One touch of destruction, as Shakespeare might have said, makes the whole world kin.
Every year my Japanese friend, Mitsuo, visits a son that lives and works in my US neighborhood. He recounted how his mother drummed it into him each morning as he left for school that he should be attentive. Of course, he needed to be attentive in his class; but, much more, he needed to be attentive outside.
Every year my Japanese friend, Mitsuo, visits a son that lives and works in my US neighborhood. He recounted how his mother drummed it into him each morning as he left for school that he should be attentive. Of course, he needed to be attentive in his class; but, much more, he needed to be attentive outside.
Those were the forties, World War II years, and allied bombers were pounding Tokyo and its suburbs virtually every day. The flimsy wooden houses collapsed and burned easily, scores lay dead and wounded every day. Mitsuo’s mother simply didn’t want her son to be literally what his name meant in Japanese, a “shining man.” So she repeatedly admonished him to pay attention to the warning siren, to find some protective cover like a desk and to crouch below instantly.
The advice paid dividends. Mitsuo survived the war and later worked his whole life for the multinational company whose US branch his son now served.
With a little hesitation, I responded by telling Mitsuo of a singular experience I had had in 1943. I was visiting my uncle with my mother twenty blocks from our home in Kolkata, when the piercing wail of a siren struck terror. We knew what it meant, for we had been told in school that an attack was imminent by the Japanese army, which was already at the frontier of Burma, now Myanmar, and that the land invasion was likely to be preceded by bombardment.
The advice paid dividends. Mitsuo survived the war and later worked his whole life for the multinational company whose US branch his son now served.
With a little hesitation, I responded by telling Mitsuo of a singular experience I had had in 1943. I was visiting my uncle with my mother twenty blocks from our home in Kolkata, when the piercing wail of a siren struck terror. We knew what it meant, for we had been told in school that an attack was imminent by the Japanese army, which was already at the frontier of Burma, now Myanmar, and that the land invasion was likely to be preceded by bombardment.
We rushed to the basement and crouched under a bed, our ears shut tight by our palms, carrying a bag containing petroleum jelly and bandages. We could hear the bombs fall and the earth shake, but mercifully the bombardment was short-lived. Though I had heard about shortages in town and famine in the countryside, now I was experiencing the war first-hand.
A half-hour later, as the All Clear sounded, we walked back home. Six blocks down I saw what mother didn’t want me to see: three flattened tenements, two dead cows, and next to that the grotesquely crumpled body of the local milkman, who supplied us milk every morning. Apparently he wasn’t paying attention and had chosen to stay with his cows instead of going down to the air-raid shelter.
A half-hour later, as the All Clear sounded, we walked back home. Six blocks down I saw what mother didn’t want me to see: three flattened tenements, two dead cows, and next to that the grotesquely crumpled body of the local milkman, who supplied us milk every morning. Apparently he wasn’t paying attention and had chosen to stay with his cows instead of going down to the air-raid shelter.
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