Good morning!
Sittings seem like great old trees standing tall, surrounded by many green trees and
all kinds of flowers, solid and serene in the blue sky ocean. Our abundant greenery is
due to the unusual weather, like a rainy season with a lot of rain and cool air. This is
abnormal, but the abnormal climate of pouring rain with flooding and landslides,
and with record high temperatures with drought and wild fires are going on in many
places.
A severe heat and thirst far more severe than the scorching sun took place in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty eight years ago. I forwarded the Peace Declarations
this year, as well as a video titled “Opened Seal – Nagasaki Seen by An American
Marine Cameraman” broadcast by NHK in 2008. The video featured Joe O’Donnell,
who sealed in a trunk 30 pictures of Nagasaki taken just after the A-bomb hit;
after 43 years he opened the trunk for the public.
O’Donnell volunteered to be a Marine in 1940 at the age 19 due to the Pearl Harbor
attack. He was sent to Nagasaki for seven months on Sept. 22, 1945 in order to
record the devastated Nagasaki. He secretly brought back the pictures, but he could
not sleep because of nightmares. He sealed the photos in a trunk and sent it to the
attic. Seeing, in an abbey, the devastation anti-nuclear activists had pictured on
the Christ’s crucified body, O’Donnell decided to open the trunk and share the
pictures with the public.
The record of his voice to the local media shows his change of hate into compassion
toward the devastated people, and the unbearable weight in his heart: “How can
human beings do this? I could not understand it.” His wife left him, considering his
action anti-American. He had 25 operations due to cancer, etc., but the government
denied his claims that the illnesses were due to the effects of radiation. He died in
2007. His son, Tige, regretted not understanding well, but succeeded to his father’s
will.
O’Donnell saw many burned and dying children, including small orphaned children
taking care of younger ones. He was especially impressed by one heavily burned
child, without hair, nose, etc., who continued to cry out: “You enemy, kill me.” The
boy was standing straight and biting his lip with his dead younger brother on his
back, waiting for the order of cremation. He left the scene with no words.
O’Donnell later searched for him, in vain, to learn whether or not he had survived.
This story tells us that one can go beyond nationalism in wider, common human
compassion, cooperation, and construction for a better world without war and
nukes. Actually it is essential for one to go beyond sectionalisms of selfishness,
society, state, and species to achieve holy (wholly wholesome) harmony, health,
and happiness. We must be awakened to this truth and act accordingly.
So long as we stick to sectionalism in pursuing me-ism, materialism, militarism, and
money-ism, we cannot discard wars against others with the worst weapons, nukes,
as well as an abnormal climate, more man-made disasters, mass extinction, etc.
While we remain deluded in separated-selves, material Mammonism, power
pyramids, we cannot stop the concomitant results of delusion, devastation, and
demise. We need a paradigm shift.
8/12/13
Opened Seal –
Nagasaki Seen by An American Marine Cameraman
