HATRED
After
watching the news tonight, and seeing that North Korea is celebrating their
“Victory Day”, 60 years after the Korean War ended, my mind started to explode.
Over
30 years ago my best friend and her husband decided to adopt two of the most
beautiful little girls. I had never
fallen in love so fast as I did when I saw these darlings. After Al and I got
married, my friend and her little girls came over to visit me. At the time I
was living with Al and his Uncle George in the family home. I was so glad to
see my little sweeties, who called me Aunt Megan, and my high school
friend. After the visit, Uncle George
told me that they could never come back.
I was beside myself in shock. I could not figure out what the problem
was - these little girls were so well behaved it was unreal. BUT what I did not
think about was this…Al’s Uncle Al had been killed in the last week of the
Korean War. So in Al’s family there was
such a hatred for Koreans that even 30 years later it was no less intense. In
fact, Uncle George hated Harry Truman for not dropping the atom bomb on Korea. By the way, my beautiful nieces were adopted
from Korea.
After sobbing about how innocent children could bring out such hatred, I never
had them over again. My naïveté was that
I did not think about how long hatred could last. When I saw the news I could see that the
hatred has lasted over 60 years, because when questioned, the Korean children
said they were taught all Americans were imperialists.
Hatred
is so pervasive in the world that at times I am surprised the human race has
survived.
The
hatred I experienced was not just from Al’s family, but my own were just as
busy with it.
My
mother despised the Jews who went to college during the WWII to escape the
draft because they did not want to fight for this country. She would not go to a Jewish doctor, and in
fact did not like any doctor that was not white, and spoke broken English. Yet
she would not allow her children to use certain language that was
negative. We were not allow to call
someone a Jew…the person was Jewish. She
respected one’s religion, but not always the behavior or actions of people of
certain religions.
When
her husband called someone a n*gger, she would have a fit, she did not
tolerated that word. My mother was raised in Detroit and worked with “people of color” as
she explained, and said they were no different than the rest of us.
Even
my father, who had served in two wars in the USMC, never used the word n*gger
around us children.
Yet,
unfortunately my father did hate the behavior of the Japanese and the Chinese
where he had served. As a result, we
never had any kind of oriental food growing up.
It
was interesting to note that having a child out of wedlock is normal now, but
if a woman was pregnant before marriage in the past she was a “fallen
woman”. My mother’s last husband and his family said that
the fact that my mother had a child before she married my father was horrible,
and used it against her for decades. It
did not matter that her fiancé was killed in action, during WWII. But if my mother brought up the fact that his
ex-wife said that she had four children with four different men it was
okay. What her husband really hated was
my Mother was a Marine, and so were both her fiancé and my father. Her last husband did not serve in the
military during WWII because he was in a war protected job. He hated the veterans, which included my
brothers who served. I tried to tell him
his job was just as important, but he did not agree, so for over four decades I
heard how bad the veterans were.
The
other hatred I listened to was that he hated the “red n*ggers”, the Native
Americans whose school he attended. So
when Al and I got married he was so furious that I married a “red n*gger”he
said I was no better than “white trash”. My husband is a Metis. In fact he said that Al was not good enough to
be in his home. Yet Al was good enough to do work for him for free.
I
guess I should really hate this man, but instead I feel sorry for him and his
family. When bigotry starts, it is so hard to get to the root of it and erase
it. People tell themselves stories, and
begin to believe the stories so much that they forget that the story was not
based on fact.
The
news is so full of hatred that people are spewing against other people… Why
can’t people realize how lucky they are to be alive?
I
found I enjoyed the positive news about little Prince George being born, but there are
already negative stories about Diana and Kate circulating in the news. The little guy isn’t even a week old , for
god’s sake; it seems that joy is so short-lived.
What
is it going to take for the world to stop being angry? Just blow itself up and be done with it? I sure hope not; I plan on hanging in for a
while longer. I have plans.
I
do see such a difference in this country after reading hundreds of letters from
WWII. That generation had hope for a better world… it is so sad that so few
have that hope anymore. Maybe we could
learn something from them.
I
am judged by many, and try not to judge others. It is not easy. I have some of the most wonderful “heart
family” that any person could want. My
hope is that others are as lucky.
