History in the Making

> DIVINE WIND
> By Jocelyn Hainsworth
> This planet is a small place. It doesn’t seem like it when you are trying to get to someplace, but it’s a whole different story, I think, when you are trying to get away. Just put yourself in the shoes of the people in Northern Japan: how far away is far enough when a nuclear reactor is in its death throes? The people in western Canada don’t think they are far enough away, so the poor, earth-shaken, tsunami-struck, overwhelmed people of northern Japan must feel vulnerable indeed.
> I am a Baby Boomer. I grew up watching reruns of the movies made about World War II. These films were nothing more than propaganda Hollywood style, of course, but in the first decades following the war we didn’t think about that. It was much easier to think in terms of good guys and bad guys. Everything was either black or white. You were either an ally or a foe; a friend or an enemy. In the cowboy movies of the time they made it super simple to spot who was who – the good guy always rode a white horse, and the bad guy always rode the black. The viewer needn’t be troubled to do any thinking at all.
> This past week, while I sat in front of my TV set, mesmerised by the pictures and stories coming out of Japan, I did a bit of thinking ... and subsequent learning about, and then developing a respect for ... the people of this tiny country.
> I can’t help but be struck with the calmness and dignity these devastated people are utilizing to deal with their circumstances. Compare the scenes of Japan this week with those in the streets of Haiti last year. There is no looting or civil unrest, no anger and frustrated shouting for help to come quicker. I don’t mean to belittle the people of Haiti because I shudder to think how I would react to such trauma, but this only makes the Japanese people’s grace under such horrible conditions all the more awe inspiring.
> And, by far, the most awe inspiring act being carried out on the planet at the moment is the on-going effort to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Electrical Plant.
> It occurred to me, as I watched the news stories about the men (and possibly women) who are going into this crippled nuclear plant, day after day, that the concept of “kamikaze” had resurfaced, but in such a good way.
> The true translation, I found when I asked Google to enlighten me, is “divine wind” and refers to two typhoons that saved Japan from Mongolian invaders almost a thousand years ago, but to anyone who grew up watching the same movies as I did, “kamikaze” means a warrior who is willing to sacrifice his life for the cause that he was fighting for.
> There was a time that “kamikaze” was only something to be feared. They were the suicide bombers of their day, men who measured their success in how much damage they could inflict and how many deaths they could cause with the sacrifice of their own lives. They were serving a cause, and were willing to die for it; as we have learned since 9/11, there is hardly anything to be feared more than that kind of extreme allegiance.
> Isn’t it strange how, without altering the “willing to die for a cause” definition at all, suddenly we find ourselves cheering on these Japanese warriors of today? What the workers at the Fukushima plant are doing by just so much as entering that building, is no less deadly for them that flying a plane into a target. And yet, that’s what they have been doing for a whole week now.
> I am struck with the poetic justice of the situation, too – that it is the Japanese people who get to redeem this term “kamikaze”, and in this new light, make it a thing to be admired by all the nations of this tiny planet.
> And maybe, if they can win the battle against meltdowns and superheating, this kamikaze sacrifice will stir up a new breeze – a divine wind of peace ... and may it blow straight to the Middle East.
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