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Feature - What kind of peace do we seek?

We have to do a better job of honouring our planet, honouring those who came before us, and being accountable to those who follow

What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, peace in all time. Our problems are man made, therefore, they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis our most basic common link is; that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breath the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we are all mortal.

— John F. Kennedy

One year ago this week, on March 19, 2003, the world watched as U.S.-led forces launched a long-anticipated war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It was a controversial decision that has become no less controversial in the 12 months since.

The use of force to resolve differences is as old as man. Sometimes it is the only way. Sometimes it only seems like the only way.

Following every conflict there is a period when the terms of the new order must be sorted out. Peace can require as much strategy, manpower and soul-searching as war. And even if the status quo holds, conflict has an impact on people, their values and the planet we all share.

To date, Japan is the only nation in history to have atomic bombs dropped on its people. The first bomb was dropped by the Americans over Hiroshima (the equivalent of 13 kilotons of TNT) on Aug. 6, 1945. The second bomb (the equivalent of 22 kilotons of TNT) was dropped over Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

In the autumn of 1983 I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was 21 years old, and the museum’s black and white images of the incineration sickened me. At Hiroshima Peace Park an eternal flame burns, only to be extinguished when the planet is free of all nuclear weapons. Today, I find it frightening to comprehend how atomic weapons have developed and advanced since 1945.

It is not for me to judge the choices of the generation before us, I would rather learn from them. It was wartime. The fate of the Japanese people began with their attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941 – that day Imperial Japan brought World War Two further into the Pacific and the Americans joined the Allied forces.

In early 1941, Winston Churchill asked Canada to assist in defending Hong Kong from the Japanese. The British Government assured the Canadian Government that their men "would not be put in harm’s way."

The Winnipeg Grenadiers and The Royal Rifles of Canada, totalling 1,973 men, departed from Vancouver on Oct. 27, 1941. They were declared, unfit for combat because at that point they had little front line training. Three weeks later, they became the first Canadian soldiers to fight in World War Two.

Private John Gray, a Manitoba farm boy, was captured and executed by the Japanese on Dec. 14, 1941. He became the first Canadian infantryman to die in the war. By Christmas Day, 290 Canadians were killed, 493 were wounded, and 1,690 were taken prisoner.

Then, on Dec. 25 th , after fierce fighting with the Japanese, British commanders officially surrendered to the commanders of Imperial Japan.

Known as the Battle for Hong Kong, Canadian soldiers were not only betrayed by the British Government, but by the Government of Canada. The majority of the British fleet had left, before the Canadians had arrived.

At the time of surrender, the Canadian prisoners of war believed they would be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. It was not to be; their hell was about to begin.

For one year they were incarcerated at Sham Shuipo Prison Camp in Hong Kong. Then, 700 Canadians were loaded onto ships bound for Japan to serve as slave labourers in a shipyard near Tokyo. Their living conditions were horrific, the inhumane treatment, including beatings and torture, are quite possibly the worst any Canadian soldier has faced in the history of our nation.

After the Americans dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski, it took only 13 days for the first Americans to arrive on Japanese soil. As the war drew to its end, and Emperor Hirohito was preparing for surrender to Allied forces under the command of American General Douglas MacArthur, military leaders were planning to execute all POWs.

However, the American’s arrived sooner than the Japanese expected. In August of 1945, the American’s liberated the Canadian POWs and by October they were back in Canada. On Aug. 15, 1945 Emperor Hirohito decreed that Japan would surrender. He asked the people of Japan to "bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable" throughout their nation’s first foreign invasion.

For several years Canada has lobbied unsuccessfully for an official apology from the Japanese government and monetary compensation for the forced war time labour. Japanese companies refuse to acknowledge or discuss the issue. Meanwhile German corporations have paid out billions of dollars in compensation to wartime workers.

Recently, here in Japan, I interviewed a Japanese history teacher.

Question

: Is teaching the Allied position obligatory as a result of the peace agreement at the end of the war?

Answer:

No.

Question:

How has the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected Japanese culture?

Answer:

Japan has no nuclear weapons and chooses to propagate peace throughout the world.

Question:

How did the Japanese population respond to Emperor Hirohito’s declaration of defeat?

Answer:

He finished the war. Others are also accountable for Japan’s role in WWII; some military leaders didn’t want to end the war.

Question:

Are Japanese people aware of the treatment of Canadian prisoners of war?

Answer:

No.

Question:

What is the stance of rendering the apology that Canadian veterans are requesting?

Answer:

There are other nations asking for apologies. It would get complicated.

At the end of the interview, he asked me, "How do you teach your students that mistakes were made? How do you teach the terror of war to children?"

As in all nations, there are good people and there are bad people. Chiune Sugihara was one of Japan’s signature humanitarians of World War Two.

Sugihara was a Japanese foreign diplomat sent to Kaunas, Lithuania in the fall of 1939 to open a one-man consulate. The Japanese government wanted to gather critical information on German and Russian military movements before signing another agreement with Germany.

The Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939 and within months Jewish refugees began to descend into Lithuania with horrific stories of persecution. By July 1940, they arrived on Sugihara’s doorstep, begging for transit visas in order to escape through the Soviet Union to other parts of the world. Three times Sugihara wired his government asking for permission; and three times he was refused. Japan had signed the Japan-German Anti-Comintern Pact in November of 1936 and the government believed that issuing visas would appear as a hostile act.

After agonizing about the position he was in, Sugihara opted to ignore the orders from his government and issue the visas. Sugihara stated if he didn’t help them, "I would have to answer to a power higher than the Japanese government."

Sugihara began to write, by hand, 300 visas a day. In total, he wrote 6,000 visas before he and his family, had to evacuate the country.

On Aug. 23, 1940 the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact was signed and the Soviets officially annexed Lithuania. Sugihara was ordered to leave the country immediately.

Sugihara spent the remainder of the war in Europe, the majority of it in a Soviet internment camp. In 1947, when he returned to Japan, he was dismissed from the diplomatic service. He died in 1986, virtually unrecognized by his own government and people for his humanitarian efforts.

But others did recognize Sugihara’s wartime efforts. In 1985 he received the "Righteous Among the Nations" honour from Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. In 1992, the "Hill of Humanity" monument was dedicated to him in his hometown of Yaotsu. In 1992, he was posthumously awarded the Nagasaki Peace Prize. And in 1995 his memory was honoured by Steven Spielberg at a Holocaust testimonial dinner.

I believe as global citizens we have to discover our values, morals and principles at a micro level, in our homes, before we can move up to the macro level, our community and our country.

Culturally, and religiously, nations are different; however, if we all took some time to learn about each other perhaps we could celebrate our similarities instead of negating the differences.

I have visited the sacred grounds of many living faiths, but I truly believe that the world is a sacred place. We have to do a better job of honouring our planet. We have to honour those who came before us, and be accountable to those who follow.

I aspire for freedom of all human beings, of all colours and creeds. It is a ravaged planet; there are insane tragedies taking place all over the world. However, I still believe there is more good in this world than bad. And perhaps, one momentous day, the eternal flame that burns at Hiroshima will be put out.

Janet Love Morrison is a Whistler writer living and teaching in Japan.



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