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<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">My
Nippon-Zhongguo connection</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Had my first child been a boy, he would have had the
unhappy name of Kenichi Zhou Enlai! Just
imagine the ribbing he would have gotten in the schoolyard. My wife and I were children of the 60s,
forgiving as hell. I "forgave"
Japanese daily atrocities they allegedly committed in the Philippines during
WWI. <i>Kenichi
</i>means first healthy child in Nihonggo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">I was also a cheerleader to Mao Zedong's alter ego, Zhou
Enlai, the consummate diplomat, and nemesis of Zhongguo's Gang of Four led by
Mao's actress wife Jiang Qing. My first
child was born a year after the historic visit of Richard Nixon to China in
1972, set up by the Kissinger-Zhou Enlai tandem. Ergo, Zhou Enlai would have joined the family's
litany of names since Mao Zedong would have been too hard to handle in my
wife's conservative family, and I would have taken exception to a German
addition to my lineage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Happily, we had a girl.
With her Mom of Welsh-Scot-English-German Midwest US extraction, and ourself,
a Sino-Indo-Malay-cum-a-dab-of-Iberian concoction, Manila-born Kristina grew up
to furl a school banner that declared: Mongrels of the World, Unite!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">I grew up in an area that still pronounced Yamashita's
name with blood curdling sound. Rocks
rained on our house roof on New Year '65 when I brought home a Japanese student
from a Youth Assembly I attended in Dumaguete City the previous week. That was a good twenty years after the famed
Nippon General's march north of Manila through our valley.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">I would later find out that a Japanese officer warned my
Dad that he was on the list of those to be apprehended by the Kempetai. He was suspected of cutting the stencil and
running a mimeo machine for the underground's news rag. He was guilty as charged. Had he been apprehended, I might have been
born an orphan. My mother was heavy with
child while "we" were on the run.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">I am no apologist for Japan. They have their ample share of the blame game
from WWII. Their atrocities were
characteristics of every occupying imperial force in the last five centuries,
born out of a sense of superiority nurtured and sustained by a heirarchical
social structure that ordered humanity from the heavenly mandate to the lowly
peon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">One of my Dad's older brothers was a school teacher
before the Rising Sun's banner was unfurled over the archipelago, a nationalist
noncompliant to the wishes of the American forces who saw it their task to
husband the birth of an independent nation through a Commonwealth heavily
tilted to the advantage of US commerce.
He ended up being a translator to Nippon's occupying forces, thus, seen
as a collaborator to the regime. American-led
guerrillas quartered him at the public square with four carabaos heading
separately to the four winds, a warning on Filipinos who cooperated with
Nippon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">During the Vietnam War, records of American forces'
earlier behavior in the Philippines, particularly in Samar, came to light. Atrocities did not start in Vietnam by
drug-crazed exceptions. They were abundantly
on display by the flannel-garbed Indian fighters who came to tropical Philippines,
already seasoned in leaving behind veils and vales of tears in their paths
through native territories, as real estate hungry easterners of European
descent moved westward-ho!</span><span style="font-family:"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Forgiveness came on as a strong virtue in our
upbringing. As an adult, we came to
realize that this was more than just ignoring other's unacceptable
behavior. It is acknowledging the objective
reality that whatever occurred in the past, is done. Finis.
There is no way of undoing it; one can, however, learn a lesson from it,
and decide whether one continues with established patterns, or takes on a
different course.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">We now know that humanity is wired to behave according to
the images that informed its growth, and therefore, feels comfortable when it
automatically just follows the easy path of previous behavior. Education's task is to provide alternative
paths.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">My Chinese Oral English students introduce themselves at
the beginning of the semester, and as a model, I introduce myself first with
some guidelines that they then use for their own intro. One of my lines in response to the question
of "what makes me happy" is an echo of Star Trek, which I rephrased
as "going someplace I had not been previously, and doing something I had
not done before." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">There is a new context abroad, surprisingly a germ
already implanted from those who devised the remembrances of this season, from
the progeny of <i>Millat Ibrahim, </i>whether
it be the Hanukkah/Menorah of the Torah story, the manger Christ-child at
Yuletide, the end of Muharram in Islam, or the secular drumbeats of African <i>matunda ya kwanza, </i>a celebration of the
fruits of the harvest, where humanity affirms the path it hath already trod,
but proceed to move someplace it had not previously been, and do something it
had not done before. In my old book,
that was labeled "forgiveness", or, if I may be allowed a play on
words, being "given for" the future.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">My Nippon-Zhongguo connection is grounded in the past,
but moves unencumbered and freely into the future. Happy Holidays!</span></div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both"><a style="font:lighter 10px Verdana, Arial;color:#000000;"><img align="absmiddle" border="0" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> <font color="black" size="2" face="arial">j'aime la vie
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<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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