The Strange Irony of Existence

[Futwick]

I am half-Japanese--my mother was a Japanese citizen, my father was a white American--born after WW2. While I certainly didn't support the Japanese military govt of the war (my mother despised them), I realize an irony:

I can trace my existence to one incident--Pearl Harbor. Without Pearl Harbor, America and Japan would not have gone to war, Japan would not have lost, Americans would not have gone there for the rebuilding effort (my father among them), my parents would not have met and hence I would not have been born. I am a product of World War II, would not exist without it. Millions upon millions had to die so that I could be born--not as a direct cause, of course, but that's still how it shakes out in the end: without a war that killed tens of millions globally, I would not exist.

Is it hypocrisy to speak against war when you owe your existence to one? And probably a lot of you are in the same boat even if you don't realize it. If you are about my age (54), ask yourself how your parents met and where. You might find the war brought them together.

Moreover, the war brought tremendous changes to American culture. Rock and roll, for example, might not have come about without the war

 

[Treetopflyer]

Welcome to the world of the Historian. You have taken on a very personal aspect to the study of history, but it is how the study of history works. History is seeing how events and people connect and why. When studying history you have to treat it like a 4 year old would, always asking why.

 

[Futwick]

I write a lot of histories--none published--for my own edification. But WW2 is a recurring them in a lot of what I write and not just the Pacific Theater. I have a fascination for the Nazis NOT because I admire them, I certainly don't. But because of where they came from, how they arose, what permitted it, what changes they brought tot he world. We're really lucky that the Axis Powers didn't take over the world. We're very lucky.

 

[Foxer55]

Futwick,

I can trace my existence to one incident--Pearl Harbor. Without Pearl Harbor, America and Japan would not have gone to war, Japan would not have lost, Americans would not have gone there for the rebuilding effort (my father among them), my parents would not have met and hence I would not have been born. I am a product of World War II, would not exist without it. Millions upon millions had to die so that I could be born--not as a direct cause, of course, but that's still how it shakes out in the end: without a war that killed tens of millions globally, I would not exist.

A conundrum. An enigma.

 

[Futwick]

The uncomfortable truth is that wars are probably necessary for the continued existence of the human race as strange as that sounds. Just as lightning fires that burn off old growth vegetation which permits new growth to sprout, maybe wars serve the same function for the human race--introduce new cultural trends and new "blood" to keep the human race healthy and moving forward. Of course, there must also be limits to everything.

 

[Shangas]

WWII brought my paternal grandparents together. They married in 1943, in the middle of the Japanese Occupation.

 

[Stearmen]

WWII brought my parents together, but in a different way. They both grew up in the same town, my Mother did not give my Dad the time of day. Then the war, my Dad was drafted, he was lucky, he had worked in California on aircraft, so he ended up in the Army Air Corp. A lot of his friends were sent to the Infantry and North Africa where they did not survive. My Dad went to England. After the war, he looked a lot better in uniform. The war helped them even after they got married. The Doctor said my Mother needed to move out of the damp Iowa climate, so they moved to Colorado. Thanks to the GI Bill, my Dad became an electrician, so he landed on his feet. And I was born! Indirectly because of the war.

 

[Futwick]

My father joined the Navy right after Pearl Harbor and graduated from boot camp in late December 1941. He spent most of the war in Guadalcanal. After the war, he returned to Japan as a civilian. When he and my mother had decided to marry, he met one of her brothers, my uncle, whom he learned had been a pilot who flew missions over Guadalcanal. It's important to talk to people that were there to compile useful histories. My dad told me that right after the war, the Japanese had electric cars on the streets--taxis. When he got in one, he noticed how quiet it was. He asked my mother to ask the driver what kind of car this was and the man said, "Densha." Electric car. They weren't very powerful cars. When it had to go uphill, my dad had to jump out and push it and then jump back in at the top of the hill. But nevertheless the Japanese had electric cars on the streets right after the war. That's not something you would likely ever learn without either being there yourself or talking to someone who was there.

I followed in y father's footsteps and joined the Navy where I spent most of the 80s decade seeing the world including the Middle East and South Asia. My dad died a few years ago. My nephew, my sister's son, moved to Japan a few months ago and, in all likelihood, will spend his life there.

 

[herringbonekid]

I can trace my existence to one incident--Pearl Harbor.

you can go even further back than that if you like. to the big bang (or whatever your personal universe creation idea might be).

don't forget too, that your parents meeting didn't guarantee your conception. the odds of any one of us existing right now are so huge as to be virtually infinity to one against.

 

[Futwick]

It's a moot point since I am here.

 

[Stanley Doble]

What about the guy who was half Japanese half African American, and every December 7th felt an overpowering urge to attack Pearl Bailey.

