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Farewell, Uncle Edward, and All the Uncle Edwards
My uncle Edward is dead.
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I hated the Japanese all during the war.
I thought of them as diabolical subhuman creatures that had to be destroyed so that civilization could prevail with liberty and justice for all. In newspaper cartoons they were depicted as bucktoothed monkeys. Propaganda encourages the imagination of children.
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The years continued on.
I was seventeen and then eighteen and began to read Japanese haiku poetry from the Seventeenth Century. I read Basho and Issa. I liked the way they used language concentrating emotion, detail and image until they arrived at a form of dew-like steel.
I came to realize that the Japanese people had not been subhuman creatures but had been civilized, feeling and compassionate people centuries before
their encounter with us on December 7th.
The war came into focus for me.
I started to understand what had happened.
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They are different from other poems that I have written. Anyway , I think they are but I am probably the last person in the world to know. The quality of them is uneven but I have printed them all anyway because they are a diary expressing my feelings and emotions in Japan and the quality of life is often uneven.
Extracts from Introduction of the book "June 30th, June 30th" written by Richard Brautigan.
From "June 30th, June 30th" Published by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, New York, 1978
Copyright 1977, 1978 by Richard Brautigan
He died when he was twenty-six years old.
He was the pride of my family.
The year was 1942.
Indirectly he was killed by the people of Japan, waging war against the people of the United States of America. That was a long time ago.
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