Recent news tells us that Shelter Institute has installed in Bath a beautiful torii gate honoring the Japanese city of Tsugaru (“Bath honors ties to Japanese city with torii gate, memorial garden,” Times Record, Oct. 4).

My time in the Navy during World War II and 1940s USA society featured the epithet “Jap,” Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, “comfort women” and the Nanjing Massacre.

But I also remember the shipwreck event that inspired Tsugaru as Bath’s sister city; the Japanese gift of cherry trees that bloomed each spring in Washington right through the wars; the pacifist Japanese Constitution after we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the Toyotas I’ve driven since 1990.

And I remember what we did to people who occupied our current USA from 1491 onward, and our reaction to slavery and lynching.

The lesson: Aggression and pacifism reside in each person and in each society, including those in Russia, North Korea, Syria … and the USA. Now if only half the governmental budget that is devoted to destruction could be instead devoted to a better humanity. Start with homelessness.

Dick Dreselly
South Portland

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