1935

His memory and the views of the world...

I decided to write this story on Substacks post for one reason.

I feel extreme insensitiveness and ignorance in people exemplifying Gaza as Japan. I feel fury over the comments, “Look at this. This is like Japan. I feel very sorry.” When they say this, I would really like to ask, “What do you know about Japan? What are you sorry about?” A picture? Social media? Google? TikTok?

There is another comment that I feel anger, “Holocaust expired.“ These young generations in 20s who have never been educated the history of the world and the wars. They believe that peace exists itself. They never appreciate the fact that there is a life each day and what do they do instead? They laugh about Holocaust being a fake story. What do these people who laugh about Jewish people taken away everything and burned in the gas chamber compare Japan to Gaza?

Anyway, I would like to start a story for today.

There is a moment in life when I witness the side that I have never witnessed in a person. I didn’t know about this secret in his heart he kept for 20 years even though I knew this person so well. I gave him about a month-long interview about his experience of Great Tokyo Air Reid on March 10th, 1945.

This was a very hard work for me because it was sometimes very hard to ask what he experienced and how he felt. I had never done this but I could feel his pain when I heard him answer certain questions.

He was 10 years old. He was born in 1935.

His name is Mr. Masaaki Hiroi. Mr. Masaaki Hiroi’s father was a wooden craftsman. Mr. Hiroi started to mimick his father and started making wooden tops. He was just a boy who loved to play with his classmates. He loved playing with his friends. However, there was not much to play during the war. That was one of the reasons he started to make tops. However, above all, he just wanted to surprise his classmates and he was playing with the tops he made. This was the memory he kept in his heart for decades.

Mr. Hiroi didn’t want to think of the war. He wasn’t critical or supportive of the war. He just wanted to play with his friends. However, on the night of March 10th, everything changed. His house was burned down and his area was completely burned down. He lost his classmates he played with in one night.

One day, when I turned 20 years old, he called with my childhood nickname that only my family called. He always called me that way. He briefly started to talk about losing Great Tokyo Air Reid and he asked me if there is a way to share his experience. He had been invited to 37 countries. He had met… supposedly President Barack Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago?

President Obama was in his 30s and he was working in Harold Washington’s office. When he visited Chicago the first time, the mayor was out of the office for other duties and Mr. Hiroi was saying that President Obama took him around. Mr. Hiroi has brought a letter of Governor or Tokyo for former President Chirac, when President was the mayor of Paris.