Pass HR 760, the Filipino Veterans Equity Act NOW!

I got into it a little the other day with a buddy over whether Filipino WWII veterans should be considered for increased benefits or not. The conversation came up because of a current bill titled House Resolution 760, called the Filipino Veterans Equity Act. He doesn’t have anything against the old WWII guys, but my "misguided friend" feels that only American citizen U.S. veterans should have first crack at what little of the VA benefit pie is available.

In one way, I understand one of his beefs. He argues that the Philippines does very little for the few thousands of these aging fellows that are still left, and he says these guys ARE, after all, Filipino citizens.

(At one time I believe the WCC (war claims commission) counted 2 or 3 million of "them," as having served under the direction of the US military, until they decided to stop counting in the late 1940s when the numbers got "too high").

The old WWII vets here are paid a scant 5000 pesos a month (about $111) by their own government. Yet the Charge d’ Affairs to the United States, Carlos D. Sorreta, had the temerity to “testify” to our Congress:

“Mr. Chairman, the Philippine Government and the Filipino people continue to maintain that the Filipino soldiers who fought and served under the US Army during WWII specifically during the period July 1941 to October 1945, are US veterans under then existing US laws and are entitled to all benefits due a US veteran. We make this call based on assertions that are supported by clear facts and historical records.

We therefore welcome the filing and urge the passage of HR760 and its companion bill in the Senate, S57, into law, to restore veterans’ benefits that were removed by PL79-301 (the Rescission Act of 1940).”

Part of what upsets me about this Philippine official chiding and lecturing our government is that its not like we’ve done nothing for these guys. In the past the American government handed over several millions in dollars to the Philippine government for the benefaction of their WWII vets. I’d love to see exactly where all that money went over the years. Government accounting being what it is here, or isn’t, I don’t think the advocates of the old veterans would be very happy with what they’d find.

Aside from the question of what was done with all those millions meant exclusively for these honorable old WWII vets and my resentment at the scolding given to the US congress by a representative of “the steward” of those funds, I am STILL completely IN FAVOR OF the passage of this bill—and the sooner the better.

I wrote an earlier post about an entirely different issue concerning "Justice for WWII Filipino Vets." Unfortunately, HR 760 will do nothing to fix this even more serious problem. In a nutshell, there are veterans who did not feel it necessary to get “counted” by the War Claims Commission (WCC) canvassers when they crisscrossed the Philippines back in 1946 and thereabouts. These veterans KNEW they had served; after all, they had (and have) their discharges signed by American officers, their wounds and battle experiences were still fresh in their minds and on their bodies, and they didn’t see the need to find a WCC “bean counter” to report to. All most of them wanted to do was to get on with their lives. The result is that many who actually served are not considered veterans no matter how much documentation they have since the US VA insists that ONLY their inclusion on the WCC list constitutes US veterans status. It’s the most ridiculous, dishonest, and unjust thing I can think of. In fact, it’s much worse even than the injustices supposed to be corrected by HR 760.

On the HR 760 topic, here’s a little more background: For the vets who qualified for disability compensation and medical assistance, the VA has a clinic for them in Pasay, Manila; and actually, a clinic has been in place here for them since the end of WWII. To qualify for those disability and medical benefits, they needed to show that their medical conditions directly resulted from their active duty service—easier said than done I’m here to say. The rest of them would have to use the Philippine veteran’s hospitals as they got older and sicklier, and that, I think, is where the bulk of the monies are supposed to have been spent (or more likely squandered) that I spoke of above.

And now the crux of HR 760: Currently, the only WWII Filipino veterans being paid any US VA monies are the ones disabled by service-connected conditions. Those are the guys who were able to show that they had illnesses or wounds resulting from their service as I describe in the preceding paragraph above. What HR 760 is supposed to do is to provide “war pensions” to ALL WWII Filipino veterans. Even so, our congress only wants to pay them less than half of what we pay US veterans for the same sort of pension.

So, why should we pay these guys their pensions? Well, looking at the history and circumstances of how these fellows happened to serve is the best way to argue for them. I’ll provide an example of how one of my best friends, Baldomero, happened to find himself in the uniform of the United States Army of the Far East. He was recruited in spite of his tender age of 16, the recruiter having instructed him to lie about his birth date to prevent problems. It was September 1941--the Japanese invasion was just over two months away. Baldomero and his mates were put through a rigorously concentrated training course because his American officers and sergeants knew that war was just over the horizon.

