Re: Todays students knowledge
Eberhard Weber (glosys@PSNW.COM)
Mon, 12 May 1997 02:20:13 -0700
Mary Haas, in a message dated April 14, wondered about the emphasis on
Europe when schools teach about WWII even though the US fought a longer
war in the Pacific than in Europe. I will side-step that issue and
instead connect the story I am about to tell to the war in the Pacific
even though I, as the Berlin schoolboy, had no wartime experiences there:
The reason for this story is to underscore how war itself impacts a life
far beyond the specific experiences, in my case half a world away. It
started in 1962 when, on our honeymoon, I went to Hawaii and saw the
monument of the Arizona and the radar site on Kauai where the off-duty
radio operators first saw the swarm of japanese planes. I had not
thought much about the war after arriving in the US in 1958 until the
sights of that war once again caught up with me, dramatically driving
home the point that WWII was indeed a world wide war.
Then, in 1975 I was a professor for the University of Southern California
and I was asked to teach graduate courses in study centers in Tokyo, on
Okinawa, in Taiwan and in the Philippines. Except for going up to Mount
Mitake near Tokyo to see the mountain and the shrine used as a code word
by japanese bombers after successfully atacking Pearl Harbor, there was
nothing in Tokyo that reminded me of the war. But then I went to the
Philippines.
Driving north from Manila I came through San Fernando and I saw the place
where the survivors of the Bataan death march where loaded into freight
cars, and I followed the rails, knowing that for every two or three rail
ties I walked over, one prisoner on board of that train died.
On another occasion I drove to Camp O'Donnel where those who survived the
train ride spent the war, and where so many of them died from many causes.
Driving up the field road to its end there was a simple gate with a US
airman as a guard, but nothing else. All the barracks were gone and there
was nothing there to remind the casual observer that this was a branch of
hell not all that long before. The airman belonged to a US communications
station that was established ner that site. A farmer walking behind a
Caribou or water buffalo pointed to a field next to his where he said the
ones who died during the night were collected every morning and buried
there.
On still another trip I took a banka boat (outrigger) with a lawnmower
engine from Bataan to Corregidor. Even from a distance the concrete piers
showed the ferocity of the shelling that island had taken. Going up on
the hill where now there is a monument (it was not there when I first
visited) there was spent and disarmed munition everywhere as well as
rusting guns of the US defenders and of the japanese defenders lateron. I
walked past the mile-long baracks, a ghostly remnant but one could see the
paint for rooms and hallways still.
I went to the mortar emplacments and walked on the roof of the concrete
bunkers that ringed the mortar installations. There were so many
star-bursts carved into the concrete where bombs and grenades hit and left
their mark. I visited McArthurs quarters where his adjudant threw him off
the porch because the general stood out gazing at the attacking planes
as if he wre invincible.
I went to the Malinta tunnel the american defenders retreated to, knowing
that some of the side tunnels where blocked because the japanese defenders
subsequently blew themselves up in these tunnels.
I walked over these grounds in silence - there was no tourist anywhere,
and I cannot describe the feeling and the sense of understanding of the
horrors that took place there where now I could only hear birds chirping.
I felt like an invader into the tombs of those who died there, and so many
died there. I had a book with me with detailed stories about very
specific places, and I mean places of twenty square foot in size where
combat actions took place, described in detail, and giving the names of
those who fought there. Once such place is a small space above the
entrance to the tunnel, and I stood there as if I could somehow reach
those who left their lives on this small piece of dirt and talk with them,
tell them that I honor them, thank them, mourn for them.
On another occasion I drove to Bataan on the very dirt road where the
death march took place. There were so many trees which had a painted
board nailed to them saying "a mute witness to the infamous death march".
I tried to visualize the column of tired and wounded soldiers, falling,
being stabbed, shot and left on the road side. I tried to imagine in the
villages I went through which house held those brave filipinos who
snatched soldiers from the column when the japanese soldiers were not
watching. And again, I could feel the ghosts of those who walked there.
I went to the back country, in the mountains, crawled into caves blown up
by US troops. I became an expert in spotting places that were blown up
which even locals were surprised about. I dug out shells, bones, helmets,
glass ampules that were severed to help someone wounded there and I
wondered who that might have been. I dug up forks, nescafe wrappers,
bayonets and quite a few live rounds, rusted and wet in this tropical and
rainy place. I met those who went to missionary school in the only
concrete building within many miles on top of that mountain and which
became a headquarter of the japanese. The stories and experiences are
endless and vivid. I climbed the mountain on the Gulf of Lingayen
which was bombarded so heavily by the US fleet and followed the road to
Bagio where in the crevisses of rocks one could (then) still find
war equipment and even skeletal remains. I could go on and on.
My point here is that my own war experiences a generation prior to that
time and half a world away descended upon me, took hold of me and did not
let go all the time I was there, and it did it again when I arrived on
Okinawa. It is as if by visiting these places, touching the ground that
now was so peaceful and so quiet, I could somehow find an answer, somehow
reach beyond myself to discover some meaning or purpose or to find
something redeeming about what I saw and what had happened since.
It is somewhat masochistic, I presume, at least on the face of it. But it
was not this place or that place or americans or japanese but the war
itself, its insanities, the thoughts of soldiers in places so far from
home which these places still hold, their fears and their hopes and their
own confusion why they were there seemed to have infiltrated the earth in
these places and made them something other than what they seemed.
Something like an un-named shrine to be seen only by those who wanted to
see, being just places for those who did want to see.
And I wanted these hills and other sites to talk to me, to talk of what
they had seen, to say to me that I was not alone and that germany was not
alone, that the whole world was in flames and that, in the end, there were
only shopkeepers, farmers, taylors, teachers, and other ordinary and
not so ordinary people, thrown together in far away places all over the
planet, killing each other and yet, when they meet years later, as they do
at times, they no longer harbor the animosities that burned in them in
these places.
That war, 35 or more years before I walked over so much paindrenched
ground and half a world away, has burned itself into my mind as it has
in the minds of so many, relegated to the background at times, but
awakened so easily. They do not evoke memories of anything in particular
about that war, but the particulars I saw and touched evoked a general
sentiment or feeling I cannot understand nor overcome. It is a morbid
feeling, a sad feeling and even a painful one. It keeps hounding me, not
now so much because I do not see the phsyical evidence to remind me.
Knowing where some of the battles of the Pacific were fought drew me
like a huge magnet and for all the five years I was in the Orient to
visit these sites and to honor the suffering of those who fought there
and to find something by doing so which I did not and do know what it is.
For this list this may not be an interesting story. But in my mind it
points directly to what I believe we wish to address, that wars
do not stop even when they are over, and that no matter how much we search
and probe, the message we seek to deliver does not lie in the stories
themselves so much as in their meaning as it relates to war itself,
wherever it may be fought, whoever may fight it or for whatever reasons.
So, pardon the departure from direct experiences, please, and try to
understand that even in telling them the 'teller' him or herself is
still searching for answers where none may perhaps ever be found for such
insanities. And the search goes on ....
Best regards to you all
Eberhard Weber
The Berlin schoolboy
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