s3raphita said: Talking about atrocities reminds me that when I was last in Tokyo I visited the (controversial) war museum there. In the attached shop I saw an English-language book with the title "The Nanking Massacre: a Modern Myth" claiming the 1937 slaughter of 300,000 Chinese civilians was groundless enemy propaganda. Imagine walking into a German museum and finding a book called "The Holocaust Myth Exploded"!
Not to perpetuate this depressing topic too much, but your mention of the Japanese Revisionist History museum reminded me of a memorial that *doesn't* gloss over past events and pretend they never happened. Bruce Cockburn wrote a song in 1999 called "Postcards From Cambodia <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vmAbOBmbA8> ," about his visit to that country and others in Southeast Asia trying to combat the still-present-today danger of land mines left over from the war(s). One of the most poignant images he saw was this tower, in Phnom Penh: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Phnom_Penh,_Killing_F\ ields_of_Choeung_Ek_(6226142426).jpg <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Phnom_Penh,_Killing_\ Fields_of_Choeung_Ek_(6226142426).jpg> Looks pretty, doesn't it...even serene. Until you get close, and realize that it is filled with five thousand human skulls from the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The song/poem at the link above (and lyrics below) conveys Bruce's reaction, both to that past horror and its present-day legacy -- seven *million* land mines still laying wait to kill anyone who steps on them, and none of the countries who laid them willing to remove them. States that have so far flatly refused to sign the International Treaty To Ban Land Mines include the countries that still make (and make money from) them: the United States, China, Korea, the Russian Federation, India, and Israel. Bet you won't find this on Global Good News, eh? Only talk about the glorious Age of Enlightenment that Maharishi created... Abe Lincoln once turned to somebody and said, "Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?" There are three tiny deaths heads carved out of mammoth tusk on the ledge in my bathroom They grin at me in the morning when I'm taking a leak, but they say very little. Outside Phnom Penh there's a tower, glass paneled, maybe ten meters high filled with skulls from the killing fields Most of them lack the lower jaw so they don't exactly grin but they whisper, as if from a great distance, of pain, and of pain left far behind Eighteen thousand empty eyeholes peering out at the four directions Electric fly buzz, green moist breeze Bone-colored Brahma bull grazes wet-eyed, hobbled in hollow of mass grave In the neighboring field a small herd of young boys plays soccer, their laughter swallowed in expanding silence This is too big for anger, it's too big for blame. We stumble through history so humanly lame So I bow down my head Say a prayer for us all That we don't fear the spirit when it comes to call The sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient reservoir. Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin below air-brushed edges of cloud. But first, it spreads itself, a golden scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping fly catchers. Silhouetted dark green trees, blue horizon The rains are late this year. The sky has no more tears to shed. But from the air Cambodia remains a disc of wet green, bordered by bright haze. Water-filled bomb craters, sun streaked gleam stitched in strings across patchwork land and march west toward the far hills of Thailand. Macro analog of Ankor Wat's temple walls intricate bas-relief of thousand-year-old battles pitted with AK rounds And under the sign of the seven headed cobra the naga who sees in all directions seven million landmines lie in terraced grass, in paddy, in bush (Call it a minescape now) Sally holds the beggar's hand and cries at his scarred up face and absent eyes and right leg gone from above the knee Tears spot the dust on the worn stone causeway whose sculpted guardians row on row Half frown, half smile, mysterious, mute. And this is too big for anger. It's too big for blame We stumble through history so humanly lame. So I bow down my head, say a prayer for us all. That we don't fear the spirit when it comes to call.
