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July 8 - July 21, 2025
Only the laundry knew how scared I was.”
Life was cheap in war.”
When a person drinks seawater, the kidneys must generate urine to flush the salt away, but to do so, they need more water than is contained in the seawater itself, so the body pulls water from its cells. Bereft of water, the cells begin to fail. Paradoxically,
“transfer of oppression.”
The depth of the conviction was demonstrated at Australia’s Cowra camp in 1944, when hundreds of Japanese POWs flung themselves at camp machine guns and set their living quarters afire in a mass suicide attempt that became known as “the night of a thousand suicides.” The contempt and revulsion that most Japanese felt for those who surrendered or were captured extended to Allied servicemen. This thinking created an atmosphere in which to abuse, enslave, and even murder a captive or POW was considered acceptable, even desirable.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer.
