I’m preparing for Wednesday’s class when I would normally talk about whether or
not WW1 and 2 are so different that they need to be called different things, or
that they are one war in two acts. It used to be that one would assign essays
on such a subject. Now…nope.
Because the course is called “Perspectives on Society and Culture” and we are
encouraged to consider non-European views, I decided to start this time around
with a Japanese anarchist, Itô Noe, about whom everyone might know nothing had
the police who murdered her and her second husband not had the bad luck to also
murder his nephew, who was an American citizen, born in Portland, Oregon.
Before she died, and she knew the brutal end was coming, she got in the face of
authority by writing articles that now occupy the final pages of Mikiso Hane,
“Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcasts: The Underside of Modern Japan."
My second reference will be Georgina Sand, who is related by marriage to Keith
Lowe, author of, “The Fear and the Freedom." His book is an attempt to assess
how the Second World War shaped the second half of the twentieth century. She
grew up Jewish in Vienna, was put on a Kindertransport and was lodged with a
family whose grandson, “tried to do unpleasant things with me.” Yes there are
two major wars in the first half of the twentieth century and large events seem
to demand a god’s-eye view, but underneath it all were people who were, like
us, trying their best to survive.
My third source is Norman Stone, “World War Two, A Short History,” in which I
have found errors. My point will be that small errors of fact do not a
sweeping narrative destroy and that his perspective, especially on Turkey and
the Middle East, is engaging.
All this is prelude to my question for you. The reason I write now is that I
wondered over dinner—my wife is at tennis and so there’s plenty of quiet for
wondering—whether or not it would be reasonable to ask what few of you who
remain on the list if there is some matter or question big or small, you’ve
been waiting a while to put before us. It’s an impertinent and
impatient-seeming question—you’ll normally tell us what you think when you
think it—but this evening I’m conscious of the way events can suddenly turn.
Conversation is practice and the more this list is silent the less likely it is
that anyone will have much to say. I stopped and thought and decided, why not?
What harm could there be in sending out a small provocation,? A two percent
death rate is so small by historic standards, and it’s not as if this list has
only old people on it.
David Ritchie,
washing his hands often in
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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