From HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI to You…. ヒロシマ,ナガサキからのお願い
I am a product of war.
I am a product of racism and white supremacy, Japanese imperialism, and global military corporate industrial complex. I am a product of love.
I am a product. Of people’s minds and hearts. It is not one or the other in any way. Living is complex. But people reduce things to ONE thing or another ONE THING.
The IMPERIAL ONE. I hope that we work to Decolonize, De-imperialize our minds.
Is this the only way people see? Do you see?
My mother was bombed by the Americans for nearly a year. Charred bodies, dreams, hopes. Destruction of a cultural self imagined. Towards the American century.
My mother’s sister perished in Hiroshima. My mother was supposed to go with her that day, but her sister went in place of her. And then……………the mushroom, the fire.
Then……….the looking and searching. The stench. The orange glow sky. The tears. The gaping gape, a darkness. Still here today in the minds and hearts of people who love to destroy and hate.
But until we can be smarter, stronger, more strategic, more concerned, have different worldviews, I offer a prayer.
Prayer:
I KEEP IN MIND, for myself, my mother, and all ancestors, that we seek understanding, thought, peace, connectedness returned and revisited and lived. BUT ALL THIS in CONTEXT OF THOSE WHO WRITE TO ME to tell me that THE ATOMIC BOMBS on JAPAN were NOT ENOUGH and that ALL JAPANESE should’ve been killed. I hear this from some VETS (usually white, black, or Latino), from some Koreans, Filipinos, Chinese), from some Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, White Australian and White Brits. SO WE LIVE CONNECTED to PASTS of HATRED alongside PASTS of HOPE. May we all Survive with Better Hearts, Intellects, and Strategies……….
Scars: Inter-generational Perpetration
Currently, there are many articles regarding the passing down of trauma in DNA. I am particularly focusing on trauma as a result of war, genocide, mass violence, and social oppression leading to refugee-making and exile, as well as such things as domestic violence. Inter-generational trauma is real. I did not need a scientific research paper to tell me this. However, as usual, I find that this kind of research, and these kinds of articles, have contradictory effects, like mostly everything in public life. Especially, if it has to do with oppression. Thinking about my own life, and the trajectories from what I know of my father’s life and mother’s life, and their parents’ and the conditions through which they survived and thrive, I see many issues. For now, I want to discuss five (5) distinct ones first, in relation to this “thing” we are beginning to mainstream: intergenerational trauma, the internal scars passed through time. The five I want to mention here are:
In Order to Do Justice
With an education system that teaches us to memorize certain facts, but not to analyze and think, and with a failing structure that deserts ethics and life itself, one does not have to be blind to see that there are incredible changes going on now that are disturbing our sense of peace and security. For most of the world, there has not ever been “peace” and “security.” The global cognitive dissonance is real. For Europeans, South and Central Americans, indigenous cultures, Asian nations, and almost everywhere, a rise in anger, confusion, and disillusionment is going on. It speaks, from my point of view, at various levels of the success that the state (wherever and whichever) has had, in blinding people to the truths of history, culture, and certain factors of life. In fact, there are many who will die with an understanding that war, victory, and narcissism are normal and perennial.
New Video posted on YouTube: “BLACK PACIFIC ELEGY”
Here is the second installment of my video series.
It is a visual poem. Read, listen, feel, think.
Hopefully you will be curious, look up information and terms you don’t quite know or understand.
Be outraged? Become more understanding? Curious?
Watch this in HD for the best view!
If you prefer VIMEO – the same video is here: https://vimeo.com/153967699
Controlling Amerasian Body-Minds: The American and French-Fathered Mixed-Race Children in Japan, Korea and Vietnam
For infants and children born to local mothers in Japan and Korea, fathered by U.S. military and civilian personnel during the U.S. occupation of these countries, their lives were not in their own or their mothers’ control. During U.S. occupations in Asia and the Pacific which began earlier—Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and the Solomon Islands—the same issues became prevalent, real, a struggle, continuing today. It continues today because these places are still “occupied.” And then in the latest full-out colonial Cold War played out in Southeast Asia, the same for the children and their mothers. But let us not forget that before the U.S. arrived in Southeast Asia, the French colonized Indochina. They had state policies on how to control the issue of the Metís, as they were called by the French, which differed from the United Statians.
LINK: Negritos of East Asia: As we Continue to Question Origins
There is diversity in the world. But not as diverse as previous times. Globalization–aka neo-colonization, has made empires and colonies into nation-states.
Dream of the Water Children — Video Series Launch: Episode 1
This is the first in a series of ongoing video projects based on my personal family history, historical memory, Asia-Pacific postwar ethnography and the historical present. It is on my channel at YouTube.
Okinawa, Guam, the Pacific and the U.S. Military- 4,700 marines to go to Guam
In the first week of February, there were decisions made by the U.S. government, the U.S. military and the government of Japan, with the governing body of Okinawa, to relocate 4,700 U.S. troops from the Okinawan bases to Guam. This number is about half of what was originally planned.
