I Remember

I REMEMBER
October 2001

They didn't look like other Americans. They weren't white, or "Negro". They didn't speak a language any of us understood the music of. They didn't seem to fit in our churches. They were suspected of having links to their home land that were stronger than their links to America.We heard tales of their mindless fanaticism. We were afraid of what they might do, afraid they might stab us in the back again. To make us feel"safe" we decided the best thing to do was to put them all in camps.

Then, at least, we would know where they all were. It was 1942. They were Japanese, we were Americans. There was no hyphen.

Then it was the 60's and a different war started very subtly and I supported it to begin with. There were these "freedom loving people"struggling in a partitioned country. Half the country wanted freedom,the other half didn't want them to have it. We began sending troops to help them out. Kids here began protesting. They did a lot of outrageous things. Things that didn't seem rational or open to reason. I figured they were whacked out on drugs and heady with a mix of juvenile hormones and the usual hatred-of-authority. "Hell no we won't go!" looked anti-American to me.

Then there was blood running in the streets of Chicago, my hometown, and it's mayor, his veins popping in his neck, shouting in support of what began to look like a police-state riot. It looked like those nightmare southern scenes of Bull Conner turning dogs and hoses on people who were just trying to be heard in the name of freedom.

I began to listen. Maybe the "kids" had something to say that made sense. To my older ear though, it was like the music of the Beetles. Icould almost hear the truth of it, but the presentation created so much "noise" it was hard to sort it out. When others, the cooler heads, the officially sanctioned orators, the classical arrangers, began to present the same material, then I could hear it. Then it all began to make sense.

It was 1968, something was wrong with what we were being told. Maybe the war most of us thought was important to our national security and the security of the free world...wasn't.

Maybe we were even on the wrong side.

In 1942, we were afraid of the Japanese here at home. We didn't know much about them and what we did know, that Japan had suddenly, and without warning, attacked us and killed a bunch of our people, made us even more afraid, angry and suspicious. We didn't want to have to watch our backs in our own country and prepare to fight all the forces arrayed against us outside it too.

In the decades since we lived that, there has been a lot of second guessing about why any of us could have thought and done what we did.

And the Wheel has turned and now many people are suspicious of the people, in many cases their neighbors, who originate from the area which produced those who stabbed us in the back September 11th. Now you know how things were in 1942. Doesn't seem quite so insane now does it? The wondrous thing is, though we are suspicious, we're not quite as naive as we were back then. Communication is better, we know more about our neighbors than we did, we've grown.

There are protestors about what we are preparing for now. They seem to have the same anthems of those kids in the 60's. American policies are to blame. Innocents will be killed, theirs and ours. Our government and big business are joined in an evil alliance, back then it was napalm, today it is oil...and that's what it's all about they say. And we're trying to undermine those older societies with our pop culture crap, and they resent it and they want to keep their religion safe from our influence, and we shouldn't have been meddling in their affairs, and we support corrupt governments which suppress their populations,and......?

But this isn't Viet Nam. And if you listen to the voices of the firemen, the police, the families all involved in the loss of close to seven thousand murdered souls buried in the ruins in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, if you see the faces of the military people, husbands and wives, preparing to be sent into battles from which they may not return, though it may seem to be reminiscent of preparing for southeast Asia, it isn't.

There are tears in those eyes. There is anger in those voices, not bewilderment. No, "I'm doing this because my country has asked me to and I support the President." kind of talk that you heard from 18 year olds dressed for combat heroics in the 60's. In fact, these faces and these voices sound exactly like those we saw and heard in the 40's.

And for the most part, they're not eager kids yearning for a rite of passage through which they can earn manhood. Many are adults, already tempered by life's realities. They know what they have to lose. And they know that they, and we, must risk it.

Over the past few weeks I've caught myself singing "America" undermy breath. I'm always kind of surprised when it happens because that's not a song I'd sing. Not in "ordinary" times. Usually I'd be doing ColePorter, or Gershwin or maybe Lennon. I am able to hear "Imagine" even past the noise.

I've discovered that sometimes, when I catch myself humming one of these, it's a kind of message I'm sending to myself, like the code in a persistent dream. Now, when "America" comes up, attached to it are feelings. There are tears forming in my eyes, a tightness in my throat,it is sadness. Sadness that it is all happening again. Anger follows later, that we must be put to through this for someone's agenda. I find no political rhetoric.

When the phrase, "the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there..." insinuate themselves into my awareness, I suddenly remember that the words of the Stars Spangled Banner have never been important to me; until now. And I have feelings connected to them that I didn't have before.

I feel proud. I feel aware of my country. I feel, there is no other word for it; American.

I guess that's how Francis Scott Key felt when he wrote it while he peered through the bars of a British prison ship in the midst of an attack on his country. He saw bombs bursting over Fort McHenry, I see the burning Trade Tower and the shadow of another plane approaching.

And I see the faces of the firemen raising the flag on the ruins. I see the symbols of today and I remember the symbols of the hundreds of years that have gone in to the building of our survival.

In a sense this is unlike anything we have experienced in our history, and yet there are echoes. It's important that we sort all of that out. We have changed since 1941. We are a society which accepts more diversity than we ever have at any time in our history. It's not perfect by any means, but we are a work in progress towards that end. We must acknowledge this and use it to understand and forgive our ancestors for their reactions. We can taste a little of what must have been going through them then in our own fear now.

We have a set of circumstances that in no way, shape, or form match the 60's and our involvement in southeast Asia. We must differentiate what happened then from this attack. This is not an ill conceived intervention in another countries politics. This is about us and our way of life. And it is about how most people in the world want to live. Free of fear. It is not just we who have to assume the role of "World Cop". Every nation, dedicated to the principle of the right of its people to live lives unthreatened by fanatics of whatever persuasion, will have to, at last, join with us no matter what their political or spiritual ideology.

We love our children.
We love their children.
We love our grandfathers.
We love their grandfathers.
We love our grandmothers.
We love their grandmothers.
We love our women.
We love their women.
We love our brothers.
We love their brothers.
We love our sisters.
We love their sisters.
We must not allow anyone to stop us from loving

Dick Prosapio ©2001
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Dick Prosapio aka, Coyote is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, ceremonialist, psycho-
therapist (ret.), author, leader of men's experiential workshops, & Co-founder of The Foundation for Common Sense. He lives with his wife and daughter in Stanley, NM

For more info about Dick Prosapio, visit his web-site, Spirit/ Earth Path
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