Now, mind you, these fellows weren’t asked to serve in the Philippine Commonwealth Army; they served as soldiers for the US Army. Their commander was THE MAN himself, General Douglas Macarthur. These young Filipinos had put their full trust into the hands of arguably the most qualified and famous American military man alive. Looking ahead, if they had known they were being asked to serve in a half-assed delaying operation, which is what FDR had in mind for these guys all along, including the thousands of American troops serving alongside them, I’m sure most of them would have had second thoughts about signing on to serve, but serve they did.

I won’t go into the horrible events of the 4-month siege of Bataan (Dec 41-April 42), and the subsequent “Death March,” all of which involved bitter fighting and ghastly suffering; but these guys DID their duty. In fact, compared to the weak showing of the Brits and Aussies at Singapore, these inexperienced young Filipinos and their American mates fought the battle-hardened troops from Japan to a standstill. They only surrendered after their food and ammo ran out, and even at that, they had to be ordered to surrender. Just the same, Filipinos continued to voluntarily join and fight on as guerillas under American control, even knowing that if they were captured that it meant immediate execution, if they were lucky that is.

By comparison, I have assisted US veterans to obtain their much larger pension after they had done almost no real service at all, at least compared to what some of these Filipino vets went through. To qualify for a pension an American veteran must have served 90 days during a “period of war.” Notice that it says “served” and “period of war;” it doesn’t mean they needed to have fought in a war zone or to have even been part of even an iota of warfare. I assisted one US vet who was in for a total of 4 months and was discharged because of a medical problem, yet this man is now receiving a pension for the rest of his life. Why is this fellow any more deserving of that benefit than one of these Filipino U.S. war vets?

The sponsors of HR 760 and its senate counterpart are all democrats, mostly out of Hawaii, California and Guam. I’m ashamed to say that Republicans have turned this into a partisan issue. They say they are against the bill based on “higher priorities” and are doing their part in squashing the bill by holding up this important piece of legislation from passage. All I can say is that lately Republicans have been doing a lot of idiotic things like this and I’ve just about had enough. I’ve mostly voted Republican since 1976, and if I find that one of my legislators doesn’t support this bill then my vote will definitely go elsewhere. Hey you guys, if you want my continued support then you need to start backing the “right” horses, and there is nothing more “right” than this one.

Speaking of priorities, the youngest Filipino WWII vet that I know is over 80 years old. They are dropping like flies and soon bills like HR 760 will be moot. Is that what the opponents of this crucial legislation want—to continue to stall until the last of these US veterans are gone? And by the way, these guys ARE US veterans; that is according to the VA’s own regulations, which describe them as such. It’s time to start treating them like the rest of us U.S. vets, and right the wrongs of the past. This bill would make a nice start.

Passport Renewal

Last year I renewed my passport and just last Thursday we went to the embassy for my 6-year-old daughter’s passport renewal. I don’t normally have good things to say about our American embassy staff in Manila, but they seem to get it right when it comes to this simple endeavor.

Last summer I was in a bit of a panic when I realized my passport was going to be within 6 months of expiration during the last week of a scheduled training trip to the States. The rule is that no passport should be within 6 months of termination while traveling.

The immigration “crew” in Manila is infamous for "seizing" passports in this “status” and frightening travelers out of a “bribe,” or lets be euphemistic and call it a “penalty,” until you pay them to let you on the plane. Its illegal as hell, but they get away with it all the time. If they try it, call their bluff, ask for their names and then ask for their supervisor; of course, that won’t work if their supervisor is in on it too. The best thing is to check your passport date and make sure you have plenty of time on it before trying to travel with it.

It turned out to be very easy to get mine renewed. I called the local transport service used by the embassy and they sent out a packet the next day. It contained all the forms I needed to fill out and explicit instructions on what I needed to include when I was ready for the service to come back out and pick it all up.

All I had to do was get four 2x2 photos of myself, fill out the forms, and call the Air21 people. Unlike the embassy itself, they ALWAYS answer the phone with a real live person, and that person has all the answers. The price is reasonable too, only about 5 or 6 bucks for the entire service start to finish.

The very next morning the pickup guy came by on his motorcycle and accepted receipt of my old passport, my forms and photos, and of course, my money, cash of course. We both signed the receipt and off he went. Within 3 weeks my new passport showed up at my front door. Beautiful.

The cost of the passport itself is like 80+ dollars, which seems kind of pricey to me, but even if it were ten times that I'd still have no choice but to pay it. They got us coming and going.

My daughter’s passport was not quite so easy, but not so bad just the same. She was just 2 months old when she had received her first passport, so her photo in no way resembles her current looks.

