Views from Two Ground Zeros

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100904E.shtml

Views from Two Ground Zeros
By Jun Hoshikawa
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 09 October 2004

The Americans are at last beginning to notice how badly the Bush administration has damaged their reputations worldwide, earned over decades if not centuries by so much effort and goodwill. It is as tragic to them as to us outside who have admired American values and acquired many American friends.

Make no mistake. The anti-Americanism is on a steep rise, not only in Islamic world, but also in surprising places like Japan. And it's all because of the way Bush & Co. has mishandled their War on Terror after 9-11.

In March, 2003, on the eve of Anglo-American invasion into Iraq, I was struck by an article in one of the major weeklies in Japan. In it, an old woman, mother of a popular illustrator of children's books, said to her son: "Americans can do such arrogant things because we have allowed them to get away with Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Yes, she meant those two nuclear bombs and the utter devastation we suffered. Nearly 200,000 died in respective explosions on August 6th and 9th, 1945, around the two Ground Zeros, followed by countless additional deaths and disease from radioactivity later. The toll continues to this day.

She is no radical, nor particularly liberal; just an ordinary person who has lived long enough to gain a historical perspective. As the overwhelming majority of Japanese do, she knows what we did as a small Empire was terrible before and during the WWII, and is very happy to live now in a democracy. She probably has, like so many of us, maintained general good feelings toward Americans.

Yet, she remembers.

...more...

[MikeG]

1. So who was that guy at 3 AM the other night?

Threatening to off us all.

[WilliamPitt]

2. Missed it

I actually slept last night.

[WilliamPitt]

3. .