Ave, Elisson!

Elisson's got a brief but thoughtful Pearl Harbor Day tribute up.

UPDATE: There's a minor uproar going on about Sidwell Friends School, the school that President Obama's two daughters attend. It seems the school has chosen to serve Japanese food on Pearl Harbor Day. Menu planners claim the culinary choice was a random assignment made months ago. I just checked out the menu... and see almost nothing recognizably Japanese about it, except perhaps for the edamame. If anything, the selections skew heavily Chinese-American (because they certainly aren't truly Chinese, either!).

Sidwell Friends doesn't deserve to be tarred and feathered for its menu. And even if an American school cafeteria did somehow manage to pull off the miracle of serving authentically and unrepentantly Japanese food on Pearl Harbor Day, are we really so symbol-minded* that we can't separate cuisine from a historical event? Why should food suffer from guilt by association? Should I be wary of vegetarians because Hitler happened to be one?

And are we, today, the enemy of Japan? Certainly there are reasons to be bitter about the history of Japan's actions before 1945, but life also relentlessly moves forward. Relationships evolve. Even South Korea, for all its justified historical anger, has close ties to Japan: business relationships, student cultural exchanges, tourism, academic dialogue, etc. Pearl Harbor Day isn't Beat Up a Japanese Day.

None of this means we should cast Pearl Harbor Day aside. Remembrance, an awareness of our past, is crucial if our goal is to move forward, as a global community, without repeating the mistakes of previous generations. And if we're going to address our lingering bitterness about events from a lifetime ago, shouldn't we be concentrating on something more profound than cafeteria menu items?

---

*"I leave symbols to the symbol-minded," said George Carlin in his Madison Square Garden performance.


_