Still, it still worked similarly in that I called the Air21 people and they sent out the passport renewal package for a child under the age of 14. I filled out all the forms and carefully read the instructions. Obviously, this was going to be a lot more involved than for my own renewal.

We had to get together a series of photos showing my daughter from age 1 up to the present. This being “the land of fraud,” naturally, the embassy staff wanted to make sure we weren’t trying to pass off some other little girl as our little citizen-daughter. Even understanding this concern, I still couldn't help but to feel a little insulted.

Another requirement was that we had to get a notary stamp on a form stating that our daughter was our daughter. Sheesh! That cost us another 500 pesos. What a rip-off. Notaries in the States don’t cost even half of that. Still, you got to do it—so we sucked it up.

We had to include our daughter's birth certificate and our ID as parents, and all of these docs had to be original. I included both my wife’s and my military ID cards. It was either that or our passports. I went for the IDs since they are easier to replace. The Air21 people reassured me that we’d get them back when we showed up at the embassy.

The instructions are very explicit about showing up at the embassy—BOTH parents and the child, all three MUST present themselves. While waiting for our final meeting with a counselor I listened to some woman argue with another counselor that she was never told that her husband had to come too, and that he was very busy at his job in the office at Makati. I was thinking, “I guess they didn’t bother to read the instructions.’ She also argued that she had called the embassy and the person on the phone never mentioned that requirement specifically, as if that was a valid argument.

Less than a week after our package was picked up, the embassy called and set us up for an appointment 10 days hence at 7:30 a.m. I had a car set to pick us up at 5 a.m. and we were on the road by 5:20. I handed the driver his 3000 pesos, up from the old 2800 pesos—inflation due to rising gas prices I guess.

Traffic wasn’t too bad. There were only two or three chokepoints on the way due to roadwork and a couple of accidents. Unfortunately, my girl inherited my childhood penchant for motion sickness and just 20 minutes from the embassy she threw up all over her pretty white dress. My wife did her best to clean her up including taking off the dress so she could blot it off and let it dry a little. (Make a note to be better prepared for that possibility next trip!)

Our driver pulled into the parking lot of a children’s cultural museum just down from the embassy at about 7:15. The museum is a good place to park since its cheap, only about 50 pesos, and there is a guard at the gate.

We made the short walk up Roxas Boulevard to the opening in the embassy outer wall. Surprisingly, there was no one else in line. The guard asked my wife our business; I showed my passport and he politely pointed the way to door 3 where we went through internal security. They checked our things and ran us through the metal detector.

By the way, don’t bother trying to bring in your cell phone. They WILL confiscate it inside door 3 and there are times that it can take as much as 30 minutes of waiting to get it back. Leave it at home, or if you have a car or a driver, leave it in your vehicle.

At exactly 7:30 we strolled into the American Services section. I made a beeline to the head and while I was washing my hands I heard my daughter’s name being called for us to report to window C. Wow, right on time!

The Filipino fellow at the window asked that we lift our girl so she could sit on the ledge while he “interviewed” her. She was still a bit queasy and sleepy from the early morning rise and her carsickness, and she did not do well during the questioning. He asked her how old she was and she barely whispered, “six.” He asked her name and again she barely whispered. He asked her to point to mommy and daddy and she just stared straight ahead looking queasy and miserable. Finally, he just gave it up.

The half dozen pictures we’d included in the Air21 pickup had not been good enough for them, so we brought an entire photo album as per more than their request. My wife squeezed it under the window by opening it in half and shoving it through. I knew the photos would provide conclusively the validity of our daughter, so I wasn’t worried about the bogus interview.

The counselor told us to take our paperwork to the cashiers window across the hall and to bring back the paid receipt where we should place it under the glass at window E. The nice thing about paying at the embassy these days is that they NOW accept credit cards, something they didn't used to do. At last, a little convenience! After that, we were supposed to have a seat and wait for the "final" interview.

We sat and watched the other families around us as they studied us, while we all waited to get the heck out of there. At 8:30 we finally heard the welcome loudspeaker request to go to Window A. An American fellow waited for us there behind the largest of all the plexiglass windows and asked us to sign the final forms. He then asked us to raise our right hands and to swear that everything we had turned in was true and correct. You know, I don't remember doing that when I had filled out the forms for my original passport. Strange...

XXX

As he put our papers and documents in order he asked us more questions like, how long had we been married, how long had we lived here, where did we live, how was our trip there—and I nervously answered each of his questions. He realized that I thought he was still grilling us about the passport, and smiling, he said hastily, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m just making conversation.”

“Oh, I thought you were still questioning whether this is really my daughter, especially after the little 3rd degree the other guy just gave her.”

