I thought it would be fitting to write a Memorial Day tribute to honor the men and women of our class that served so proudly for our country. We are fortunate to list no casualities among our classmates, unlike many classes in the late 60's and 70's that suffered losses in Vietnam. Like the classmates you see in the picture above (Rodney Kimura, Dan Kalili, Bruce Oliveira and Butch Maunkea with Mike Chun) most retired without seeing any active combat duty. Others in our class to serve active duty are Randy Chang, Tim Bachran, Jonathan Spence, Jonah Hoapili, David Copp, Gerard Akaka, Albert Hee, Wally Zane, Dennis Kamae, Allison Melemai and Tommy Thompson. Each one deserves our praise and admiration for chosing to serve our country and protect the lifestyle and values we share as Americans. But as I get older, Memorial Day is more and more disturbing to me, not because we pause to honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, but because each Memorial Day adds thousands and thousands of human beings to the list of fatalities caused by war in every corner of the world.
Memorial Day was started in 1868 to honor the thousands who perished on BOTH SIDES of the Civil War. It was an act of peace, a move that would bring solidarity to a country divided and mourning. As we moved through the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War and Iraq, Memorial Day took a greater significance as more and more Americans were touched by the casualities of war. But what if we looked at the TOTAL loss of life on all sides of the conflict? In WWI, the US lost 126,000, the rest of the world lost 15,000,000. In WWII, the US lost 500,000, the rest of the world lost 55,000,000. We lost 35,000 in Korea, the rest of the world lost 2.8 million. We suffered 58,000 fatalities in Vietnam, while the rest of the world lost 3.5 million people.
I don't mean to minimize the loss of American lives, the point is to recognize that the human spieces has been exterminating itself all over the planet for thousands of years. In the last century alone, the advancement in our weapons and technology (along with the insanity of indivduals like Adolf Hitler) contributed to the deaths of over 100 million people worldwide.
So as we honor our fallen heroes on this 2008 Memorial Day, let's consider the loss of life that every war, revolution, conflict and social uprising creates for BOTH SIDES. It's the reason Memorial Day was established in the first place. I think its the beginning of the "consciousness of peace" that our planet needs to survive....wishing everyone a safe holiday, Benny
2 comments:
war time is only the other side of peace time, and if you've ever seen how wars are won... then you know what it's like to wish peace time would come and it seems like a long, long time.
And regarding that "consciousness of peace,” it was in place here in 1898 then the US violated the neutrality of Hawaii as a sovereign nation-State thus by force of arms preempting a recognized member of the family of nations' choice to exercise "aloha" to all nations as its official foreign policy, something it had been doing since 1843. Not everyone knows that aloha was part of the early geopolitical scene among nations and that the Hawaiian Islands as a constitutional monarchy proudly maintained that position for 50 years by rule of domestic law for internal affairs and by treaty with dozens of other nation-States for external affairs. Someday, because of environmental sustainability issues and other changes in the world, we may be forced to be an independent political entity once more. Stranger things have happened. The Baltic States of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia restored their independent governments in 1991 as a result of the end of the Soviet Union's control of Eastern Europe by force. Stranger things have happened.
Post a Comment