[Oe List ...] About Japan

[Janice Ulangca]

Thanks, Jaime.  I don't know if you grew up with any anti-Japanese sentiment, but when I was in the Philippines (1959-1962) I ran into a lot of it.  College age students wrote stories for my English class detailing Japanese atrocities that happened to people they knew - even though they were very young at the tail end of World War II - most born during the Japanese occupation.  I don't know the national origin of your San Francisco friend, but it's very good to see recognized the fine qualities that are showing now in the Japanese people. I wish the USA had had a little of this grace in its dealings with Japanese Americans during that war.
Janice Ulangca
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jaime R Vergara 
  To: oe at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2011 4:12 AM
  Subject: [Oe List ...] About Japan


    
  While we must do what we can to share of our means, we might have the humility to learn from the recipients of our goodwill, as well.  This was forwarded to me from a friend in San Francisco.

  Japan In a Time of Crisis

  1. THE CALM
  Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.

  2.THE DIGNITY
  Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture.

  3. THE ABILITY
  The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall.

  4. THE GRACE 
  People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something.
   
  5. THE ORDER
  No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding.


  6. THE SACRIFICE

  Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid?


  7. THE TENDERNESS
  Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak.


  8. THE TRAINING
  The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.
   
  9. THE MEDIA 
  They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage.
   
  10.THE CONSCIENCE
  When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.

  Domo arigato gosaimazu, Nippon-san.

  (Remarkable that the casualties are mother nature's more than the feared catastrophe on the nuclear reactors.  Am anti-nuclear power to the degree that we do not still know where, and how to dispose of the 25,000 year radioactive spent fuel.  We can now build reactors that can withstand 10.0 of the Richter scale, but does still does not deal with my concern.  Nuclear reactors will not go away unless we blow the planet away into pieces.)




  j'aime la vie


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