book and listening to the folk music produced in the culture at the time, I have tried to convey the heartbreak and terror that I imagine the people living at the time must have experienced. This piece was commissioned by Mary Kay Fink of the Cleveland Orchestra.