So, as I wrote in my entry for yesterday today is the obon day, but it is also the day when WWII ended for us Japan. The day Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration. As a Japanese, I let many thoughts and feelings mix and whirl in my mind.
On this day 61 years ago, the voice of the Emperor announced flowed across the entire country through radio that we were defeated and that the war was over. My grandparents’ generation went through all of the war. Unfortunately, my grandfather who has actually gone to the battleground had passed away when he was still young, so I never had the chance to make him tell stories about the war. I wonder how he felt when he heard the radio.
My grandmother on the other hand, was very young when she experienced the war and has lived so much longer afterwards through the age of turbulent shifts and transformation, and cannot fully express her feelings then about the war.
She does, though, talk a lot about the peace today. A life with her grandchildren, a life with abundance that she could’ve never imagined back then. Happiness is smiles bringing more smiles, to be able to smile naturally.
The peaceful Japan we have today is the treasure that the war dead and the survivors have protected with their life.
But with the increasing atrocious crimes and cases, how much can we protect the treasure to pass down to the coming generation?
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