Written by Scott Watson   

442 is a movie playing now at some cinemas in Japan. It is directed by Junichi SUZUKI (2010). The documentary is a celebration of the famous 442nd regiment that was mainly young Japanese-American men. The film goes into but does not dwell on the concentration camps (internment camps), the anti-Japanese discrimination, as well as the Posttraumatic stress disorder many suffered. In general it is a celebration of valor. This was a highly decorated regiment. The men who fought under that flag and survived will not be around much longer.

Why is it we can hear about brave fighting men but hear nothing of men and women who with equal bravery and against even more insurmountable odds, resistance, and repression struggle for peace?

Here is Tolstoy on that point:


“The activity of W.L. Garrison in founding the Society of Non-Resistants, and his Declaration, ... , convinced me that State-Christianity’s abandonment of Christ’s law of non-resistance by violence had been observed and pointed out long ago, and that men have laboured and still labour to expose it. Ballou’s work convinced me of this still more. But the fate of Garrison and Ballou--especially the latter, who remained quite unrecognized in spite of fifty years of constant and persistent work in one and the same direction--confirmed me in the idea that a kind of tacit, but obstinate, conspiracy of silence exists concerning all such efforts.

Ballou died in August 1890, and on August 23rd the American Religio-Philosophical Journal, a magazine with a Christian tendency, published an obituary notice of him.

In this laudatory notice it is mentioned that Ballou was the spiritual director of a parish, that he delivered between eight and nine thousand sermons, married a thousand couples, and wrote some five hundred articles; but not a single word is said of the object to which he devoted his life, and the word ‘non-resistance’ is not even mentioned!

So that all that has been preached by the Quakers for the last two hundred years, as well as the efforts of W.L. Garrison, the foundation of his Society and journal and his Declaration, as well as the whole of Ballou’s life-work, are as though they did not exist and never had existed.”

[from THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND PEACE ESSAYS by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Aylmer Maude]


Why is it bravery in war is advertised all over but bravery connected with peace is ignored? Why is it those who die in battle are celebrated--their names in bronze on town hall walls, their spirits enshrined in sacred places, their remains interred with special honors in specially designated places but those who live or die for peace go almost totally unknown unless one receives one of the very few awards such as a Nobel Peace Prize (though some recipients of that award can hardly be called pacifists) or the Gandhi Prize?

Why is it war connects with work, with an ethic in which “doesn’t want to work” is seen as a bad attitude in a society laboring to produce labor-saving devices? Does it sound crazy?

Why is a low unemployment rate a sign of a society’s success when one supposed goal of human happiness is being freed from the yoke?

In terms of having enough, having what is needed to survive in a basic but comfortable way, a majority of the working populations of developed countries could be dismissed. They could have basic but comfortable dwellings and have enough to eat.

It is not necessary for entire adult populations to be at work. It is not necessary for nations to be at war. It is not necessary that there even be nations. Nations mean work. Nations mean war. Nations mean wark [sic].