Despite my best efforts to manage my negative feelings towards the Japanese soldiers for killing, raping, and breaking the spirits of millions – this goal was never accomplished; I never discovered how to change the negative state of my mind.
Seventy years have passed since the war ended. Those years never took away those memories – they remain a part of me, forever. The art of survival lived in me without my being aware of it. It would have been so easy to surrender.
As stated in my previous blog, I consider those four years of war both “important and forming” but I will never be able to identify those experiences with the feelings in my mind and heart. Those years are not meant to “teach”. They are unnatural, distorted and merciless. They have transformed people into what they were never meant to be.
The first ten years following the war may have released me from imprisonment, but freedom did not bring back happiness, love or trust. Peace was a long forgotten treasure.
Years later healing and joy was returned to me by a man who loved me, without reservation; broken and damaged as I was. By my children, one after another, who showed me I am capable of a love that is pure and unconditional.
Slowly the doors opened – doors I was positive were closed forever.
That man and those children gently put the evil to rest and helped me surrender to a sense of peace, allowing fragments of joy, beauty and love to shine through the darkness.
Life itself taught me to pray and heal and hope.
World War II left behind an endless trail – millions deep of scarred and damaged persons. This same war will soon be forgotten – remembered only in history books – as there will be no survivors left to remind the others.
Truly there is a need for forgiveness.
Christ ordered: “Follow me”.
Perhaps I am getting close.