“Well, they have to make sure. She doesn’t look like this anymore, right? Their job is just to make sure.” He pointed to the old passport picture of my daughter as a 2 month old.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I admitted grudgingly.

He handed us back all our photos, ID cards, and my daughter’s birth certificate and old passport, telling us that the delivery service would hand carry our girl’s new passport to us sometime next week.

We were home by 10:15, not bad at all.

QA, a touchy-feely experience--Part 1

Just a few months after sewing on master sergeant, or E-7, and thus becoming a “bigwig” senior NCO, at least in some people’s minds, I was recruited away from the shop to join the Quality Assurance Office. MSgt Gray, the man I would ultimately replace, was the fellow who recruited me. He had observed me one steamy Arkansas Monday morning out on the flight line as I supervised all the avionics airmen, about 25 people, for that week’s FOD walk.

What caught Sgt Gray’s attention was my constant haranguing of my troops to stop gabbing, to spread out, to get their hands out of their pockets, and to actually pick something UP for heaven’s sake!
Ever since I had first started picking it up during my time in the air wing of the Marine Corps, I had taken F.O.D. very seriously. Sgt Gray was apparently quite impressed with my devotion to the task at hand and he really liked my apparent “hardass” take-charge style, which ironically, was not really my style at all. He hadn’t realized it, but I was doing what I was doing mostly tongue-in-cheek. Knowing me, my guys knew better than to take me TOO seriously, but still understood that I had to at least try to make it look good, especially when they knew that I knew that people were watching them AND me. Does that make sense? (probably not!)

By the way, FOD stands for foreign object debris, the destroyer of super expensive aircraft engines. When sucked up into engine intakes, FOD can cause major bucks worth of damage to an engine's vital internals, mostly to the spinning fan blades and vanes.

QA was quite an experience, very different from my previous life as a maintainer, and richly rewarding. The first wonderful thing about it is that my first task was to do what I’ve always been pretty good at—reading. My second task was also to read, and finally, I was ordered to—you guessed it—to READ. For the first week or two I read page after page from a mandatory reading list that included dozens of every sort of Air Force technical publication, all applicable to the work of repairing and maintaining C-130 aircraft and its ancillary systems.

Right off the bat, from the other inspectors, I learned that no matter what their maintenance specialty, all Quality Assurance inspectors keep a pocket notebook filled with references to all of the most important maintenance publications, called Air Force Technical Orders, or in the vernacular, TOs. The reason is simple: upon taking on the mantle of QA, we were expected to become fonts of maintenance wisdom and to be able to instantly quote the sources of that wisdom.

Supposedly, we were the experts, the go-to-guys for every problem that came down the pike. Whether it was an aircraft fire or a run of bad components from supply, we were expected to investigate, gather data, report our findings, and recommend “fixes.”

Another primary assignment, albeit an unofficial one, was to be bogeymen. I hated that part of it and refused to act the part of a “gotcha monster,” or at least I refused to enjoy it, much! On the other hand, several of the others just plain old reveled in it. They’d pull up next to an airplane in one of our QA pickup trucks and satisfyingly watch the flurry of activity they caused. Sometimes it was exactly like when roaches scurry away when the lights come on. With distinctive caps perched high, aluminum clipboards clutched prominently, and with forbidding personas on full display, they would proceed to scare the hell out of as many airmen as possible.

A favorite ploy was to pull up in front of an airplane, a C-130E, usually filled and crawling with maintenance troops, and just sit there for a few minutes. In the meantime, people in the aircraft scrambled like crazy to make sure things were put right if they weren’t already, like having proper TOs at each work position, to double-check on safety devices and to make sure the aircraft forms were in good order. Then, after waiting a few minutes, the inspectors would pull away without ever intending to actually get out in the first place. It sounds like harassment, and it is, but some would reason that if that’s what it takes to get people to get squared away then so be it.

Sometimes, after coming back in from the flight line after a crueler than usual “attack,” I’d hear a couple of my fellow inspectors brag about some young airman that they had just reduced to tears. I guess it was my softhearted side, but hearing that kind of meanness always turned my stomach. The way they saw it though, they were putting the fear of God into those youngsters, making sure they understood the consequences and gravity of screwing up with lives and multi-million dollar weapons systems on the line. Even so, I didn’t like it.

I had a different style. I had no use for the concept of instilling fear into hearts and minds of “my people,” and that’s how I thought of them. I wanted them to “do right” because it was the right thing to do. I’d let the other inspectors act the “bad cop,” while I tried to play the “righteous cop.” Unless, that is, they gave me no choice.

