In honour of veterans with gratitude
By Lethbridge Herald on November 1, 2024.
Editor:
On every Remembrance Day I remember the veterans I knew personally with gratitude. The following are some of them:
• Col. Bill Savage and Dr. Shin Kuroda: My cousin Midori married Bill who was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. Uncle Shin was Midori’s father and a surgeon of the Japanese Imperial Guard Regiment during WWII. Bill and Midori carved out a loving family with two children, James and Jenn, both now retired from the Air Force. I wonder how Uncle felt about his daughter’s union with Bill who would have been on the wrong side of the war. Bill died too soon from an injury to his lungs from Agent Orange he sprayed over VietNam. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. Uncle Shin was a family doctor.
• Jack Mellow: He was in the Canadian Air Force based in England during the Second World War as a mechanic keeping Spitfires in good condition. He was my father-in-law. When Muriel told her parents about me as a future husband, Jack said, “But he is Japanese.” That was the only time he said anything like that. My enduring memory was the afternoon Jack and I spent together in a car parked on the south end of the Winnipeg airport. We watched planes landing and taking off. He loved airplanes.
• Commander Masao and Pvt. Shiro Mitsui: They were my grandmother’s brothers. I never met them. Their photos were hanging on the wall of the Mitsui home. They both died in Japan’s war with Tsarist Russia in 1904 – 06. Grand uncle Masao was in the Navy. His last mission was to lead a fleet of old cargo ships to the mouth of Port Arthur in North East China, scuttling them and sinking them to block the passage so the Russian Pacific Fleet could not get out to Japan Sea. Uncle Masao’s ship was blown up and his body never found. Uncle Shiro died in a field hospital from dysentery. The Mitsuis lost all male heirs. So my father was adopted and married my mother who was a Mitsui.
• Dr. Yukichi Takeda: My grandmother’s husband. He was a veterinarian of a cavalry regiment during the Japan’s 1904 war with Russia. After retirement from the military he did not succeed in everything he tried. His veterinary practice and his enterprises all failed. I was a child and never asked why Grandpa was always home sitting in his den reading books or chanting from Buddhist scriptures. My vivid memory was the smell of disinfectant in grandpa’s den. After he died my cousin who was closer to him told me that grandpa was a drug addict after the war. That explains why he was dysfunctional. Being a veterinarian he had no problem with drug supply. He must have seen the worst in the war. Today he would be treated for PTSD. Grandfather Yukichi was an iconic figure of Samurai dignity sitting with his back straight chanting.
• CPL. Jacob DeShazer, U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942, and later a missionary in Japan from 1948: My father helped him translate his sermons and his auto-biography to be published in Japanese. DeShazar was a gunner on a B25 bomber under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle. It was the first Second World WAr U.S. bombing raid of Japan.
He was one of 8 airmen captured by the Japanese Army and spent four years in a POW camp. He suffered unspeakable brutality but survived. He befriended a guard of the POW camp who gave him a Bible which was the only book allowed. The friendship made him decide to become a missionary. He went to the Seattle Pacific University, studied theology, and back to Japan as a missionary in 1948. He lived in Japan and died in 2008.
• Frank Carey, Garth Legge, Ian McLeod, and Don Ray were the veterans of the Canadian military. They became United Church ministers.
• Frank Carey from Nova Scotia was in the infantry. After the war he came to Japan as a missionary. He recruited me to come to Canada.
• Garth Legge from Toronto and Ian McLeod from Halifax were Spitfire pilots. Both became missionaries: Ian went to Japan and Garth to Zambia. Garth became the Secretary of the Overseas Mission Board and recruited me to go to Lesotho Africa. He was my supervisor while I worked in Lesotho. Ian became a pacifist in Japan.
• Don Ray from Winnipeg was a navigator on the Lancaster bomber. He later became the General Secretary of the Church. He was a part of the bombing campaign of Germany in 1945. He told me he didn’t see anything of the operation. He was confined to the tiny cubicle for the navigator. He was scared to death whenever an anti-aircraft flak exploded nearby and the whole plane rattled.
I remember them. Rest in peace!
Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui
Lethbridge
16-15
i recall a time where there was an actual lightness attached to being a canadian. that was when we were known as peace keepers. we fought 2 world wars in the name of freedom, figuring if we did not fight we were likely to succumb to fascism.
we were savvy and good and decent enough to stay out of the disgusting and war crimes ravaged vietnam debacle. but, then came the break up of the balkans, and canada became a yahoo-type nation of jingos, following along on usa coat tails with fly-by bombings over areas that were not at all our business. the balkans had no bearing on any degree of our freedom; and, the fly by bombings, that indiscriminately killed and maimed countless civilians, that should have been prosecuted as war crimes, sullied our place as a decent, peace loving, good society. those bombings also did not do anything for freedom or for any good at all.
since then, we have lost much of the respect from the world that we had earned with many a lost soldier. since then, too, we have continued to follow along with usa into several dark and ugly pits of inhuman action and support, including afghanistan. we continue to further support war crimes in the middle east, not with soldiers but with little rebuttal to an israel that should be ashamed of itself, as well being well prosecuted for its cynical use of human hostages as a means to annihilate what is left of the palestinian presence, and to steal more land for the goal israeli expansion. this is not the first time israel will have stolen land via war, which is indeed illegal.
to not take a stand that says unequivocally we support human rights, and that we support and respect the laws that protect such rights, is another of decrepit legacies of canada today on the world stage. worse, so is selling and providing arms to states that use them in unlawful ways.
