November 11, 2007 Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
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Richard C. Choe ©
Warriors Memorial at Walpole Island Nation, Ontario, Canada
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Stolen Voices.
The title of the book, Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq, twigged my interest. I read it in preparation for Remembrance Day service last year but found that I needed more time to digest it, experience the difficult stories, and find hope in the stories.
I have attempted to use the book again this year but with the same result. The war time stories of children broke my heart. It was so painful to read stories of children growing up through wars and experiencing atrocities. I could not pick myself up after reading the final entry of one of the diaries and, then, the postscript. Nina Kosterina, a young Russian girl who began her diary at the age of 15 on June 20, 1936 with so much love of life and hope, died on the Russian front at age of 20 fighting against the Nazi German army attacking her country.[i] Like Nina, many of the children whose diaries were in this book died fighting in wars.
War, I think, is just that to most of people – a catastrophic event through which people’s lives are destroyed. War destroys people’s hopes for one another and changes the terrain of human hearts forever. Such destruction happens to the innocent and the war-mongers. Such heart change happens to both aggressors and victims. Everyone, soldiers as well as civilians, are affected by war forever.
Olara A. Otunnu, UN Under-Secretary-General, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, 1997-2005, wrote in July 2005 to the foreword for Stolen Voices.
“In the last decade 2 million children have been killed in situations of armed conflict, while 6 million children have been injured. Over a quarter of a million child soldiers are being used today in situations of armed conflict around the globe. Since 2003, over 11.5 million children have been displaced within their own countries, and 2.4 million children forced to flee conflict and take refuge outside their home countries. The scourge of land mines result in the killing or maiming of between 8,000 to 10,000 children every year. The future peace and prosperity of many countries will depend upon how well we are able to care for the children affected by today’s conflicts and their future rehabilitation and development.”[ii]
Mr. Otunnu ends with the following words.
“Today, as never before, we have the necessary means to ensure the protection of all children exposed to armed conflict. In today’s world, parties in conflict do not operate as islands unto themselves. … the force of international and national public opinion represents powerful means to influence the conduct of parties in conflict.”[iii]
Zlata Filipović, one of the co-editors and a survivor of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a child diarist herself, shares the following story.
“Some months ago, I received an e-mail from a ten-year-old American girl who had read my diary and who had such a pertinent point that I had to relate it here. She was finding it strange that my story was the only one that she had read about the war in Bosnia, or that the most famous story from the Holocaust is that of Anne Frank. But after thinking for a while, she realized that in order to understand, you follow one story and subsequently accept that Anne Frank is, in a way, the face of the Holocaust, and that I am also, in a way, the face of the Bosnian war. She couldn’t help wondering, however: “Who will be the face of peace?”[iv]
Who will be the face of peace?
Who will be the face of peace in a planet where war is a never ending event? Who will be the face of peace in a globe where war mongering is a major business venture for investors to increase their stock portfolios? Who will be the face of peace?
Nicholas Keung reported in last week’s Saturday Star about a screening of Chris Tashima’s Visas and Virtue, which tells of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who in 1940 ignored orders from his government and issued hand-written visas to Jews fleeing the Nazis.[v]
Chiune Sugihara was sent to Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania, as a Japanese Consul-General in March 1939. Chiune Sugihara had barely settled down in his new post when Nazi armies invaded Poland and a wave of Jewish refugees streamed into Lithuania. They brought with them chilling tales of German atrocities against the Jewish population. They escaped from Poland without possessions or money, and the local Jewish population did their utmost to help with money, clothing and shelter.[vi]
Mr. and Mrs. Sugihara wrote and signed visas by hand for 29 days – from July 31 to August 28, 1940 – and saved more than 6,000 Jews. They wrote over 300 visas a day, which was about a month’s worth of work for the Consul. This selfless act resulted in the second largest number of Jews rescued from the Nazis.
Chiune gave two reasons for signing the visas against his government’s order: "They were human beings and they needed help," he said.
“You want to know about my motivation, don't you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when (one) actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. … There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives....The spirit of humanity, philanthropy ... neighbourly friendship ... with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation – and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.”[vii]
Sugihara was a Christian who believed in a universal God of all people. He was fond of saying, "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't I would be disobeying God."
In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations (Hebrew: חסידי אומות העולם – Khasidei Umot ha-Olam) by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and son accepted the honor on his behalf. Sugihara and his descendants were given perpetual Israeli citizenship. Chiune Sugihara died on July 31, 1986 at the age of 86. In spite of the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he remained virtually unknown in his home country.
