Saturday, July 29, 2006

A Hiroshima Story

A Hiroshima Story


When Hiroshima was attacked with an atomic bomb in the summer of 1945, a teenage school girl was saved by luck in a whole skin behind a concrete wall.

Though she felt sometimes a sick, her survival was a kind of miracles for someone having suffered an atomic bomb attack within a mile of its hypocenter.

In those days, as most of young men went into military service, school girls were mobilized to working in various social sectors.

The girl was rendering s service as a conductor of a tramcar of Hiroshima City.

One day before the atomic bomb attack, in a meeting of those girls working for tramcar systems, a male manager scolded some other girls for having picked and eaten peaches from trees in someone's orchard.

The girl in question, however, got envious of those illegal peach pickers, though she did not like to be reproved so hard. Food situations were indeed so bad at that time, while a rationing system was enforced.

Therefore, after the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, she was very unhappy even for that reason alone, though she was wholly saved and very busy helping other victims of the huge, destructive bomb.

And, when the war ended on August 15, those girls working for tramcar systems gathered and decided to put an end to their lives as their beloved Empire was going to be ruined. However, as they saw a tramcar still running in the city of debris for its dear life, they changed their minds and decided to continue to help other victims.

Yet, she could not be unhappier in those days. Her mind became wild.

However, as an angel expected, one day in a refugee center, a wounded man gave her a peach.

She took it and enjoyed the taste, which in that instant healed her mind and heart.

Thereafter, she has been living a long and peaceful life even to this day, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper.
* * *

Japan also recovered from devastation like the teenage school girl in Hiroshima in 1945.

But, after WWII, how God gave a peach to Japan is still unknown.

God kindly gives a peach to a good girl. All the more, He would probably give a peach to any war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel.
* * *

Anyway, take a peach once in a while in commemoration of a recovery of one sweet heart in Hiroshima in 1945.



"ONCE AGAIN THEY WILL LIVE UNDER MY PROTECTION"

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Charlie Chaplin on Air

Charlie Chaplin on Air


The night before, I saw a Chaplin's movie aired by Japan's public TV station.

Also, last night, I saw another Chaplin's movie on the same channel.

Tonight, I might see other Chaplin's movie in the same broadcast time.

According to him, the silent movie is a kind of ballet shows.

Yes, Charles Chaplin is a cool entertainer, but not a hero himself of permanently unemployed persons on the street whom he played.

I am always amazed, whenever I saw his movie, at a stark difference in presence, not a simple visula appearance, between a hobo hero Chaplin played and other figures surrounding him except a girl he loved in a story.
* * *

For example, I can confirm how ordinary people in America, say, in 1918, looked like from his movie "Dog's Life." But, Chaplin in the film looks aloof from all the others and the time. Put extremely, it is as if an Asian comedian in 2006 were in a street of the U.S. in 1918.

His expressions are very universal rather than American, British, or Western at a fundamental level.

Such techniques could be only absorbed by having experienced a very poor life and a real human tragedy in one's youth.

Indeed, a very poor life and a real human tragedy in 2006 must be the same as those in 1918 in terms of effect on human spirit.
* * *

So, if somebody could show a stark difference in appearance or personality among many colleagues or peers, he or she should have learnt something deeply concerned with humanity somewhere beforehand.

Therefore, I am enjoying seeing him in a movie, wondering how he had succeeded in acquiring such a charm but failed in his life in extending what he had learnt to the real world to become another Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King Jr., if I may say.
* * *

I hope that someday a Chaplin in the 21st century, no matter if he is a Muslim or an Israelite in Palestine, will make such a film as those Charles Chaplin produced, according to the wish of the Supreme God.



"NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD"

Monday, July 24, 2006

Women with a Gun in the U.S.

Women with a Gun in the U.S.


A Japanese woman put her impressions of an American novel in columns of a Japanese newspaper.

The novel was about daily lives of policewomen in the U.S.

The point of issue is that they shoot the suspected to death without hesitation even when they are off duty.

This feeling cannot arouse sympathy of Japanese female readers.

"American women with a gun are so quick to kill petty offenders!"
* * *

Of course, it is a result of long-term, horrible experiences of American policewomen, in my view.

But, Americans should be alerted to a kind of deterioration in their social environment.

It is also alarming that one in 35 citizens in the U.S. is a criminal or an ex-criminal.
* * *

To your astonishment, you cannot buy a handgun at any shops in Japan.

No family has a handgun technically in Japan.

Though it is yet to be the case in Japan, if everybody in a town has the same amount of money and assets in their pockets, none should carry a handgun with himself / herself on the street for any purposes.
* * *

It may also be an issue of a kind of psychological syndromes.

What they need is courage to seek a right solution, love for neighbors, even though those policewomen still have a right and duty to be armed with a handgun.



"JESUS HEALS MANY PEOPLE"