JMJ. This is going to be a long post. You've been warned. And it's not religious, either. I've had foreign attacks on my mind a bit lately as we approach the eighth anniversary of the Al-Qaida attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I can't help but be reminded of the "date which will live in infamy," Pearl Harbor.
I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood in Berea. Very cosmopolitan. Shoot, we had Canadian Catholics next door, two black families on our block, an Italian-American family down the street and a Japanese-American family two doors down. The Yoshizawas. Miss Alice's parents had been born in the US but Mr. Jim was a Nisei--his parents had been born in Japan.
As far back as I can remember we were treated to Japanese food, music and customs. We even learnt how to do a simple Japanese dance. Miss Alice taught the kids in the neighborhood to use chopsticks and to enjoy an abbreviated tea ceremony. It was only as an adult, though, that I learnt that (to our everlasting shame) America had imprisoned its own citizens in concentration camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Yoshizawas never mentioned this.
And it was only two years ago that Mr. Jim admitted that he had been a Nisei Warrior, one of a unit of Japanese-Americans who had swallowed their anger at America's treatment of them and became the most-decorated soldiers in the US Army during WWII! He's in his 90's now, bent and hard of hearing but still proud. As I am of him.
Japan entered my life again when my younger sisters, Lori and Beth, and my parents were hosts to a wonderful girl, Tokiko Kubota, from Japan. Unfortunately, I was only peripherally aware of her as I was away at college most of the time. Like all teen-agers, the three of them had their frictions but the friendship which started so many years ago has remained alive and vibrant to this day. Toko never forgot to write to Mom and Dad and Lori and Beth and kept them apprised of her life.
She is married now and has two beautiful children and when my Mom died in April they sent a huge and exotic flower arrangement to the memorial service. I know that my parents were almost as important to her as her own. I am privileged to have reacquainted myself with Toko and hopefully we will both be the richer for it.
Which brings us to Pearl Harbor, which should rightly be FDR's infamy. What most Americans do not know, because it has been carefully hidden, is that America brought the attack on by her own actions. Do the research for you won't believe me but American interests in the Pacific were at complete odds with those economic interests of Japan and America did her best to block Japan at every opportunity. We backed Japan into a corner and then were surprised when she chose to fight us.
Even in this we were complicit! The US government, headed by FDR, knew that the Japanese fleet was steaming toward Pearl and against the Navy's own regulations, ordered all the battleships into harbor where they were caught like sitting ducks. Only the carriers were at sea and Roosevelt and his cronies counted on them to form the nucleus for retaliation against Japan. Even Honolulu radio stayed on the air after midnight (when it usually signed off,) acting as a beacon for the in-coming Japanese airplanes.
Should the attack have taken place? I don't know. I DO know that I will never condemn Japan as so many have done down through the years. We called Pearl Harbor a "sneak attack" but when we did the same thing to Iraq a few years ago to bring down Saddam Hussein we called it a "pre-emptive strike." I love this country and supported her by serving in Viet Nam but this is hypocrisy!
I learnt of something just recently that brought tears to my eyes. I read of the supreme sacrifice of a small congregation of Japanese Catholics who gathered in their Cathedral in Nagasaki and in a solemn Mass offered themselves as sacrifices for a speedy end to the war. Moments later an atomic bomb was detonated overhead and the war DID come to a speedy end. THAT, my friends, is the courageous sacrifice that Jesus epitomised.
I will never see Japan in this life but I hope our Lord will allow me to visit sometime in the next. I have no desire to see anything Muslim.
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