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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-16/japan-ishigaki-military-base-remilitarisation-counter-china/101869542>
"Setsuko Yamazato was seven years old when her family left their home to live
in the jungle. They joined the other villagers, some with food on their backs
and crying children in their arms, and filed into the green hills of Ishigaki,
an island at the south-west end of the Japanese archipelago. Many never
returned.
It was the dying days of World War II and the Japanese Imperial Army was
preparing for a last stand in the Okinawan islands. US troops were sweeping
through the Pacific, and an invasion of Ishigaki looked imminent.
Fearing the islanders might help the Americans, Japanese soldiers ordered them
to abandon their homes and shelter in the jungle. Officially, it was to hide
from the air raids. But residents found no sanctuary there. Starvation and
malaria were rife.
Now 85 years old, Setsuko sits in the swaying grass just beyond the shadow of
the trees. “I don’t even want to come here and think back of those days,” she
says. “I’d rather forget.”
But memories still reach down through the decades, like how her mother had to
beg for milk to feed her baby sister; and how Setsuko lay in her mother’s arms,
both of them trembling with a fever from malaria. “I didn’t know what death
meant,” she says.
That soon changed as the war in the Pacific took a devastating toll on Ishigaki
— and on Setsuko’s own family. The horrors she witnessed in the jungle made her
a lifelong pacifist. “Whoever creates or cooks up war are the ones that I
really hate.”
But now she fears that history is repeating itself and the spectre of war is
returning to Ishigaki."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
