Search This Blog

Monday 5 September 2011

Japan's tragedy six months on

September 9 is remembered for many deaths


9/11 is significant as the tenth anniversary of the mass murders of almost 3,000 people from many nations and religions perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. This terrible loss of life was due to man’s inhumanity to man.

As there are plenty of natural disasters that cut a swathe through countless innocent lives, it seems deplorable that anyone could contemplate killing innocent people simply because of a different value system. The terrorists’ twisted logic probably argues that no westerner is innocent, since they don’t follow a certain strict code of behaviour. Wars and conflicts happen for a variety of reasons, too complex to go into here; whether a quest for power or resources, or the imposition of ideals and beliefs. But there's another conflict - against nature...

9/11 also marks the six-month point of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, a devastating double whammy from Nature against the islands of Japan that claimed over 20,000 missing or dead. In those months, like many, I’ve been moved by the resilience of the Japanese, particularly the many orphaned children, who strive against formidable odds to rebuild not only their lives but their nation.

I thought that in the lead up to this six-month marker, I’d open up some discussion on the effects and consequences of this natural catastrophe.

All author and publisher royalties go toward aid of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami survivors for these 2 e-books: WHEN THE FLOWERS ARE IN BLOOM by Nik Morton and A MATTER OF TEA and other stories by Charles T Whipple.



4 comments:

Jeanne Bannon said...

Well done, Nik!

ChuckTyrell said...

Yes, Nik. It is indeed time to revisit the disaster of Japan's 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. There's a young man in Japan named Ototake. He has a first name, but everyone just calls him Ototake.

Ototake was born without arms or legs. He gets around by power wheelchair, one made specially for him. Ototake taught elementary school before he became a full-time author. And as a man with no arms or legs, he wondered what he could do to help people in the disaster-striken Tohoku area. I'm pasting a news clip of what he did. It's long and it's in Japanese, but look what one man, Ototake, did. Can we not take a lesson from him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ybrFZdX0MQ&NR=1

Nik Morton said...

Thanks, Jeanne. Best of luck with your latest book Invisible!

Thank you for telling us about Ototake - what a man!

Nik

ChuckTyrell said...

Here's a newspaper article published today about people who live in the pathway of the Fukushima Nuke plant radiation fallout.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20110907p2a00m0na007000c.html

Charlie