In spite of going out of my way to downplay the scariness that my position as QA inspector caused, I realized quickly that it didn’t matter how nice I acted or how friendly my demeanor; my very presence was enough to send some young inexperienced airmen into fits of trembling mindlessness. This was more likely to happen when I did what we called an “over the shoulder” on one of them.

Each inspector had an extensive quota of various types of inspections that had to be completed each month. These inspections included checks of test equipment and their forms, proper upkeep of shop TOs, and our bread-and-butter—inspections of both completed maintenance, and maintenance as it was in-work, also called “over the shoulder” inspections.

The “over the shoulder” inspections were particularly nerve wracking for the inspectee, because he was literally a fish in a bowl. The inspector watches every action, from selection of the proper TO and test equipment, to the final sign off the aircraft forms, and every action in between, and all of it timed. To an inexperienced troop this process could cause unbearable anxiety.

I remember one poor fellow, an A1C, who as his “over the shoulder” progressed, became so nervous that he became unable to function. His hands trembled so hard that he could not even turn the pages of his checklist. I stopped him, telling him that I had just officially ended the inspection and to go ahead with the procedure just for practice. I think it was a simple operational check after one of the aircraft indicators had been removed and replaced.

As soon as I told him that I would just watch him go about the checkout as a freebie, he lost his shakes and sailed through it. As he finished the last step I clicked my stopwatch and congratulated him on a job done perfectly. I had decided that if he was able to complete it correctly to give it to him, and if not, I’d just tell his supervisor that the boy needed more work to build his confidence. After that, he was good to go and never had another problem with inspectors.

So that was my style, trying to put people at ease, to get a TRUE take on things. I figured if folks were trying to overcome nerves that I wasn’t getting a true gauge of their knowledge and abilities.

Not long after “learning the QA ropes,” another personal policy I soon implemented was to never surprise a branch chief with a “gotcha!” For instance, on occasion, a procedure would get amended in the checklists or TOs, and because I was always reading the publication changes I oftentimes found them ahead of the shops. I’d always be especially sure to make a note in my “inspector’s notebook” of any new aircraft “warnings,” “cautions,” and “notes.”

Sure enough, I’d be out on the flightline and find one of the guys going through a procedure without complying with one of the new steps I had discovered. If it involved safety then it was considered a “major write-up,” never a good thing for supervision to be nailed with. I’d correct the problem on the spot and make a beeline for the branch chief’s office. I would tell him, nicely of course, of my findings and that I wanted to ensure that it was corrected, or else I would have to elevate it as a major write-up.

I’d give him a week to fix it, to make sure that all his technicians knew of the amended procedure, to basically get that new knowledge incorporated into everyone’s brain banks. I’d follow-up after the week just to make sure. By comparison, some of my fellow inspectors might simply write it up without trying to fix the problem first with the shops. Again, I had a “kindler and gentler,” less adversarial style. I never wanted to make anyone look bad if I didn’t have to.

What I hated worse than anything though, is if I’d approach a shop chief or a branch chief with what I considered a “freebie,” only to have him cop an attitude and argue with me. I’d listen for a few minutes, smile, and wish him a nice day. First chance I got after that, if I’d catch someone not complying with what I had found and had tried to “share” with the chief, I made it a point to just wrote it up WITHOUT first conferring with him. You see? You TRY to be nice…!

Not long after I began my long tenure in Quality Assurance, I developed a reputation for two idiosyncrasies—one was for the supposedly peculiar way I inspected completed maintenance tasks, and the other, strangely enough, was my affability.

That my affability was not entirely appreciated surprised me somewhat. My goal was honorable—to put folks at ease—but I guess I was creeping some of them out with it. For most, getting inspected was grim business and to have a lighthearted inspector with a good-humored attitude just did not jive with that. Just the same, I continued with the “funny guy” bantering style I was comfortable with, although I could see where my detractors were coming from.

For instance, there were times, although not often, when some of the people I inspected, through no fault of my own, became my “victims;” or that’s how they saw themselves when I had to either outright fail them or rate them very low. When that happened, my smiling joking manner came off as jeering and snide, as an “unkind cut,” so to speak.

One of these poor fellows captured that outlook perfectly after a particularly brutal inspection when he told me after I briefed him on all his many errors, “PJ, you’re the ONLY inspector that tries to cheer people up WHILE you’re failing them. Can I be honest with you? You know, sometimes we don’t know whether to thank you or to knock those smiling teeth down your throat.” With that, I think he captured the sentiment perfectly.

