Are people still talking about Pearl Harbor? They should be. We should be talking about every conflict, trying to understand why it happened and how we can avoid it in the future.

Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor

Is there a lingering resentment of the Japanese, post World War II? Did they attack us unprovoked?

America certainly regrets its internment of over 125,000 peoples of Japanese origin or decent. Should America regret the use of nuclear weapons?

Should Japan apologize for the Rape of Nanjing? What about comfort women? How about the enslavement of possibly millions of people from neighboring nations to fuel the Japanese war machine?

That’s nothing in comparison to slavery in the US, right?

The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial “gold standard” in the field of the study of the slave trade.) Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.

And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.

How Many Slaves Landed in the U.S.?
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Originally posted on The Root

We should all be concerned about the erosion of history.
History is written by the victors… Yeah, not just the victors though; all of life seems muddled in the grey of interpreting the “he said, she said” and “Oh yeah? What about…” There is plenty of history written by the underdog, the offended, downcast, and oppressed.

“Our system has been creating young people who get annoyed by all the complaints that China and South Korea make about war atrocities because they are not taught what they are complaining about,” she said. 

“It is very dangerous because some of them may resort to the internet to get more information and then they start believing the nationalists’ views that Japan did nothing wrong.”

“What Japanese history lessons leave out” By Mariko Oi -BBC News, Tokyo

Wow, that statement opens up a whole other line of thought about nationalism, and the ideologues who… take it with a grain of- hold on, let me hand you a salt shaker. Take information and try to put it in context. MAKE THE EFFORT to understand and fight through bias.

Start with your OWN bias. Why do you believe what you do? Could you be wrong? Why or why not? Things are worth knowing. Not what some Instagram famous, flake had for breakfast or what their favorite song is- no, information that matters in life. Why do humans act the way they do?
Ok, you read that one book, now read an opposing view.

Also, as countries continue to crack down on free speech, the above quote echos a warning about the power of censorship by country, corporation, or otherwise. Filtering your results in a search engine is a form of censorship. Compulsory speech is a form of censorship. Filtering dissenting opinions is egregious censorship.

Buyer beware. Hot coffee burns, the truth offends, trusting a single source will skew and screw you.

Go and meet credible people FACE to FACE. Learn to trust, and build other’s trust in you. Operating remotely behind this keyboard is a function of my current reality but I’d much rather sit across from you, in person, and have a dialogue, a meaningful conversation. Let us respectfully disagree if necessary and part ways still friends, encouraged to meet again.

This post is an extremely toned down version of a few minutes in my head: the myriad questions that flood every topic, the thoughts that invade while you’re discussing something completely different and I’ve noticed a pattern in your speech; why I laugh out loud at the wrong time or have an expression that may be incongruent with the subject at hand.

Is it? Factually, history records consistent offenses committed by everyone for all of time. Should we take offense? You may have just taken offense to my previous statement; what about Mother Theresa or…
It’s ok, I find myself in that combative mindset often.

NO country or people group, not one, has been or will be innocent. We are all born of and in blood. Should we all then lament and live in despair and shame?

Nope.

Live YOUR life. Did you enslave and murder all those people?
Oh your ancestors did? That’s totally you then. Wait…

Should we be judged for who we are OR what we look like?
Should we feel shame about where we were born, to whom, or into possible privilege?
(Should current Japanese feel shame for the past actions of their countrymen? What of the Germans?)

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Does this even mean what you think it means? Articles today and quotes from his four children would say that things are far more complicated. I agree, they are; but maybe not for the same reasons.

Can we right the wrongs of the past? Should we try? What unintended consequences will that have for those uninvolved who will be caught in the wake of the woke wave?

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Aristotle

Please, you’re just stringing quotes together at this point.
Yup. But I figure, the weight of my words isn’t much and I’m not prolifically quoted, so why not take some things out of context to cause you to think? Didn’t I tell you earlier to put things in context?
Yeah. Yeah, I did. Now find their context and think.

This morning as I cleaned the kitchen, my mind was spinning. There’s too much in there and not enough time to put all the pieces I’ve dumped out into a cohesive picture. I gotta go buy some feed and bedding for the goats and chickens.

-Drew Out!

Drew founded Mental Grenade Jan 2020. He is a follower of Jesus Christ, a medically retired Marine, EOD Tech, husband, father, writer, mountain biker, photographer, facilitator, and fly-fisherman. He seeks to bridge the civilian – military divide and bring hope through honest communication about difficult issues.

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