Chiune Sugihara is the face of peace.
The Rev. Murray Whetung is another face of peace. I have known Murray Whetung since early 1990s. We even shared a room together at the Grand Council of the All Native Circle Conference in Manitoba. Late in life Murray became a United Church minister. I have experienced Murray as someone with tremendous wisdom and humour, and who has an overflowing love for his son, a traditional healer.
Murray Whetung’s story was recently featured on the front page of the Toronto Sun.
Mike Strobel reported that “every man of fighting age, (51 of them), in Curve Lake, an Ojibwa reserve then known as Mud Lake, volunteered for World War II. All 20 young men had volunteered for World War I as well. 100% of the young men in Murray’s reserve volunteered for the two wars. From across Canada, 12,000 First Nations Peoples fought for Canada. More than 500 were killed, including two of Murray’s childhood friends. Signalman Murray Whetung landed on Juno Beach three days after D-Day and fought the war until the Germans surrendered. Still think native Canadians aren’t too committed to this country?” Strobel asks in his article.[viii]
There are so many tragedies in war. One of which is that all sides at war have tendency to lump together and condemn all people on the opposing side as evil. War propaganda would make you believe that all Germans are Nazis, all Allied soldiers were saints, and so on. I would encourage you to watch Letters from Iwo Jima, an American movie directed by Clint Eastwood as the other side of Flags of Our Fathers. It took more than 50 years for Americans to see and accept Japanese soldiers as human beings with families who faced the same uncertainties about fighting for their country and who experienced war with fear and misgivings just like the American soldiers.
Another tragedy of war is the tendency to forget all those who fought along side you to defend your country’s freedom. The photo in the bulletin cover today was taken in Walpole Island, Ontario. Warriors from the First Nations are forgotten by most Canadians. For years, Murray Whetung was not able to wear his native attire since it was banned from any Remembrance Day ceremony. Soldiers from the Caribbean Islands who fought for the “Motherland” of Great Britain, were treated as foreigners who were taking away jobs after the end of the Second World War. Algerian soldiers who fought for France took several decades to be recognized as French Army veterans.
If we believe falsehoods about other nations propagated during the war, we will be continuing the same kind of attitude that led the nations to war. If we forget those who also fought for the freedom of our nation, we would be perpetuating injustice that divides our nation from within.
Remembrance Day is a very difficult day. We are all affected by war in one way or another. By naming those who are not usually remembered, I invite you to expand and deepen your memories in order for us to “correct” the falsehood that leads people to conflict and war.
Let us remember those who have fought and perished as Canadian soldiers in Juno Beach, Vimy Ridge, Korea, Afghanistan, and many known and unknown places. Let us also remember those whom we considered our enemies. They were all fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends, and lovers who gave up their lives for their country. May our response to all who died in war be a commitment to transform our face into the face of peace, and a commitment to also transform the faces of our neighbours and our enemies into faces of peace.
We have red balloons in our sanctuary to remind us of our hopes and dreams for peace. The 1984 song 99 Red Balloons envisions the imaginary end of the Third World War.
“99 dreams I have hadIn every one a red balloon …In this dust that was a cityIf I could find a souvenirJust to prove the world was hereAnd here is a red balloonI think of you and let it go”
Jesus talked about resurrection as something that is very different than the way we experience our life. Resurrection is a process of making God’s reality of peace a human reality. Resurrection is a process of transforming our face into the face of peace. May each one of our lives be a process of becoming the face of peace.
Amen.
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[i] Nina Kosterina, Russia, 1938-41 (15-20 years old), World War II, 1939-45, Zlata Filipović and Melanie Challenger, eds., Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006) 41.
[ii] Stolen Voices, v.
[iii] Stolen Voices, vi.
[iv] Zlata Filipović and Melanie Challenger, eds., Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006) xvi.
[v] Nicholas Keung, 2007 Nov. 3. Pain of Holocaust felt by many groups: Cultural and religious organizations share grief during Holocaust Education Week. Saturday Star.
[vi] Jewish virtual library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sugihara.html.
[vii] Hillel Levine, In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1996) 259.
[viii] Mike Strobel, 2007 Nov. 7. Murray Whetung strung telephone wire from Juno Beach to Germany. At Age 85 he salutes the other 49 brave men of Curve Lake who enlisted, Toronto Sun; 6.