Now, getting back to that first idiosyncrasy of mine—the peculiar way (some claimed) that I inspected completed work. The best way to describe it is by quoting the nickname that some of “my troops” saddled me with. They called me “Touchy Feely,” because I touched virtually everything I checked. But, there was a perfectly valid reason I did that and it came from one especially hard experience that I took strongly to heart.

Lucky me—it happened only a few weeks after I became a certified inspector. Over a week’s time, I guess you could call it “QA hell week,” the QA office itself came under the critical eyes of an even higher level of inspectors, an entire team of them in fact. It was an MSET, or maintenance standardization, evaluation and training assessment team. (Whooo! That’s a mouthful!) Basically, that’s where a group of highly experienced experts came in and assessed whether or not a wing’s QA was doing its job up to par. (I made it past tense, since I don’t think they even do MSETs anymore).

My turn in the barrel was nerve-wracking to say the least. The MSET evaluator decided that he would rate how I assessed one of our avionics troops removing and replacing a flightdeck control panel. I thought all was going well until the troop I was assessing came to the step where he was about to secure the panel in the bracket. The MSET guy stopped him, and using his flashlight, he looked down inside the center console at the electrical connections. He reached inside and called me over. He then pointed out that the panel’s pigtail was loose and out of its clamp, although to me, it had LOOKED to be quite secure. He didn’t fail me for that flub, but I felt useless just the same.

Anyway, from that, I learned my lesson and subsequently, my nickname as well. From then on, I ALWAYS touched, felt, probed, twisted, pulled, pushed, and just generally used my fingers as my second set of eyes. It was also a great way to discover FOD in dark places behind corners and components, and I found lots of other errant things with my touchy-feely fingers that I never would have otherwise discovered.

My time in QA was amazing. I loved being in a job where I could make a difference to an entire wing and not just with one airplane at a time. Plus, it was a vacation from “babysitting” airmen, which is what anyone in the shop does who runs a shift, or a shop, or a branch. Instead of the maintainers, in QA, my only worry was the maintenance itself.

As a matter of fact, I stayed away from supervising maintainers for much too long, and that was ultimately the reason I never made the final “chief master sergeant” enlisted rank.

In essence, I chose between making rank and doing what I loved most. I probably could have made it all the way up to the highest Air Force enlisted E-9 rank, but I opted instead to stay in "staff level" positions, namely Quality Assurance, Aircraft modifications, and aircraft systems testing.

Career wise, my 6 years in "Quality" was my "biggest mistake," but it was also the second best part of my career… my time in testing being the best by far. More on that later… In fact, go here for part 2 of my QA experiences!

Hatred is an evil that must be guarded against

My parents were very clear; they specifically taught us kids NOT to hate. They imparted to us that ALL people are potentially good, and that religion and race are NOT characteristics with which we should judge anyone by. Basically, they taught my siblings and me this life lesson with this worn-out adage: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

In fact, my mom discouraged the very CONCEPT of hatred, no matter how trivial the context. You know how kids, and even adults, say things in a fit of anger? Sometimes we’d make bitter hyperbolic declarations after some minor schoolyard conflict like, “I HATE Johnny! I wish he were dead!” My mom, and even my dad, would sternly interject, “No you don’t. You don’t HATE anyone.” When they pointed this out, it always made me feel foolish and a little remorseful, like I had been caught doing something vile.

Nevertheless, the human condition being what it is, I had to learn in time for adulthood that hatred between people does in fact exist and for all sorts of absurd reasons. On top of that, I was going to have to deal with it. By the time I was drinking age I learned that essentially there are three broad types of human hatreds based on ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.

Hatred for religious practitioners, especially for Jews, has always been difficult for me to comprehend; when I’ve come across it, I’ve just never gotten it. Some consider the Jews to be a race, so I suppose you could say that one is based on a combination of race AND religion, the old double whammy of hate.

Speaking of which, a few weeks ago I was having what I thought to be a perfectly reasonable conversation with a middle-aged guy whom I thought was levelheaded, just a run-of-the-mill guy. I forget the exact topic, but out of nowhere he declared that all our problems stemmed from the many Jews in charge in our government and in our economy. I was stunned to the point of amusement so I reacted with humor.

“Hey, Mel! Mel Gibson! I hadn’t realized that you were here in the Phils!”

He laughed me off and continued to strongly and seriously defend his assertion that it was the Jews screwing everything up, not only in the USA, but also in Europe and especially in the Middle East. It was surreal. This average American guy votes democrat, is a union man, and by definition is left leaning—by any standard a moderate-liberal. I wouldn’t have thought him to be a crazy Jew hater from his apparent progressive stance on most other subjects. You just never know what people really think. Perhaps its better NOT to know!

