A Lesson in Compassion

I don’t think I can tweet.  Or at least, I cannot digest information quickly enough to consume tweets.  (Eat tweets?  I have a terrible tweet tooth.)  Twitter is all the teacher rage right now (perhaps because we have rage and are trying to channel it?) but I get too excited and I can’t read fast enough.  The blog is more my speed.  It takes longer, and I don’t produce as much, but I get to ponder at my pace.  I guess I can tweet the blog?  Crushing.

You know what else is crushing (and curiously joyful)?  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  The story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic track star and World War II prisoner of war, captivated only a few days of my summer vacation because I could not put it down.  She managed to tell a thoroughly researched history lesson that included so much information on bombers and so much devastating detail in a very lucid style.  Really, you wouldn’t believe how much I know now about B-24 bombers and 1930’s track statistics.  Doesn’t sound that interesting, but she made it so.  Of course, Zamperini’s experiences getting shot down over the pacific and surviving almost fifty days adrift only to be captured by the Japanese and thrown into a war prison made for a very exciting framework.  But she also recreated the thoughts and events so clearly, with so much detail, that even non history and military buffs would be riveted.

The tragic, excruciating events were sometimes difficult to absorb.  Zamparini (and all of the prisoners) suffered such traumatic physical and mental abuse that my stomach was literally in knots reading about what one human could do to others.  While the starvation and beatings ravaged their bodies, the denial of dignity and information punctured their very souls.  So when I say this book was crushing, that is what I mean.  However, how could I call a book on this topic joyful?  Where, in such an ugly patch of history, would even one shred of joy live?  Compassion.  To say that Zamperini and others who were with him demonstrated compassion is to understate the bounds of the soul.  I don’t want to ruin the end of the book, but I will suffice it to say that his capacity to overcome his trauma and forgive his trespassers completely blew me away.  That is the lesson to be learned from this book.

Yet, I do not feel compassionate when the US (or perhaps the UN?  Honestly, I don’t remember the name of the body in charge of prosecuting war crimes) ended the search for Japanese generals, prison guards, and others who violated international treaty laws during the war.  After approximately eight years, we exonerated all warrants, paroled all prisoners, and granted amnesty to those in hiding.  With energy of the Cold War mounting, we desperately wanted Japan as an ally, and the procuring justice for war crimes interrupted that desire because the war trials were highly unpopular with the Japanese citizenry.  Moreover, the US declined funds from Japanese assets for its soldiers who had been POW’s because it already paid them the paltry sum of something like $1 for each day they could prove they were mistreated.  The funds went to those in other countries.  And then I saw this article in the news as I finished the book:

Laszlo Csatary: Hungary arrests 97-year-old alleged Nazi war criminal

Sixty seven years later, people are still arresting Nazis.  And I do think that man should answer for his actions.  But why  still Nazis, and not still the Japanese?  Is it because we can categorize our disapproval under a political party name instead of the name of a nation state?  Because politics demand we move on with the governments named “Germany” and “Japan,” reserving punishment for those who can be corralled into a fringe group?  I grew up learning the atrocities of the German side of the War, learning the cruel details of the Holocaust, learning the dangers of eugenics and Nazism.  I never really learned about the Japanese faction of the Axis powers, how unbelievably harsh its military was, how large a death swath they carved through China, Korea, and other neighboring nations.  So after reading Unbroken, I just couldn’t understand why Japan got off the hook. (I suppose using the phrase “off the hook” too flippantly, because many Japanese military officials and prison guards were executed.)  And I am left wondering, because I know that Neo Nazis are alive and well, if there are similar groups still sputtering in Japan.

Zamperini visited some of his old prison guards while they themselves were imprisoned.  “At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.”  I guess if he can get over it, so should I.