Emiko and Captain Lewis on war, their differences and similar beliefs In the essay “The Scar” they talk about an author who wrote books and essays and could describe the war between Japan and The U.S with great description. I found more and more as this essay went on that tears were welling up in my throat and in my eyes. It is very sad what happened to the Japanese over something so small. A few acres of land and some canned goods caused them to have this war. Captain Lewis and Emiko differ because Captain Lewis speaks of the war as if it is just a medical emergency and not something to fret about whereas Emiko speaks of it as a real event that affected her life and they are the same because they both speak of the war as being an abstract and as being obscene and about how terrible war is. Captain Lewis and Emiko both disagree about the medical part of the war between Japan and the U.S. In one part of the essay it says We do not expect illustrations in a book of surgery to be captioned Good health is preferable to this kind of cancer. Excessive comments such as And now there is a lot of blood or this particular cut really hurts are out of place. . . . To dwell on such things is morbid. Perhaps the answer to Herman Kahn is that if surgeons hadnt dwelt on those things we wouldnt now have anaesthetics, or artery forceps either, for that matter. “. I feel Captain Lewis agrees with this because he only describes the war as being a great explosion such as is cancer in a way. Cancer is an explosion of cancerous cells that inevitably through chemotherapy destroy white cells. Explosions destroy everything, so does cancer. So he sees it as being something that is easily helped because he speaks of it so lightly. Emiko speaks of the medical part of her recovery. The woman telling the story says of Emiko’s version that “Emikos wounds healed slowly. In mid-September they had closed with a thin layer of pinkish skin. There had been a shortage of antiseptics and Emiko was happy to be getting well. Her satisfaction was short-lived. Mysteriously she came down with diarrhoea and high fever. The fever continued for a month. Then one day she started to bleed from the gums, her mouth and throat became acutely inflamed, and her hair started to fall out. Through her delirium the child heard the doctors whisper by her pillow that she could not live. By now the doctors must have known that ionizing radiation caused such destruction of the bloods white cells that victims were left with little or no resistance against infection. Yet Emiko recovered. The wound on her hand, however, was particularly troublesome and did not heal for a long time. “. Emiko describes the medical part of war as gruesome and disgusting whereas Captain Lewis describes it as being like cancer. Cancer is something you cannot help. War is. We can only expect that Captain Lewis and Emiko must have both known of the importance of medical information to know about the severity of war. That is why it is so unbelievable on how their viewpoints about this differ. Captain Lewis is just so misled on the medical part of it by not even caring to mention it and Emiko is so well informed because she was there. Emiko and Captain Lewis are the same in their viewpoints about the war between Japan and the U.S because they both speak of how terrible war is. The author of the essay says “But why am I telling it? Everyone knows how terrible this story is. Everyone knows the truth of what von Clauswitz said: Force to meet force arms itself with the inventions of art and science. First the bow-and-arrow, then Greek fire, gunpowder, poison-gas -- and so on up the lethal scale.” Captain Lewis expresses how terrible war is by saying it was the greatest explosion of all time. Any great explosion is terrible so it’s easy to tell he finds it terrible. Emiko describes with great detail the fathom and hunger they went through. She says “Her mother was kept busy looking after the children, for her youngest daughter Eiko was sick with heart trouble, and rations were scarce. All of them were undernourished.” She also describes how hungry she was for lunch on the train. She was hungry enough to start an argument with her sister whom she was to never see again about whether or not she should eat her lunch in the morning. She describes the brutal injuries that they got. The author describes it as being the worst treason he actually says “This is the worst treason.” I must point out that treason is the worst of betrayals. It means that you are betraying to the utmost and fullest because you are joining the other side of the fight. Captain Lewis exclaims I might say, he wrote, I might say My God! What have we done? and this could only mean treason on the Japanese. If you commit treason you might share information that is lethal to somebody if you are somebody who commits treason. War is terrible because of treason. Captain Lewis seems to understand this with his comment I might say, He wrote, I might say My God! What have we done?. He seems to understand this because when you commit treason you think, what have we done? and exclaim my god