As far as hatred between the races, for the first few years of my life such a thing never occurred to me, at least not until I was about 8 years old. That’s when I was rudely introduced to it when the fire hose of racial vitriol was turned on me full force in a very painful and personal way. Strangely enough, this occurred when an angry black mom physically accosted me thinking that I was hurting her boy. Actually, he had just fallen from the top of a tall slide and I was trying to help him. In a rage she violently yanked me straight from my haunches onto my back. Out of the 5 or 6 other kids gathered around her prostrate and winded boy, she had singled me out, probably because of my blonde hair. She grabbed me by it, nearly snapping my neck, screaming “white trash,” a term I had never heard before. That was my introduction to racial hatred and it was traumatic to say the least.

What I learned from that incident, and many more to follow, was that because of my “whiteness” I had to be very wary around black people. Before that, they were no different to me than Asians, Latins and other Whites. Growing up a military brat, I was around all sorts of races, and truthfully, I never noticed the variations. As long as the differences aren’t pointed out to them, young children don’t see race; they just see people.

In effect, I suppose I paid in part for all the abuses suffered by generations of American blacks at the hands of whites. If you don’t want to call it reverse racism then call it racial backlash. That lesson continued and was reinforced as I got older, when I learned that there were places that I, as a white person, could not safely go because of the odium felt by blacks living there. During our many drives across the States, as we moved from one base to the next, or just traveling home on leave, we would see a Tastee Freeze or a Dairy Queen and plead with our parents to stop. Sometimes my dad reluctantly told us that it was a black neighborhood and they probably wouldn’t welcome us there, so we pushed on.

That’s when I began to understand that America wasn’t so free after all. How free can a country be if there are places people cannot go without fear just because they are black, or white, or Jewish, or a homosexual? (Or in these times, because they don’t belong to the correct gang?) Blacks say there is no such thing as racism by blacks, but I’m here to tell you that that is rubbish. Hatred is an equal opportunity endeavor, practiced by all sorts of people against all sorts of other people.

The first time I heard someone refer to black people, or negroes, as we were instructed to call them back in the 60s, as niggers, was when my dad got stationed in Texas. I was 11 years old. Shockingly, one of my new neighborhood playmates casually referred to one of our schoolmates as a nigger. My head snapped over in the direction of his mom, who was easily within earshot. I became even more shocked that she didn’t jump straight down his throat. My mom would have thrashed me and washed my mouth out with soap. After that, I avoided his house. I didn’t feel comfortable there anymore after having been so conditioned in my own home that saying such things was horrible and forbidden.

As far as hating homosexuals, I never even knew gay people existed until late in my high school years, and even then it was on a purely theoretical basis. I had heard the word “faggot” of course, but to me it just meant someone that was a wimp or girly. To us kids using that word had nothing to do with sex between members of the same sex—such a thing just seemed outlandishly unlikely. Evidently, that was during a time long before people would dare to “come out of the closet.” I suppose this new age of sexual openness is better for today’s gay people, but it sure made it easier for the likes of me back then when it was “out of sight and out of mind.”

So as you can see, the guidelines of my upbringing didn’t cover all the “hatred possibilities” in the world, such as homophobia and anti-Semitism; but considering the times that my parents grew up in I suppose that was understandable.

For instance, my mom and dad never addressed "sexual orientation” with me, or, in other words, homosexuality. Thinking back, I suppose that only makes sense since we never discussed heterosexuality all that much either. From that, it’s safe to say that once I reached young adulthood I was quite naïve to the sexual ways of the world, and when at the tender age of 18 I ended up in the Bay Area, where “gayness” was everywhere and too obvious to ignore, I eventually also made it a point to include homosexuality in with the religion and race “book covers” of not to judge others by.

Concerning my decision not to be a homophobe, I think the very reason I even had to think about such a thing was because so many of my fellow marines were homophobes. Some of them hated gays because they had been “hit on” in town by homosexuals and didn’t like it one bit. Others had been to San Francisco and had become sickened by the overt acts between gay men in public. That very thing had happened to me on several occasions, and though I had felt great revulsion, I had just decided to ignore and avoid them.

At least with homophobia I can dimly understand why some men, perhaps insecure in their own sexuality, would feel threatened by gay men. For some reason just the presence of homosexual males causes a severe combination of anger and aversion in some heterosexual males. As I said, I also felt the aversion thing the first time I saw two men being openly romantic, but I certainly never felt anger and hatred toward them, just queasy disgust. The anger I felt was that I knew they were purposely flaunting it to make me feel uncomfortable. It was just plain rude and inexcusable.

