Re: [tlug] A-bomb service

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Sotaro Kobayashi writes:

 > For me,the matter is about an incident which happened 65 years ago,
 > I don't care about it so much.

I have friends with roots in Hiroshima; I know it has deeply affected
their lives.  I care about that.  (By contrast, my wife is from Kyoto,
and her roots there are in the countryside ... her family hardly
noticed the war; no bombs, and as long as they produced a lot of rice,
they even got to keep a lot of their men, and the men who were taken
generally went as officers, and came back.)

But what really bothers me is the way that the here-and-now hibakusha
and Okinawans get used and abused by contemporary politics. :-(

 > I am deeply paying tributes to fallen or injured British and
 > American soldiers on Youtube videos in the 21st century now. :'(

War sucks, and as an American who generally like his country, I
appreciate the thought.  But you should remember that American
soldiers are at least in principle volunteers, and that they are often
well-compensated for the risk they take by the more-rapid-and-fair-
than-the-private-sector promotion policies of the military, not to
mention the training they get, plus the respect that veterans get in
much, if not most, of American society.  It's not at all the same as
the victims in Hiroshima and Dresden, many of whom hated their
governments, or at least the local representatives in the Tokko and
Gestapo, I'm sure.

Again I'd like to make the point that many of the alleged
justifications for war are based on economic inquality (either trying
to lessen it or trying to increase it :-/), and we in the advanced
countries could do a lot to decrease tensions by improving economic
fairness.  That will cost us a lot, when you consider how many Chinese
and Indians there are to be fair to.

True, that won't remove all cause of war, eg, the Taliban you mention
are probably motivated much more by religion and rage (about family
lost to foreign bullets, etc) than by economics.  But it will help.