People of the past: indict them vs. learning from them
A poignant passage from the memoir of an American expat interned by the Japanese in Manila during WWII
Happy Friday! TGIF!
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The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas
In our contemporary world, we often have a misconception that people in the past were backward ignoramous. Sometimes, we may be surprised to learn of technologies that already existed during the War Era. More severely, many people today see people in the past as a blob of stereotypes, and assume that even the most open-minded of them had a way to go to before we the enlightened people today arrived. Based on this superficial caricature of those in the past, some today are quick to jump to indict our predecessors in history. But time and again, I found that assumption to be false. People in the past were also people. They weren’t the single group of bigoted, one-dimensional simpletons we’ve reduced them to, but had complex, nuanced views.
When I was writing Last Night with Tokyo Rose, the first book of the Nisei War Series, I had to research about Imperial Japan’s internment of foreign expats of their enemy countries such as the USA and Britain. One book I read for my research was The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas by Emily Van Sickle. Emily was an American expat in Manila at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. After that, she and her husband were imprisoned for three years in an internment camp by the Japanese Army. While not the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, her experience at Santo Tomas was a hollowing read. Her book is a memoir of her life and time in the camp. At the end of the book, when she described the situation shortly after her liberation, she wrote a passage that I had long wanted to share with you. But I had withheld it until Why I Fight is published to connect the passage to the Nisei soldiers.
As it turns out, this passage is especially timely given our world events today. Furthermore, it shows us that we people today can learn a lot from people of the past, rather than looking backward to judge them for their misdeeds.
Here’s the passage:
After more than three years’ knowledge of Japanese cruelty—the Death March of Bataan; the abuse and starvation of military prisoners; the beating and execution of civilian internees; the starvation of interned men, women and children; the bayonetting and burning of innocent neutrals — it was not surprising that we in Santo Tomás abominated all that pertained to Japanese militarism. However, it sickened me to read in an overseas copy of a New York newspaper that American “Patriots” harbored such violent hatred toward the Japanese as a race that they kicked and spat in the faces of wounded Nisei heroes who had fought with exceptional valor in Italy. What were we fighting. For, I wondered, if not to wipe out tyranny and race prejudice? Was this Americanism, to abuse men who believed so strongly in our ideals that they offered their lives to save our country and our necks? If so, neither country nor necks were worth saving.
In camp there were Nisei soldiers among our liberators, whom we saw bring in Japanese snipers for questioning. We owed our lives to those brave men, men of varied backgrounds and racial origins who had fought gallantly for us. Yet I heard internees express feelings of loathing and abhorrence for our Nisei soldiers. Undoubtedly, had they dared, they would have spat in each face that bore Japanese features.
I have never understood those who condemn a race or a nation because some of its members are reprehensible. If we encounter a score of mad dogs, we do not jump to the conclusion that all dogs are mad. Should we be less intelligent in our assessment in human beings? The imponderable hatreds caused by the war grow like cataracts until our spiritual vison becomes dimmed and distorted, like the sight of some child peering through darkness at harmless shadows which his frightened fancy conceives to be goblins or ghosts or other fearful phantoms of the night.
“If the light that is in thee is darkness, how great is the darkness itself.” We had come through the external darkness of imprisonment into the light of freedom; but to guard that light, to keep it burning brightly as a beacon for all the world, there must be light within the light of justice and love. “When we reach home,” I thought, “we can help to keep that light burning.”
When I was reading this book, I was very surprised to see a mention of the Nisei soldiers. I was even more struck by her thoughts about by them and what she thought about prejudice and the Japanese people. Here, I’m sharing her words. We hear sometimes people say the atmosphere of our world today feels like that of the pre-war period. If that is the case, perhaps we can take the torch from Emily, and continue to be the light in the midst of darkness.
If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share in the comments.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Alexa Kang