Well biff I have to disagree with you for the most part of what you state. As a army vet and the father of a soon to be retired soldier who served in Bosnis, Afghanistan and the Ukraine training missions, I am a bit insulted when you imply our service and those of fellow soldiers may suggest possible complacency in war crimes in UN and NATO missions in said countries. I guess ethnic cleansing is only to be settled by the people within those affected countries and are not the concern of other countries such as ours regardless of alliances or not? My son and both of our fellow soldiers witnessed wholescale killings of innocent civilians by the belligerent factions. within Bosnia and could only watch and do nothing to stop it due to UN inforced rules of engagement that only changed when NATO took over and then and only then did it (the murderous ethnic killing) stop. The bombing you discribe was NOT indiscriminate as you discribed to defend your argument but targeted at key targets to stop Serb government involvement in theirs own killings and also kidnapping of our allied ( includent Candian) soldiers. Sadly there was some collateral casualties but peace was restored and stability insured overall. But you choose to call it a war crime as our own airforce also participated in that mission. They now have by the way freedom and yes peace.
In the case of Afghaniston it harboured terrorist operatives who attacked closer to home of a close ally ,(of our alliance )but while my son did two tours of service there he could better argue our service there better than I can with the space here.
i reply to this and the second entry you make. first, thank you for your sharing. you provide another perspective, and one that is worthy of consideration.
i am not entirely at odds with your outlook, as i am not meaning to state that the entire canadian forces that was forced into action in the balkans or afghanistan are war criminals. i am, however, of the belief that in both conflicts there are war crime issues that should be investigated, that involved canadians, and not limited to but foremost at the highest levels of decision making.
i also believe that bombings that kill and maim civilians – we were not under attack; we were not at war; we chose to enter those theatres – constitute war crimes.
i read it that your take is that those fly-bys were effective; my take is they are war crimes and were of little significance otherwise. but, what do i know? the older i get the more i see that reminds me of how little we each seem to really know. still, when it comes to mass violence, power corrupted, and military industrial complex that is the base of that mentality, where power and wealth are the ends most always supplant human decency and love.
with regard to israel ever the more stealing away land, and marginalising an already robbed and inured palestinian people, hamas et al do not represent all palestinians, nor all arabs. that said, we can surely agree that netanyahoo and his ugly band of militant hawks – in israel and in and among the usa govt – do not represent all israelis. the nasty assaults that have been killing and maiming civilians are war crimes in that the civilians are not active nor willing participants in terrorism.
again, we come down to a matter of perspective, and notwithstanding the whatever rules of international law may or may not state, acts of terror do not constitute a declaration of war. furthermore, in the present case of netanyahoo, there seems little to no desire to free those hostages: it is by now fair enough to see that he is holding those hostages hostage to his desire to eradicate what is left of palestine, and that culture, by sending them to and fro, killing what he is being allowed to get away with, and further stealing away and settling upon more land that does not belong to he or to israel.
as you might guess, i find it difficult to be one that foremost must live via the orders of another. thus, for those in the military, life is perhaps one of difficult compromise. my father, bomb disposal with britain ww2, was no fan of the 7 years he spent of his late youth/early adulthood in the military. he saw much that did not meet his sense of outlook and was compelled to follow along with that which was contrary to his beliefs.
it is of no consequence that we see this or much of anything eye to eye. what is of utter importance is that we each are free to share our outlooks, our choices, and always only to the limit that respects the rights of one another. it is on this basis that i hold remembrance dear, and i thank all those that stood up to those that have tried to undermine rights and freedoms.
to you, to your son, to each that has gone forward with best intentions: thank you.
The hamas attack on Israel was unwarranted and it had to be responded to. The hamas use of the hostages and its own people as human shields to continue its attacks on Israel is somehow missing from your argument and one sidded at best. One can argue untill the cows come home about the palestinian cause (I aggree their right to a homeland) but it must also include the security and peace with Israel without threats by Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran. While the bombing etc in Gaza in excessive it is Hamas that field the blame for its continution. This situation shows the utter weakness and useless of the UN. This is also a factor in Ukraine with the security council with veto power by some permanent members namely Russia and China.
as we will agree, the middle east is complex, and most especially is the israel/palestine issue. i agree that there can be no supporting targeting civilians/noncombatants no matter what one’s concerns. thus, while the attack and hostage taking by hamas – cowardly as is all terrorism that feasts on civilians – israeli policy has too long targeted palestinian civilians in a number of ways that marginalises and destroys palestinian rights/freedoms, opportunity, economy, culture. they have held land stolen via war/conflict (illegal), they have continued to encroach year over taking more land using “security” as a basis for ongoing israeli settlement/land theft. the net effect is pretty much an ongoing genocide. what would one do if one was palestinian; how would one feel having their land stolen away via colonial powers? while not a direct comparison, this is not entirely different than what has happened to first peoples the world over: second class status at best, and cultural annihilation among other atrocities.
this begs the question: did the likes of israel, and those that have stood up and fallen in the name of freedom – which includes, then, combating hate and heavy handed power structures – not learn/gain anything from the worst experiences of the mid-30s to the mid-40s of the 20th c?