I know, it`s an ancient joke. Don`t think so much, you might go nuts. You can be against the war even though it did you good. A lot of people are sincerely against things that are to their own interest but bad for others.

 

[Futwick]

I don't know that we can think too much. I do know we can think too little.

 

[Bee]

Mitsuo Fuchida was at Pearl harbor AND Hiroshima, Talk about Irony. The poor guy lived through it all.

 

[TomS]

Interesting discussion...

 

[Futwick]

I got into an interesting argument the other day online with a poster who claimed to be a black woman (and I'm sure she was, it's just that you have to take these things on faith), who had commented over some old racist signs and posters from the South during segregation that were being auctioned off. Some of them were overtly anti-black but most were ads or business signs that relied on stereotypical images of blacks that were probably not meant to offend in the sense that white Southerners likely saw nothing wrong with the images and the images were the least of the problems that Southern blacks faced. She made a number of negative comments about them saying they should just throw them out. I posted that if I had the money and space, I'd buy the collection and store it away.

This woman became really incensed. How dare I make such a comment!! I was surprised that she felt that way. You really think we should throw all this stuff away? I asked her. She said absolutely. Why? Because, she said, she didn't want her children to see this kind of stuff.

I was flabbergasted by that. What was she worried about? That it was going to give them bad dreams or something? So we should just wipe out the past and forget what our forebears had to suffer so we could to enjoy a better quality of life today and make contributions to society than they could ever have hoped for? You destroy that stuff and you're doing the revisionists' work for them. What's to stop some guy a century from now from saying slavery never happened, that there was no such thing as segregation or separate-but-equal or the one-drop rule? She said that this information would not be lost. I said that if she has her way, it will be. No, she said, she only wanted these signs done away with, not history books and the like. Even if she stopped there, I told her, others would carry on after her to keep pushing it. At what point, I asked, would you finally stand up and say that's enough? And why should they listen to you?

I think she started to realize I was right so she took a different tack. Didn't I say somewhere that I was Japanese-American? Yes. Well, then, how would I feel if someone showed my children signs from WW2 saying, "Jap Hunting Licenses Sold Here" or "No Japs Allowed" or "Japs Go Home!" and magazine articles that justified locking them up in internment camps and stuff like that? I said I would only feel bad that someone beat me to it and I'd blame myself for that. I added that if someone was going to destroy the stuff because no one would buy it and he had no room for it, I would buy every last scrap and find room somewhere to store it. There is NO WAY that I would allow that material to be destroyed. As far as the internment itself, my kids learned about it from me before they heard about it from anyone else. I showed them the historical books written on the subject and novels like "The No-No Boy." I told them about the 442nd. I want them to know who the hell they are.

Then she started with this "It stirs up old hatreds." Well, it might, in some cases but in other cases it might prevent them from getting stirred up. I can't think of any instance where being ignorant of history was ever beneficial. I don't care how unpleasant it is, if it happened then I want to know about it. I don't hate anybody for what happened 50 or 100 years ago, for crying out loud. And that there are good guys and bad guys on every side in a war or conflict. You take the Pearl Harbor thing I mentioned in the opening post; sure, I struggle with it. I'll probably always struggle with it but I feel I'm a better person for it. I feel it gives me a deeper outlook on life than I would have had without it even if I can never come to a resolution or maybe because I may never come to a resolution.

 

[rjb1]

Very well put, and I think you are on the side of history (literally) in trying to stop people from doing away with it, as your "adversary" would like to do.

 

[Futwick]

History books don't pop up spontaneously, they have to be written. The people who write them should have some familiarity with the methodology of the historian. Anyone can write a history book and put anything they want into it. That doesn't make it so. Accurate histories have to rely on eyewitnesses who can corroborate events, documents and memos written during that period by people pertinent to the subject, photographs and film clips, news reports, speeches, affidavits, etc. If you destroy this source material, your histories are next to worthless. The signs this woman wanted to destroy are source material and therefore extremely valuable to responsible historical research. Look at how many knuckleheads believe the Holocaust was hoax even with the photographs, testimonies, trial transcripts and the tiny fact that the camps are still standing as proof that they existed. Now the gripe is, "How could these shower rooms be used as gas chambers? Impossible!" But you know perfectly well that if the camps were bulldozed and paved over right after the war, the gripe would be "If these camps ever existed, where are they? I don't see any camps." They wouldn't waste 2 seconds griping about the shower rooms when they have an easier out than that and, fortunately, the Holocaust victims were too smart to give it to them.

This firsthand material, as painful as it might be to look and to be reminded of, is your proof--your proof! Not a history book. History books should be based on that proof and not asserting anything independent of that proof. Without your proof, you are just blowing smoke.