Doing the Right Thing

Abe Lincoln of Pick a Peck of Pixels wrote a post on Sunday about how some Americans thought it was a good thing to kill off all Native American men, women and children in 1867.

When I've mentioned atrocities that happened in the past some people have excused it saying, "It was just the times. That was how it was back then. They couldn't help but believe that way."

I couldn't believe that but could it be true? Slave owners and their families were OK because they really felt it was fine with God for them to do this? European immigrants coming to America could kill Native Americans in horrific ways because they were clearing the country for Christianity? Citizens didn't really know what was going on during the Holocaust and if they did it was still OK because they were clearing the world of Judaism?

Really?

And yet there were people in those times who fought against the injustices. I was reading about John Brown in the Smithsonian Magazine. His strategy was extreme but he was a religious man fighting the extreme evil of slavery. During the Holocaust there were diplomats and citizens who tried to save as many people as they could.

I'm not sure why but thinking of this opened up memories of kindnesses from so many people we met while away from Hawaii. I'd heard terrible stories of prejudice on the Mainland. I feared it and steeled myself for it. Yes, I saw a bit of it but there were far more people who were extraordinarily kind.

Thirty five years ago we were newly arrived in Chicago from Hawaii and moved into a two flat owned by an older German landlord who told us he fought under the Kaiser. He became our surrogate grandfather giving drills to train me to not open doors so freely as I did in Hawaii. He would cook sweet and sour meatballs and share them with us. I know he cared deeply about us and was upset when we bought a home and had to move out. He came to inspect our home later to make sure we'd made a good choice and we visited him whenever we could.

We moved into an older subdivision populated mostly by Catholics in a predominantly Jewish town. We didn't know any of this when we bought the place. In fact, we moved in the winter and Art heard from somebody on the train going to work that they were surprised we lived there because they thought it was a very segregated community. We had no idea! What a shock! They told us our community was even nicknamed "The island of gentiles in the sea of Jerusalem." From being in the majority in Hawaii, it was rather disconcerting to be a minority and it took some getting used to.

Anyway, one day I was talking to my neighbor who was into Lithuanian dances and she was scolding me for not knowing any Japanese dances. Dick, a veteran of WWII (Pacific theater) and a retired reporter was riding by on his bicycle....slowly. He overheard part of our conversation, stopped and proceeded to quite sternly chide my neighbor saying, "Why do you expect her to know Japanese dances? She is American!" I stood there with my mouth agape.

When Dick passed away, I wanted to attend the funeral. I planned to sit at the back and be unobtrusive. However, when I walked in, somebody must have noticed. I suppose I stood out a bit. Dick's grieving wife walked down that long aisle, thanked me for coming, took my hand and insisted I come up front to sit with them.

I've never forgotten that.