Shibuyaexpat
先輩
- 19 Jan 2005
- 184
- 25
- 38
Walking along the neon-drenched, post-Modern streets that snake in and out of Tokyo's trendiest districts, it's sometimes hard to believe that vast portions of this city were once destroyed by U.S. bombings during World War II. It was 60 years today (plus a couple of days) that American planes, under the leadership of General Curtis E. Lemay, launched the Great Tokyo Bombing campaign. It is unfathomable to person born into relative safe surroundings to imagine the sheer number of dead.
And though I feel to a small degree--whether through some quasi-sense of heritage (Korean descent) or cosmic justice--that Japan "got what it deserved," the better part of me, the part of me that embraces my mother's compassion, can't help but to feel complete sympathy and sorrow for all those who lost their loved ones during that time. I look around and think how horrible it would be to one day find that the nice old lady at my favorite flower shop who always greets me by grasping both my handsand and her entire family, her shop and the entire city block destroyed. How would I react to find the school yard filled with children on my way to work was now a hollowed out crater, dotted with a random notebook or schoolbag? Even in this simple practice, tears well up. Bombings (whichever form they take) affect real human beings not numeric values that rise as the survivors pick through the rubble of a shattered silence.
So it was with a sense of sorrow that I read a piece in last Sunday's Japan Times by MASARU FUJIMOTO about the career of Gen. Lemay or more specifically, the absence of any compassion for those Chinese civilians who died during Japan's bombing campaigns in the early 1930s. (http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20050313x2.htm) Are they not entitled to share the same descriptors that Mr. Masaru Fujimoto uses for their Japanese counterparts: carnage, fleeing civilians, mass killings? Was their suffering any less?
Normally, I would not dive into such a diatribe but a recent trip to Hiroshima, anecdotal commentary from local residents and view points expressed by some colleagues, have me wondering if Japan feels compassion for war victims outside of Japan.
What do you think?
And though I feel to a small degree--whether through some quasi-sense of heritage (Korean descent) or cosmic justice--that Japan "got what it deserved," the better part of me, the part of me that embraces my mother's compassion, can't help but to feel complete sympathy and sorrow for all those who lost their loved ones during that time. I look around and think how horrible it would be to one day find that the nice old lady at my favorite flower shop who always greets me by grasping both my handsand and her entire family, her shop and the entire city block destroyed. How would I react to find the school yard filled with children on my way to work was now a hollowed out crater, dotted with a random notebook or schoolbag? Even in this simple practice, tears well up. Bombings (whichever form they take) affect real human beings not numeric values that rise as the survivors pick through the rubble of a shattered silence.
So it was with a sense of sorrow that I read a piece in last Sunday's Japan Times by MASARU FUJIMOTO about the career of Gen. Lemay or more specifically, the absence of any compassion for those Chinese civilians who died during Japan's bombing campaigns in the early 1930s. (http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20050313x2.htm) Are they not entitled to share the same descriptors that Mr. Masaru Fujimoto uses for their Japanese counterparts: carnage, fleeing civilians, mass killings? Was their suffering any less?
Normally, I would not dive into such a diatribe but a recent trip to Hiroshima, anecdotal commentary from local residents and view points expressed by some colleagues, have me wondering if Japan feels compassion for war victims outside of Japan.
What do you think?