Growing up in the U.S., every teen wants to be known. Be famous or be a standout from the rest. Some do sports, some play an instrument and in the world of popular music, specifically rock, there are groups who hang out...sub-genres that can be confusing. I hung out with the long hair, though I had short hair. Then there are death metal and grind core, then there is punk, doom and so on. My favs were Motley Crue, Van Halen and other long-hair-types that promoted sex drugs and rock and roll.
The problem is, you have to grow up and eventually, to quote Motley Crue, the Live Fast Die Fast lifestyle takes its toll. Even if you do not enjoy the excess, living the lifestyle or pretending to live the lifestyle tends to make one warn out. So is rock music merely the era of the youth? Can there be more to this than just doing things excessively? I believe so and I learned about it back in the 80s. Who is this band? Rush.
Rush is a unique band. The closest thing that Rush did about the youth rebelling was Subdivision from their album Signals. Yet this song did not encourage drug taking, suicide or any of the proverbial stereotypes, but the challenges youth face: assimilating, peer pressure, and so on. Subdivision did not make me rebel against my parents or society, much like the previous bands I listened to, they actually made me think. I also learned about John Steinbeck from Losing it...how many teenagers know about Steinbeck? Honestly? None. Not long hairs. Then came Grace Under Pressure.
I mean Red Sector A. how many teens knew that was about the Nazi concentration Camps? Neil Peart was inspired by Geddy Lee's story about how his parents were in Bergen Belsen and Dachau. This fascinated me because the music was not about rebelling against society or the cops or my parents, but against the Nazis in this case, and it was moving. Yet Rush did not end there. Then came Power Windows.
This was the first Rush concert I attended and I was excited. But then something piqued my interest. Manhattan Project. I was wondering what the song was about. I read:
Imagine a man when it all began/ The pilot of 'Enola Gay'/Flying out of the shockwave on that August day/All the powers that be, and the course of history/Would be changed forevermore...What was the Enola Gay? Was it an anagram? Did it had to do anything about homosexuality about some person named Enola who was gay? Was it Yag Alone? I did not know. So I asked a friend in my journalism class and he said to go visit my Asian American Studies Professor. I did and my life changed forever
I realized everything that day. I learned about what my aunt experienced, but my family refused to comment. I learned from Three Canadian white guys, what was a secret my family kept from me, out of respect for my aunt and our family name. The song opened me up to a whole new perspective in life and how my religious faith was destroyed all because I learned something from Rush...shame, dishonor, betrayal, murder. yet I went beyond the song which I ultimately used as a springboard for my activism work, like:
Hidden History: American POWS Were Killed in Hiroshima
Even at this date—on the sixty-sixth anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb against a city—few Americans know that among the tens of thousands victims in Hiroshima were at least a dozen and perhaps more American prisoners of war. This was kept from the American people—even the families of the Americans—for decades, along with so much else related to the atomic bombings (as revealed in my new book).
At least twenty-three US servicemen were in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. They were prisoners of war, former aviators, held at several locations in downtown Hiroshima. It’s likely we would have never learned of this if a B-29 had not ditched off Japan two days after the Hiroshima attack, on August 8, 1945. Picked up by a fishing boat, the crew ended up on a drill field in devastated Hiroshima, bound by rope and blindfolded.
A Japanese police captain saved them from a mob by taking them to the suburb of Ujina. En route he stopped at the Hiroshima train station, removed their blindfolds, and according to Matin Zapf, one of the Americans who would survive), shouted, “Look what you have done! One bomb!”
One of the captured Americans recalled the “spooky ride” to Ujina: no houses standing, nothing moving, not even a dog, and the policeman yelling, “One bomb! One bomb!”
Along the way they came across two more American prisoners: a navy aviator and an Air Force sergeant. They were suffering from nausea, with green liquid dripping from their mouths and ears. Held in Hiroshima when the bomb hit, they had survived by jumping into a cesspool. Clearly, they were suffering from radiation disease, but no one at the time knew anything about it.
That night, as the pair screamed in pain in their cells—asking to be put out of their misery—the other Americans asked the Japanese doctors to do something. “Do something?” one of the doctors replied. “You tell me what to do. You caused this.” The two men died later that night.
Yet the death of American POWs was not acknowledged by the United States until the late 1970s. The Japanese have now added the names of the twelve dead soldiers to their official tally of those killed in the bombing (that's John Hantschel at above left), and mounted their photos in a museum photo gallery.
Three days after the Hiroshima blast, perhaps as many as a dozen Dutch POWs were killed in the bombing of Nagasaki. (See my new piece on U.S. ambassador Caroline Kennedy's meeting with survivors in Nagasaki.) One American soldier there, a Navajo from New Mexico, survived in his cell.
There were U.S. citizens. Not just civilians who were victims of a tragic accident, but actual POWs. Forget the fact that U.S. citizens died. Forget the fact that Japan was on the verge of surrendering. Doesn't it bother you that after the end of war in Japan, we got in to the Cold War? We were allies with the USSR, but quickly after, we were on the verge of going to war. Was it worth it? Yes Dresden was horrible and the allies who bombed a civilian population must be held accountable, but the difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki vs. Dresden? Seventy years later next year, there are nuclear survivors and/or their offspring who are dying of cancer. how many victims 70 years later in Dresden are dying from thyroid cancer, bone cancer or other form of wasting disease?
Not many.
But think about this, this all started because I thought the song rocked. Yes it did rock, but it also rocked my religious foundation as a former Christian, my belief in the government (maybe Henry Wallace would have been different???), I became more sensitive to the different culture and history, and found out myself that, yes, a rock band can teach. I really do want to thank Rush...if they read this blog, because, it is them who helped guide me down a path no one in my family or in my culture dare take.
Honestly? If Rush was just another rock band, I would not have written a semi-lengthy blog, but their lyrics not only moved me, it inspired me to change religion from Christianity to atheism to eventually Unitarian Universalist and the lyrics made me want to know more about the truth. Every concert I attend, I raise my palms upwards like a revival service to take in the Holy Spirit (which I don't believe as an atheist), but the music and lyrics refreshes my tired psyche and encourages me to continue on without cease.
If Geddy and/or Alex and/or even Neil reads this, I just want to say thank you for opening up my heart and mind, as today, I am doing my best to end what my aunt experienced on the August Day...thank you.
