Why Is Time A Healer Only For Some People?
During his nine months in Omori prison camp near Tokyo, Robert Goldsworthy was beaten and starved. His weight plummeted from 170 to 90 pounds.
Who could blame the bomber pilot for bitter feelings toward the Japanese. “Anyone who has been a prisoner of these people, if they can be called people,” he said after his release in 1945, “knows the futility of trying to accord them the kind of treatment we Americans naturally want to extend to a defeated enemy.”
That was then.
But somehow, over the half century he’s had to reflect, Goldsworthy got beyond that visceral hatred. The retired farmer, ex-legislator and one-time POW just returned from Japan, where he participated in a peace ceremony at the point where his Superfortress, the Rosalia Rocket, was shot down.
He came to admire the pilot who shot him down. He met the pilot’s widow. He remarked on the friendliness and kindness of the Japanese.
If Goldsworthy, after all he went through, can resolve an old anger so peaceably, why can’t other people with other hatreds?
Passing driver’s test just proves driver can pass test
A recent suggestion here that motorists should have to pass periodic driver’s examinations to keep their driver’s licenses doesn’t strike Ruth Heumier of Spokane as helpful.
“You can pass a driver’s test and be a lousy driver,” she said. “When you take your driver’s test, you’re concentrating on driving. You don’t let road rage get in the way. You don’t let distractions get in the way.
“When most of us get out there on the road, we’ve got a jillion other things on our minds, and I’ll bet there are lots and lots and lots of lousy drivers that have all passed their driver’s tests.”
Headines too easily lead to the sidelines
Background checks, like the one that tripped up Tacoma attorney Marvin Gray Jr.’s nomination to the federal bench, keep good people out of office, says James A. Nelson of Spokane.
“These are necessary, but in today’s partisan political world, common sense is lacking in judging the results of these investigations,” he said. “Rational decisions are not made in many cases and good candidates are lost, not to mention the potential candidates who refuse to accept posts because they don’t want to put their families through a McCarthyism-type trial by the media and their peers.”
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