thoughts on The War With America

(By the way, the photo is of Shinjuku and it appears the lights are definitely on.) 

Every now and then I have one of those moments when I am struck by revelation of a truth that is so obvious, that I wonder why it never occurred to me before, and I get them a few times a year.  I guess you just have to get to a point where you are open to the possibility, however remote, of not knowing everything. I spent MLK weekend in Tokyo for the second time in a month.  I knew I couldn’t really afford it, and then got a wicked flu on Thursday night (hotel and train already paid for and not refundable). I know that sometimes stuff just happens and I have to go and look for the lesson and the joy in it, despite the din created to distract me. So I went with a change of underwear, plenty of medication, a box of tissues, and a pocketful o cash for a couple of bowls of steaming hot soba. I gradually felt better through the night and the next day, then on Sunday night, as Sumo wrestlers strolled in the dusk, and as chanting and temple incense filled the cool evening air, I found myself entering Edo-Tokyo Museum looking at artifacts that have survived countless fires, earthquakes and wars, yet which contain substantial history within a relatively small space. I meandered through dark corridors and lighted models until I came to the corner of my epiphany.  It was the ‘War with America’ section.  I became suddenly very aware of my obvious Americanness looking at filmstrips of the burning of Tokyo, the mountains of bodies, the people in the smoldering streets and written and recorded accounts of some of the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, whose homes and cities were targeted and destroyed by American bombers, in an effort to crush the spirit of the Japanese people.  Looking at artifact after artifact I could not avoid the gaze of small Japanese faces looking up at me from the behind a father’s leg or a mother’s winter coat draped across her arm. I knew they were staring because I looked different from their norm but I couldn’t help but feel a little as if I might bear some guilt for looking like the enemy portrayed in the photographs.  I approached the photos of the surrender of the Empire of Japan to General MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri.  The video of that moment is striking alone but watching it among a crowd of people who look at this moment in history from the opposite vantage point is a bit humbling.  My epiphany was this.  No matter which side you are on, the story is the same.  The enemy doesn’t value human life.  The enemy is ignorant.  The enemy is evil and capable of doing unspeakable things to our people. We can’t let that happen to our people. I wonder why wise men have filled thousands of pages trying to explain and understand war, yet never resolve the conflict. It is never, never what it seems, regardless of how right we are.