My heart weeps. For those lost in the pounding earthquake or the monstrous tsunami that followed. For those injured and for those who came out unscathed but will forever be scarred by survivor’s guilt.The chattering heads are already in full flight – what this will mean to Japan’s economy and the global economy. And about the nuclear plants and radioactive fallout. About buildings and roads and towns that no longer exist. And let us not forget the idiot bimbo from some college campus who obviously doesn’t do much studying on Daddy’s dime so she has plenty of time to make fun of the Japanese students frantically calling anyone they can think of trying to get news of family and friends.
My heart weeps because these people have no heart beyond the hard little nugget that keeps them living and breathing in their own insular world.What devastation nature has wrought on this little piece of Mother Earth. It all happened so fast and so violently, most people didn’t have a chance to blink, let alone fully comprehend what was happening.
My heart weeps because the world did not stop as one great sea of humanity and mourn the loss of fellow human beings, not even for one minute. The official death toll is more than 4,300. More than 8,000 people are still missing. Some 430,000 people are in temporary shelters, too worried about daily survival to think about the future.
So right now I would like anyone who reads this to stop for one minute and mourn for the lost and those who survived but must now find a way to rebuild their shattered lives. We can give our fellow human beings one minute, can’t we?
I will stop and I will share my tears on FB.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding us that we are the human family.
ReplyDeleteMy nephew, Tom, is married to a 2nd generation Japanese American, Karen Okada, whose family is all in California. Tom and Karen's daughter, Sophia Okada Callahan, has started a fund for the earthquake survivors and just emailed me today to inform me.
You may have heard of Karen's family. Her sister is Doris Matsui (D-Calif.). Her husband, Bob Matsui, was the Congressman from the 5th district when he died after a brief illness in 2005.
In my thoughts this week are with the workers assigned to the Fukushima nuclear power plant who were temporarily evacuated due to dangerous levels of radiation. Earlier this week, a transient spike in radiation had reached the equivalent of a year's exposure that would raise the cancer probability risk to 100%. A Twitter report from Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times stated: "They took cover for 45 mins on site and left water pumps running. There was no suspension of operations." The crisis level is roughly equivalent to a Chernobyl scale disaster, and the workers are making the ultimate self-sacrifice to contain this disaster.
ReplyDeleteI started writing a post earlier this week but abandoned it because words fail me.
Thank you for this post.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Japan for a long time and married there and it's half my world now.
I've traveled all up and down the coast that has been devastated and those were some of the most character-filled and charming towns that one could imagine.
We haven't quite accounted for everyone we know yet.
As Octo mentions, there are people working to save everyone else a nuclear meltdown in the full knowledge that being that close to the problem will come at a vast personal cost. That's a special sort of courage.
A lot of the survivors of the tsunami are children who don't have parents any more, so there will be a generation of orphans who may grow up... in the Japan that comes after... with that shadow over them for all their lives.
Japan is a resilient country. It's had to be. I've known it as a very peaceful and happy place.
I can't make it mean to others what it means to me - there are some forms of wealth you just can't share. But I hope people look at this disaster and see something about the nature of the human spirit, see something about Japan, and seek to learn a little more.
Anyway, arigato.
"My heart weeps because the world did not stop as one great sea of humanity and mourn the loss of fellow human beings, not even for one minute."
ReplyDeleteIf I allowed myself to weep, I'd never stop because human history is an endless sump of grief, despair, agony, horror and inevitable death. The scale isn't as significant to me as any individual story. Each one is as sad as all of it combined. Meaningless horror and suffering will always be with us. Besides, tears don't help, people do and our country after all usually offers a lot of it -- at least for a time.
But my anger is reserved for that uniquely American reaction as typified by Glenn Beck, (damn his soul) the latest spokesman for that traditional American value of using someone elses grief and suffering to make money.
Yes, my first reaction to that wave was "will it get to California before the bastards start howling about the wrath of god "
It's not God's message about human sin. It's tiny as compared with the real catastrophes our planet has suffered. The dinosaurs didn't 'sin' and the 95% of all life that perished in the Permian extinction didn't sin.
Glenn Beck however has sinned against mankind and should be punished -- all the more severely because he does it for profit alone.
Sinning against God can't hurt God, but sinning against humanity only adds to human suffering and degrades not only the sinner but those who have to tolerate him, who are associated with him by common citizenship, by supporting his advertisers, his politics, his wealth.
And then there's the Demon Rush, for whom this is all another hysterical hype by those "Liberals" to pry a dollar away from bleeding hearts.
ReplyDeleteIf God will destroy cities for being unkind to strangers, yet Rush lives and bloats and swells with wealth and importance? Well pardon my disbelief, but while Rush breathes, truth and decency and compassion gasp for air. Pardon my atheism, but to me there is no god but god in man and no vengeance will lay its fingers upon him unless we do.
I think that there are times when events are so overwhelming that people are unable to allow themselves to fully experience the devastation. There's a song by singer-songwriter Iris DeMent that has the lyrics:
ReplyDelete"I'm walking and I'm talking
Doing what I'm supposed to do
Working over time to make sure I don't come unglued
Cause I'm older now and I got no time to cry."
Good one Sheria.
ReplyDeleteCapt - I think we must allow ourselves to feel a small portion of the pain the Japanese are suffering with just to remain connected to our fellow human beings.
But totally agree about the God's wrath crap. If God was going to bring devastation down on the most deserving, the tsunami would have hit Washington.
Shaw and Magpie - I think what has happened hits so much harder for those who have some connection to the place and its people.
Octo - The courage and determination of those plant workers left me in awe. They represent what the best of being human.
"If God was going to bring devastation down on the most deserving, the tsunami would have hit Washington."
ReplyDeleteFox News is God's punishment already. I'm just trying to figure out what we did that was bad enough to deserve that.
Next time a flood, please.
Rocky,
ReplyDeleteYes, what's appropriate in such cases is exactly the silent respect you mention. The disasters are so huge that it's hard even to imagine them -- where I live, we've had some large quakes, but 9.0? That's just unbelievable. The tsunami appears to have swept away entire villages. And then there are the nuclear plants on top of it all. If the Japanese weren't so good about disaster preparedness, the loss of life, terrible as it's been, could have been exponentially greater. I don't think we are anywhere near as prepared as they are for such a series of events.