I have learned a hell of a lot from military veterans, I don't always agree with their viewpoint based on their own experiences--veterans, like other large groups, do not all agree with each other either--but it's invaluable to me to see how heartfelt these feelings are.

Last night we watched a riveting documentary, "Return to Nagasaki", about a Newfoundlander named Jack Cook, who served in the Far East in WWII, then spent 3 1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp watching his comrades gradually starve to death, and then experienced the bombing of Nagasaki 7 km from the point of impact. This man shared his personal emotional journey with us, the internal conflict of having spent years being brutally mistreated, then seeing thousands of people who he identified as his tormentors, die terribly. In the post-bomb devastation he was able to acknowledge his feelings for the Japanese guards, and system, that had actually mistreated the POW's, but recognize the thousands of civilians who, like him, were victims. (He has survived four bouts of skin cancer linked to the radiation exposure.) Last year he returned to Nagasaki after 57 years, met and embraced other survivors of the bomb, received an apology from the mayor of Nagasaki and other politicians for the mistreatment of POW's, and generally came full circle, a difficult and emotional experience. This show was hard to watch for all the images of charred flesh and starving POW's, which gave a hint of what it must have been like to be there in 1945.

My own grandfather carried a Vickers gun up Vimy Ridge in 1917. (That incidentally is the most celebrated battle in Canadian history; it is commonly referred to as the event that, in our national psyche, made us a nation, a notion I have some trouble with. I think the folks that were fortunate enough to come home from the hellish mud of France were the ones that made us a nation.) He came home pretty much a pacifist. I found out just last year what happened to his service medals; when my cousin Roddy, the oldest grandson, was 14, he received them, but first he had to take an oath never to fight in a war. So it turns out we do have a somewhat different type of military tradition in our family. (The medals may get passed on to my son in a couple of years.)

Mick, I'd be interested in hearing how it was that you made the transition from returned veteran to union organizer. Maybe you could start another thread.

Bill