Connections

Interesting video:http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_innerlife.html

Today at the grocery checkout, I talked to my university French teacher. I reminded him that in the early '70's he'd told my class that when he was a French soldier in Viet Nam in the early '50's, American military was there too. Today I told him we'd hardly believed him. But then I married Mr. P, who was in the American military, in street clothes, in Viet Nam in the early '50's.

My teacher is a dapper little Frenchman who said "I shall give you a kiss," suavely moved into my space, and enchanted my cheek.

Interestingly, my Health students at Osaka Women's College, about 1990, told me some stories about the American military in Okinawa that I could hardly credit.It concerned a '60's protest outside the fence, and the school girls who tried to climb over the fence. They were repelled by foam from a firetruck. My students told me the protesters were sprayed with garbage and I said I was sure it had only been the usual crash foam.

My students kept saying it was just a protest and couldn't see that coming over the fence in to the base made it something else.

As it happens, it was Mr. P himself who, with the base commander sitting in the firetruck with him, foamed the protesters. It was indeed the crash foam used all the time. However. it was an old type that did indeed smell like garbage.

When Mr. P was there, no one got through the fence. After he shipped out, the next guys were too slow and Japanese men went into the base school and beat up kindergartners! The base commander turned loose a thousand marines just back from Nam, who became enraged at the site of little American kids being hurt. They obeyed orders though, and no one died.

While I was in Japan, I heard about the kindergartners having been attacked, and was outraged that it hadn't made a splash in American news at the time.(1970?)

Just to be fair, all the Japanese I met loved their children, so I can't imagine the ones I knew beating up American kids.

Please God, bless the children and keep them safe. May they truly know YOU.



Back to Osaka Women's College . I taught there during Gulf I. There was a huge tv screen in a wide hall where we'd stop to watch a little CNN. I stood in Osaka and watched a scud missile going toward Jerusalem. The teacher next to me said."Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
I said "eh?" because I didn't yet know that verse from Psalms.

Now I pray everyday for the peace of Jerusalem and prosperity in her houses.

May you too be peaceful and prosperous.