Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

This is the sequel of already posted article "Ich bin ein Berliner." My trip in Europe last month. After I enjoyed my 2 day stay in Berlin, I flew to Krakow, the old capital of Poland. From the city, I went to one of the famous World Heritage sites. It took 1 and a half hour to get to Auschwitz Museum by car. It was clear and sunny day. The place looked strangely beautiful although what happend there was so scary. At first I went to the second part of the former concentration camp, Birkenau.

Over 1 million people were said to be murdered there. The below photo is the bombed gas chamber. Nazis bombed the chamber when they left that place to destroy the evidence. It looked like Roman ruin to me.

The below is where the prisoners slept and their toilet.

Also the below is the site of forced labour in the ditch.

The below is the freight train car used for deportation of the prisoners. No seats in it. They had to stand up inside for days without food.

Then I went to the Auschwitz. That is me in front of the famous gate "ARBEIT MACHT FREI. (Labor makes you free.)" But the prisoners never became free. 90% of them died inside the camp.

On 2nd of August, I went to U.S. Navy Base in Yokosuka city, 30 kilometers from Tokyo.

On that day, "Navy Friendship Day" festival was held there. "Friendship?" Huh? Are they our friends?

The navy is bringing very dangerous ship to the sea near our capital. That is CVN 73, George Washington.

They were providing comic books that describe life of the crews, how much they are excited to live in Japan, how much they love Japan. Such a cliche just irritated me.

In fact the story were all fiction including the scene of the fire in laundry room. A crew extinguished the fire from a dryer immediately and prevented it from spreading. 

In May the CVN 73 caught a big fire on the sea near South America. The fire spread out to 80 compartments in the ship. It took 12 hours to extinguish the fire. The cause of the fire was announced 2 months later and it was from cigarette in non-smoking area. The fire was flashed off flammable fuels near it. The fuels were placed in prohibited area.

The morale of the crews was proved to be terrible. We can never rely on such crews for controlling the dangerous nuclear ship. I've already written a post about danger of nuclear aircraft carrier on this blog several times. I also posted You Tube video clip for this issue.

At night I saw fireworks lighting over the sea. It was very beautiful scene. I really enjoyed especially because I could see it lying on the football field inside the base.

The cost of maintaining the base facilities came from our tax. If they are protecting our land, I wouldn't care. But they just use that for their purposes and threaten our lives. We don't want them around us any more.

America should change their policy. They have to care about their own people rather than people outside their country. Abondon foreign bases and go back to traditional isolationism.

Last month I saw the documentary film featuring the U.S. soldiers and their miserable lives. The title was "AMERICA BANZAI, crazy as usual." The film featured Iraq war veterans who ended up being homeless after they came back home. Young soldier who refused to go to Iraq and dishonorably discharged. I hope this would be shown in the U.S. The director of the film is Japanese.

Living as American seems so hard except being Paris Hilton.

Between 9 and 12 of July, I was staying in Berlin, Deutschland (Germany).

It was a beautiful and interesting city. The purpose of visiting there was to learn history of holocaust and the Cold War era.

The first place I visited was Holocaust Memorial. It is Wave of Stones.

The memorial for 6 million Jewish victims. The place was near Brandenburger Gate and the Parliament Building.

On one downtown street, I found small memorial plates. It is called "Stolperstein. (Hitting stones)" One of 1600-1700 existed on Berlin streets to mourn holocaust victims.

I also visited some history museums. One of the most impressive ones was German History Museum. I saw below postar for Anti-Jew proganda, which depicts Jews as greedy and communist.

The same museum exhibited part of former Berlin Wall.  

I went to Checkpoint Charlie, the former checkpoint between West and East Berlin. That now became tourist spot.

The below photo is memorial for Border Crosser who failed and then being killed.

Berlin experienced very dramatic history. I really felt that by being there.  

I've made video clip of my stay in Berlin. See this you tube clip.

On 12 of July I left Berlin for Krakow to see one of the famous World Heritage designated by UNESCO.

I will talk about that later.  

Danke schonn!

Last month, I mentioned the below ad was racist using monkey as OBAMA in presidential election campaign.

The company that uses the ad, EMOBILE admitted the commercial was offensive to Afro-Americans considering the historical fact that monkey character had been used to portray Blacks as inferior creature to other people. Then early this month, they announced they would not air the commercial on TV and pulled the ad. However, they said they never meant to insult Black people by this ad because monkeys has been their maskots in their company's products.

I've mentioned this issue last month on this blog, see this article posted on June 21. I also mentioned on Japan's well-known internet newspaper, JANJAN. This is the article (in Japanese.) Some people object my view because I seem to make extreme interpretation of the ad concept. There are a lot of commercials that use animals to portray human characters.

But as a result, I was right. EMOBILE received so many complaints from Americans living in Japan. CNN covered this story. I knew that would happen because I used to live in the U.S. and learned so much about history of racism. I took Black Studies course.

Well, that helped. Most Japanese are ignorant about this issue because our society is much less diverse than the U.S. in terms of race and ethncity.  

EMOBILE wasted so much ad budget but they learned good lesson. So did many Japanese citizens.