Clifton Truman Daniel’s “A Mission of Reconciliation,” describes his recent trip to Japan, honoring the victims of the atomic bomb, ordered by his grandfather. On the first day of Daniel’s trip, Nana Yamada, the Nagasaki correspondent of Japan’s largest television network, asked Daniel whether he came to Japan to apologize.

He didn’t.

“Out of respect for the survivors and their countrymen, I would not defend the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but neither could I apologize for my grandfather or my country. After all, I have shaken the hands of dozens of WWII veterans who tell me they probably wouldn’t have survived the invasion of the Japanese main islands.”

For the remainder of his visit and in his report, Daniel worked to explain and enact this complicated stance, which I appreciate. It hit close to home. As I read his account, I thought of my father.

While Daniel’s grandfather, President Harry Truman, momentously decided to drop the bomb, my dad, Ben Goldfarb, was one of the thousands of GIs who, therefore, were not part of the invasion. For my father, this was after serving in the South Pacific for four years as a conscript (who went in as a private and out as a corporal or private, I can’t remember; he told me about repeated promotions, followed by demotions connected to fighting with an anti-Semitic officer in his unit).

My father and I generally agreed on politics, though he was probably more of a leftist. He didn’t vote for Daniel’s grandfather, but for Henry Wallace. Yet, he strongly supported President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs, not only because it saved him, but also because, he convinced himself following the commonsense of his times, the bombs in the long run saved more lives than they destroyed. I didn’t and don’t agree, but it was one of the very few issues that he really didn’t want to debate, our typical mode of communication once I was an adult. And as Daniel didn’t want to either defend or apologize for his grandfather, I didn’t want to argue about this with my father, and never did after one discussion.

I think that Daniel’s public position and my private one implicitly reveal an etiquette of reconciliation. We both recognize that others see differently than we do: I, across a generational divide, he, across a national one. We respect the other’s positions, even if we can’t change ours. We choose to remember together some things, remember others differently. We make room for discussion about some issues, seeking common ground, respecting loss and sacrifice, as we avoid issues on which there cannot be agreement. In terms of my recent research interest, we recognize the social condition, and we attempt to work with it, rather than against it. We recognize that ways of life and identities surround judgments, as the judgments form the life and identity, and that some things are possible, but others aren’t. The combination of respectful competing memories, and convictions beyond change, defines the possibilities and also the impossibilities of reconciliation. This was at issue in Clifton Truman Daniel’s trip and my discussion with my father about the atomic bomb, but it ubiquitously appears.

Will it ever be possible for Palestinians and Israelis to come to a peaceful resolution of their conflicts and to reconcile? Will racism, and tense race relations, ever really come to an end in America? Will Japan’s relations with its neighbors, specifically China, ever be normalized? I think that the optimistic and pessimistic answers to such questions often tell more about the person answering than about the specific conflicts of each case. I also think that those who declare a time frame for an answer, as in: it will take a century to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are widely off the mark. Rather at issue is not time but manner: how the social condition is confronted, how the etiquette of reconciliation is enacted. It may open new possibilities at any time in each of these cases, but requires purposive creative action, carefully combining shared memories and purposive forgetting such as is exhibited in the visit by Daniel and his respectful reception, through the work of his Japanese hosts. Combining memory and forgetting is also important for fathers and sons, and for that matter, grandfathers as well.

This past August, my wife and two sons and I traveled to Japan for the annual ceremonies honoring those who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were the first members of the Truman family to do so. On our first full day in Tokyo, I sat down for an interview with Nana Yamada, the Nagasaki reporter for NHK, the country’s largest television network. Her third question was, “Are you here to apologize?” When I said no, she followed up with, “Then why are you here?”

Someone was going to ask that question – or something like it – but I had not expected it so soon or so bluntly. In the months leading up to the trip, my hosts, Masahiro Sasaki and his son, Yuji, reported that buzz in the Japanese media was overwhelmingly positive. In July, reporters from two Japanese papers interviewed me at home in Chicago and turned in upbeat stories. At one point, our friend, guide and interpreter, Kazuko Minamoto, even suggested that we hire bodyguards, not to protect us from angry mobs, but to keep us from being mobbed by all those who would want to get close enough for a look.

I explained to Ms. Yamada that this was a mission of reconciliation. I had come, I said, to honor those who died and hear the testimony of those who lived. That did not satisfy her. She rephrased her question several times, digging for a different answer. It got to the point that Kazuko was on the edge of her chair, ready to intervene.

All through the six-hour train ride to Hiroshima that afternoon I wondered how badly I had misread the Japanese view of my visit and whether or not the whole thing had been a colossal mistake. Out of respect for the survivors and their countrymen, I would not defend the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but neither could I apologize for my grandfather or my country. After all, I have shaken the hands of dozens of WWII veterans who tell me they probably wouldn’t have survived the invasion of the Japanese main islands. Despite Kazuko’s reassurance that I had handled the question as well as could be expected, I felt that I had struggled.

The following morning, I walked with my wife and sons and Yuji Sasaki to the Peace Memorial Park … and into a throng of 30 or 40 reporters and photographers. In the middle of the melee stood my host, Masahiro. With all the fuss, I wondered when I would have a chance to tell him of my misgivings. Apparently, he’d already heard because he reached out and hugged me. And in that instant, my worries all but vanished. Not everyone agreed with what we were doing and we would face more tough questions, but Masahiro reassured me unequivocally that we would do it together. (He also became something of an older brother, often throwing his arm around my shoulder and making sure that my family and I had plenty of fans and cold cloths to protect against the August heat.)

Many of you reading this know the story of Masahiro’s younger sister, Sadako. She was two when the bomb exploded above Hiroshima. She survived the blast only to be diagnosed with radiation-induced leukemia nine years later. In an effort to recover, she followed a Japanese tradition that says that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you are granted a wish. Sadako’s was, of course, to live. She folded more than 1,000 cranes, but it didn’t work. She died on October 25, 1955.

When my son Wesley was in fourth grade, he brought home the book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, and we read it together. Not long afterward, I mentioned that to Kinue Tokudome, a writer and founder and director of the US-Japan Dialog on POWs, who was writing a story on the anniversary of the bombings. The piece was printed in Japan and not long after, I received a phone call from Masahiro.

We met in 2010 in New York, where Masahiro and Yuji were donating one of Sadako’s last original cranes to the World Trade Center Memorial. They have also donated a crane to the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution. During our New York meeting, Yuji gently placed a tiny paper crane in my palm. It was the last one his aunt folded before she died. It was then that he and his father asked me to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When I agreed, they promised to donate yet another crane to the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, which Yuji did in September of 2012.

Masahiro, Yuji and the 25 other survivors I met in Hiroshima and Nagasaki reached out without any expectation other than I take part and listen. We didn’t confab on our talking points or discuss how to stay on message. Both sides just showed up with open minds and open hearts. The only thing survivors asked after our meeting was that I help tell their stories so that future generations will never again use nuclear weapons.

I hope that more Americans and more Japanese will open their minds and their hearts. As tough as it might be, it’s important. My late brother, Will, and I had a difficult relationship. Each meeting ended with drinking, yelling and swearing. Each time, we vowed never to speak to each other again. Two weeks later, the phone would ring. “How come you never call?” he’d say. “Are you kidding?” I’d ask. “Do you remember what happened the last time?” And he’d just say, “Yeah, well …” He never gave up. No matter how bad it had been, no matter what we had said to each other, he never quit trying.

As for Ms. Yamada, when I returned to the States she sent me an email thanking me for answering frankly to some “not very nice” questions. Since then, we’ve been staying in touch.