Fateful 2001 in New York; Fateful 1932 in Tokyo
A successful cartoonist in Malaysia said that you should not take anybody as a subject into your work if you bear ill toward him or her.
It must be a key to success a humble artist has learnt in a multi-race and multi-religion environment in Southeast Asia, which should apply to all cases.
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On September 11, 2001, a Japanese was watching the World Trade Center towers burning and crumbling down to the ground zero from her residence in New York.
Mrs. Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1991 until 2001, was at that time working on her memoir in New York.
The great-grandchild of a famous Japanese prime minister was then in New York after having terminated her mission in Afghanistan Japan and UNHCR had been pursuing around 2000.
In Washington D.C. two months later after the 9/11 Attacks, Mrs. Sadako Ogata was making a speech in a high-level talk with Mr. Collin Powel and Mr. Paul Henry O'Neill, two key Secretaries of the then U.S. Government, on her experiences in Afghanistan.
She continued to play a major role, such as Special Representative of the Prime Minister of Japan at the International Conference on Afghanistan.
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She was working on Afghanistan in 2000. She flew to Pakistan and Afghanistan to meet with Taliban leasers and also inspect situations concerning girls’ education under the Taliban regime.
However, according to her reports, all the foreign countries, except Japan, had lost interest in Afghanistan and left the nation. Eventually, she left the project and returned to Japan. Everything about Afghanistan seemed to be terminated. Then she moved to New York and started to write her memoir.
Fatefully one day in New York in 2001, she eye-witnessed the World Trade Center buildings burning and falling down, without knowing the attackers on board the jet planes were put at the helm by their headquarters in Afghanistan.
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In fiscal 2000, Japan contributed a half million dollars through UNCHR to aid for Afghan refugees, as well as 1.1 million dollars to support for Pakistan and another 1.1 million dollars to Iran in connection with aid for refugees therein. Through U.N. World Food Program, Japan also provided foods worth 5 million dollars for Afghanistan in FY 2000. In addition, Japan provided medical support worth 240,000 dollars for Afghanistan and Pakistan through International Committee of the Red Cross in FY 2000.
(After the 9/11 Attacks, Japan has contributed about 600 million dollars to various Afghanistan-related projects.)
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A Japanese reader of Mrs. Sdako Ogata’s book wondered why the female scholar, a daughter of a diplomat, decided to work on the ground in troubled regions in the world when she got 60 years old. (Her relatives include many famous upper-class families in Japan.)
Mrs. Sdako Ogata’s great-grandfather became prime minister of Japan in 1931; however, in the next year 1932, he was assassinated by a terror group including young officers of the Imperial Japan’s Military.
It is also interesting to know that her great-grandfather, Tsuyoshi Inugai, had once personally helped Sun Yat-Sen (also know as Sūn Wén), Father of Modern China who led people in the chaotic terms after the collapse of Qing Dynasty.
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God seems to have prepared, for Japan’s difficult moment in the outset of the 21st century, the daughter of a daughter of a daughter of the prime minister who had become a symbol of democracy and victim of terror in Imperial Japan before Word War II.
(Mrs. Sadako Ogata reportedly refused Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s offer for the position of Foreign Minister in 2002 when then Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, a daughter of another prime minister who had met Mao Tse-Tung in Beijing in 1972, was dismissed. It might indicate another key to success for fateful people.)
“CAN YOU DRINK THE CUP OF SUFFERING”