because you feel so bad on both sides of the fight. What the U.S did was treason against the Japanese. Treason also means sometimes they are fed information in short bits that make it sound way worse and then way more people get killed. Captain Lewis actually says and I quote “There, in front of our eyes, wrote Lewis, was without a doubt the greatest explosion man had ever witnessed. The city was nine-tenths covered with smoke of a boiling nature, which seemed to indicate buildings blowing up, and a large white cloud which in less than three minutes reached 30,000 feet, then went to at least 50,000 feet.” While Emiko describes it as being detrimental to her life, Captain Lewis describes it as just a great explosion. She loses her sister in the war and almost her life. She says.” Emiko felt scared. She felt that at all costs she must go on talking to her friend. Just as she was thinking this, there was a tremendous greenish-white flash in the sky. It was far brighter than the sun. Emiko afterwards remembered vaguely that there was a roaring or a rushing sound as well, but she was not sure, for just at that moment she lost consciousness. About 15 seconds after the flash, noted Lewis, 30,000 feet high and several miles away, there were two very distinct slaps on the ship from the blast and the shock wave. That was all the physical effect we felt. We turned the ship so that we could observe the results. She can’t even talk to her friend without being afraid. I don’t know about you but that would affect me in a big way. I like having peace when I’m casually converting with a friend, not to be interrupted by planes and bombs. Captain Lewis only speaks of the effects we felt about the incident. It is very miniscule and he does specify it is all we felt but he still seems to find a lot of importance in our experience and doesn’t even think to mention the Japanese’s experience. To speak of war calmly in Emiko’s eyes would be unfathomable because she was hit with toxic chemicals. It seems as though Captain Lewis speaks of it almost calmly or dare I say even excitedly. Emiko describes “When Emiko came to, she was lying on her face about forty feet away from where she had been standing. She was not aware of any pain. Her first thought was: Im alive! She lifted her head slowly and looked about her. It was growing dark. The air was seething with dust and black smoke. There was a smell of burning. Emiko felt something trickle into her eyes, tasted it in her mouth. Gingerly she put a hand to her head, then looked at it. She saw with a shock that it was covered with blood.” Emiko must have been severely traumatised by this and it must affect her every day. She says she could barely remember for a few years after that the people had to call out names of their loved ones because some of them were so badly burned that they couldn’t recognize them. This war could in no way be calm to Emiko but it sounds as though Captain Lewis follows what people tell him about “things needing to being considered calmly”. Captain Lewis describes it as being the biggest explosion ever and Emiko describes it as being the scariest explosion ever. Captain Lewis describes it as a shock wave and Emiko describes it as a devastating rage. Emiko and Captain Lewis are the same in their viewpoints of war because both of them speak of how war is an abstract and it is obscene. Just in Emiko’s description of the happenings of the bombing and healing from her wounds proves that she finds war obscene and abstract. How relieved she is about the war being over proves she finds it obscene. She actually says (though her countries goal was to win the war) “But on August 15, speaking for the first time over the radio to his people, the Emperor Hirohito announced his countrys surrender. Emiko heard him. No more bombs! She thought. No more fear!” You can tell she finds it obscene to have a war because she is so relieved that her country has surrendered. Captain Lewis describing it as obscene what they have done says “I might say, He wrote, I might say My God! What have we done? “The reason he describes it as being obscene is because he uses the words My God and you only use those words when you find something hard to believe. This means it was obscene because obscenity is hard to believe. In the essay it states “To think about thermonuclear war in the abstract is obscene. To think about any kind of warfare with less than the whole of our mind and imagination is obscene.” It is obscene to both of them because of god. I feel that both Emiko and Captain Lewis describe it as being abtract because Captain Lewis uses the words My god and god is apart from a concrete reality. I believe Emiko describes it as being abstract because most of what she says is abstract. For instance, a man running with a piece of bamboo stuck out of his eye is definitely abstract. She describes this happening. It is abstract to both of them because god is evident in both stories. Emiko describes a light appearing where the plane was. I definitely think that was god. Both Emiko and Captain Lewis agree and disagree. Though Captain Lewis doesn’t say