The Real Tragedy Of Japan And What We Should Take From It.

The Japanese people have become as fierce an ally and friend as they were an enemy. As a young Marine I studied the campaigns of the Pacific War, where American Marines and Japanese Imperial soldiers threw themselves at each other in some of the most savage battles in the history of armed conflict. I saw a couple of those islands, actually walked some of the places where the battles were fought.

During a training cycle I had occasion to spend some weeks in Japan. I traveled the countryside when I could. I met many ordinary Japanese people in their day-to-day lives. I talked to an English teacher… a fisherman… a tank commander in the Japanese home defense forces… farmers, students and businessmen. Without exception they were sincere, friendly people. I was invited into complete strangers’ homes and treated like an honored guest… It occurred to me that perhaps it was because I made a sincere effort to learn the language and customs, and I exhibited a lively curiosity which they were only too happy to satisfy.

We are watching a people who have just suffered one of the great tragedies of the modern era… the death toll is going to be horrendous. Far higher than the figures we’ve seen up to now. What has been remarkable has been the response of the Japanese people to an event which would have prostrated many other countries outright. Grieve?… Hurt? Yes, they grieve and they hurt, but they immediately begin the long path to recovery. There are no bleating cries for others to do for them what they can do themselves.

There’s no looting. Imagine a situation like this in Oakland or Los Angeles, where looting has been rampant during disturbances… where the only stores that didn’t get looted were those owned by Korean and Vietnamese, who were defending their properties with M-16 rifles and shotguns. (Amazing how the bad guys avoid stuff like that).

We can take a lot from this if we’re willing to listen and learn. Our Lame Stream Media has screamed every irresponsible headline they could fabricate, starting multiple layers of conflicting rumor. The Japanese are playing the whole nuclear thing rather close to their vests… but they’re not wont to deal in fiction or rumor either.

We don’t have a press any more. They spew just exactly what their Marxist bosses want them to. And right now that’s to gin up nuclear fears, in preparation for walling atomic energy away for ever in the dungeons of the environmental radicals and the EPA… who, by the way, is scrambling like crazy to implement cap and tax before our timid Mr. Boehner can summon up the testosterone to cut the EPA’s feet out from under it.

So while our President plays golf, goes to Rio or whichever vacation du jour he is on, and our majority leader takes time to figure out he has a majority, the Japanese people will go quietly about putting their lives together. Of course, we’ll help. What good friend wouldn’t? But it will be the Japanese, with the same indomitable will and sense of purpose that enabled them to return from the devastation of World War Two, that will pull them through.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011