Marin County Board of Supervisors endorses H.R. 808

Kathrin Sears, Supervisor District 3
Marin County Board of Supervisors
3501 Civic Center Drive
San Rafael, CA 94903
415.499.7331 tel
415.499.3645 fax
ksears@co.marin.ca.us

February 7, 2012

Dear Ms. Sears,

Congratulations to you and the Board of Supervisors for endorsing H.R. 808, the Department of Peace.

Your decision is especially meaningful for my mother, a Mill Valley resident who still lives in the same house she and my father bought in 1961, two years after she arrived from Yokosuka, Japan.

I’d like to share with you what peace means to her.

My mother grew up in northern Japan during the second Sino-Japanese war and World War II. She told me about air raids and how she and her family hid in basements and caves for weeks at a time, sharing insufficient rations of soap and lamp oil and scavenging tiny fish, raw seaweed, anything.

She read about Santa Claus and a golden bridge in San Francisco. She watched cousins and friends and strangers die of simple things like dysentery for lack of proper food, clean water and medicine.

In nursing school the air raids began in earnest. By the time she was working in a hospital, starving circus animals were performing on abandoned grounds, pawing the air and jumping through imaginary hoops for food that had run out while people streamed into the hospital.

One young man pushed a wheelbarrow carrying his wife into the hospital after walking for days to find help, but his wife was already dead.

Another man walked into the hospital holding his stomach. When he saw my mother his arms dropped to his sides and his intestines spilled out.

My grandfather, Commander of the Western Sea Frontier, retired the year I was born. He used to say war is a dirty business. My mother always agreed with him and often said the people of Japan did not go to war with the people of the United States; it was a matter between our governments and the soldiers they sent. The citizens participated only in the air raids and blackouts, rations and hunger, disease, despair and fear.

As if to weed out the persistent memories of war, my mother has carved out a place of peace in her garden where she cultivates orchids and tends to stray and injured animals. As a surgical nurse she helped save many lives, but she told me it would be better not to risk them in the first place.

My mother is 87 years old and delights in the prospect of a Department of Peace.

Thank you.

June 27, 2011

President of the United States, Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

If I sit silently, I have sinned. Mohammad Mossadegh

Dear President Obama:

Looking back to 2009 with its daily news broadcasts reporting international turmoil, global economic collapse and personal tragedies worldwide, I recall you saying the world is getting smaller every day. I can still see your hands shaping a very small Earth in the air in front of the TV camera.

About that time I also read an article stating that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would consider meeting with you if the United States would apologize for its past actions in Iran. Considering the destructive impact of the CIA and corporate oil interests in Iran, it’s a reasonable position and one I believe warrants renewed consideration. With concerns for human rights and nuclear armament on the table, an apology seems long overdue.

The world is getting smaller every day, I agree. State actions can no longer be contained by curtains, partitions, embargoes and walls. Correspondence from me arrives instantly in your inbox just as it does in President Ahmadinejad’s. Where communication is concerned, we are nearly face to face. Yet the U.S. seems farther from Iran than ever.

As a citizen with no presidential agenda to satisfy, I can say that I deeply regret the actions of the United States government in 1953 and how much a coup by so few has taken so much from the people of Iran and the people of the United States to this day. I shared my sadness in a letter to President Ahmadinejad. I hope you’ll read it as well.

I’m sure you agree that continuing hostilities and redacted histories, with no foreseeable end in sight, trace back in part to the actions of the United States and England nearly 60 years ago. Neither you nor I would be born for another 8 years yet we have inherited the dreams and mistakes of previous generations.

When we were children, Tehran still welcomed Western students and international influences. A rich fabric of languages, music, cultures and people woven in modernity revealed resilient threads of ancient Islam. I think it’s important that you and President Ahmadinejad and citizens in both countries remember this fact: we were friends.

My mother, who remembers B-29s flying over Yokosuka, to this day says the Japanese people never went to war with America, that the war was between our governments and the soldiers they sent. The citizens participated only in the air raids and blackouts, meager rations and hunger, disease, despair and fear.

It’s time for us to begin again, by talking and listening and behaving with transparency. You and President Ahmadinejad may not agree, but that’s the nature of your presidential agendas; we, the millions of people in both countries, have the most to lose by your stalemate.

In this smaller world with its rogue diplomacy and audacious hope, my voice is one among many I hope you will hear. I hope President Ahmadinejad will, too.