much in the essay you can tell a lot just from what he says. Emiko describes the war in explicit detail. I wish that Captain Lewis said more in the essay about what he thinks about the war. It being obscene is only part of what the war was. It being abstract is totally separate. War is in itself apart from reality. They both describe it as being this. What have we done is a statement Captain Lewis makes. It is evident that it is hard to believe and in obscenity that this war occurred. What really have we done? We destroyed 75,000 people’s lives and killed so many Japanese. This is obscene in both of the whites and the Japanese’s minds clearly as represented by Emiko and Captain Lewis. Emiko’s version is just a bit more graphic than most. I’m surprised that they were allowed to post this article anywhere so proudly. It must really offend the Japanese that a white person interviewed one of their people about Emiko, just a helpless little girl’s viewpoint of it. I don’t think Captain Lewis meant to offend. I think he was trying to make light of it. Emiko tried to make light of it too by saying finally the war is over. They surrendered millions of dollars’ worth of cars and electronics to the U.S. Canada did not benefit from this. We lost an ally. There is still abstract thinking when it comes to Japan and the U.S. They don’t readily allow Japanese into their country as we do. We are trying to patch up an old flame with the Japanese but are barely making it. Abstract is our relationship with them now. They don’t seem to respect us at all. I fear every day that they might take over. There are already so many of them here and I’m not even allowed to keep my children. It really isn’t fair. Not something I would go to war over. I would go to war over something like my children being killed. They were not exactly killed, I’m just not allowed to have them. They died because there is no room here. I think we should keep allowing the Japanese into our country because they have brought us so much. Cars that don’t use gasoline, phones that charge from just a couple of hours of charging that have touch screens and state of the art graphics. They also brought us really good cuisine and helped us design buildings. I wish that we were more readily allowed into their largely overpopulated country but it is nothing to start a war over. We have the bombs, they have the Intel. We are already at war nearly with the U.S over wood and oil. Let’s not start a fight with the Japanese too. I don’t want to see what Emiko saw. What’s a reason to go to war? Fighting for your family? Or fighting for goods and services. I think both reasons aren’t good enough but I don’t want my children to die. The Japanese are slaves to us in our countries. The U.S and Canada that is. They open restaurants and serve us readily. I just ate at a Japanese restaurant a few weeks ago and they were so nice to me. I was surprised. I thought that they would hate me. Not only because I’m on disability and I live for free and they have to work all the time, but because the other patrons in the restaurant were Japanese and looked like they were starving. I am a little bit overweight but don’t get me wrong, I don’t eat very much. I probably eat less than the patrons that were in the Japanese restaurant but am affected by the high fat content in Canadian recipes that are made at Rock Bay Landing. Japanese cuisine is low in fat surprisingly! The noodles are fresh and made out of plants just as spaghetti is but spaghetti has a lot of fat in it whereas Japanese noodles don’t. They also use fresh vegetables and fresh meat that is low in fat because it has a low fat content whereas meats that Canadians eat like ham and pork chops have a lot of fat in them. Japanese eat pork but the part of the pig they use is low in fat. This little place beside the Korean Barbeque and hot pot downtown Victoria makes the best sweet and sour pork I’ve ever had. It has barely any fat on it. I actually lost weight after eating there. They serve the most disgusting beer though. You have to think, they don’t have ready access to good beer because it is all Canadian run and they get all their food from Japan. Japan doesn’t produce the hops, we do. But they do serve cider. Something they don’t readily sell to you though. I think it’s because it’s the owner’s wife’s favourite drink. They made the best shrimp spring rolls ever. The shrimp was fresh and you could tell it was Canadian. So pardon me for saying they get all their food from Japan but they get all of it from Japan but the shrimp. It’s a very small restaurant so only bring one friend. Make sure you call ahead of time on the weekends because it will be busy then. The place didn’t have a name it was unlabelled which made it so very interesting to me. It’s such a little secret. I wouldn’t recommend going on a date there because it is such a small place and your mate won’t get to show off their slamming outfit. The Japanese have made it very evident that they want our country.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:47:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015