Once, I was with a group of three other marines walking across the huge grassy mall just south of the Washington Monument doing some sightseeing in Washington D.C. I was just 20 years old at the time. Then, the oldest of us, a staff sergeant, spotted two “obviously” gay fellows walking “amorously” together hand-in-hand. The sergeant began making vulgar comments to the two men and the other two marines followed suit.

I couldn’t believe grown men could say and do what my three marine companions said and did that day to those two gay guys. I grimly lagged behind them while they continued to harass the pair. Just like schoolyard bullies, the cruel marines stepped on the frightened men’s heels and continued their foul comments and coarse interrogations. Their terrified “quarry” didn’t respond; they just kept walking as fast as they could in an effort to get away from their tormentors. I felt mortified and upset with myself that I was with these nasty characters and that I was doing nothing to stop them. After that, I told myself “never again.”

Overall, I suppose you could say that as a youngster I led a very sheltered existence when it came to NOT being exposed to the hatred of my fellow human beings, and I’m saying here and now that that was probably a good thing. For soon enough, everyone is exposed to the horrors of hatred.

No one is born hating anyone else—people are taught or learn to do it. The problem is that once hatred is instilled its almost impossible to root out. That is especially true when it is hate based in religion. A testament to that is the current hatred against the West being instilled into countless Muslim hearts in the thousands of hate-factories across the Muslim world called madrassas. Unfortunately, we can’t simply “love the hate” out of the graduates of these hate-mongering institutions. The result is the present day death struggle going on between them and “us.”

My own struggle is internal, with trying not to hate these hate-filled people right back, as well as trying to keep in mind that not all Muslims are a part of this mindless hate fest, at least I hope they aren’t. My problem with the Islamic world is that it doesn’t seem like an overwhelming number of them speak out against the haters amongst them.

Hating is easy. It takes little intelligence to do it and it’s the easiest emotion to manipulate by leaders of hate. Another blogger, Katana, wrote a post wherein she urges Americans to read why the Muslim world hates us. In other words, we are hated because of the policies and actions of our government and business people—our supposedly mindless support of Israel and our casual disregard for Islamic sensibilities. Basically, with all respect to Katana, it’s all a load of crap.

Why crap? Well, the average Muslim man on the street only knows to hate who he is TOLD to hate. Most have never seen an American, except perhaps on TV, and tiny Israel is just a modern bogeyman as well. In reality, it’s all about power. The Imam’s and even the secular tyrants running the show throughout much of the Ummah use “the threat” of the West’s so-called decadence as a rallying cry, and even more importantly, as a diversion.

Historically, its an old story--the desperate generals of Argentina did it when they invaded The Falklands in 1982. The same thing is happening now when those in the Muslim world call us the Great Satan. They do it to focus “the people’s enmity" outside and away from their own internal dysfunction and disarray, not to mention there is a very real movement among traditional Muslims to restore the mostly mythical “Caliphate,” which once ruled under a succession of forms under Sharia (Islamic) Law.

Western history, notably Europe’s, had similar eras where its leaders used religion, and later nationalism, to rally its people. In some ways we still do it, although not so much as public policy. Now, private purveyors of fear and hatred are responsible. For instance, how many hate or “warning” blogs exist to rally Americans to the dangers of Islam? Personally, I believe in many of these dangers, but not to the point that I see a terrorist behind every Arabic and Pakistani face, but many do.

Hatred is an evil that must be guarded against at all times. It destroys the soul of the person contaminated with it. One of the best books ever written about this is “With the Old Breed” by E. B. Sledge. In it, he describes how many young American marines became consumed with hatred for their Japanese enemy. He also speaks to how he felt himself succumbing to this rage and had to fortify himself against it or lose his humanity. It’s one of the most poignant tomes against the dangers of hatred ever, and I say this after having first read it many years ago.

This has turned into a rambling rampage about and against hate. When I started it I thought I would just write about that average Joe I met who unexpectedly exposed to me his senseless hatred of Jews. Sometimes, my written words take on a life of their own and that’s what happened here…

So, all you people out there, stop hating each other! And , guard against it when you feel a spate of it coming on; otherwise, it'll eat your soul from the inside out... on that note.... Hate OUT! Peace IN!

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Peace out...

Jamaican Roomy

Ed, of Recycled Thoughts fame, posted recently on his memories of past roommates from his pre-marriage days and it got me thinking. One of Ed’s roomies was a bit of a jerk, a Nigerian named Datun who was quite a character. It’s a good read; check it out. The story of Datun brought to mind one of my own nearly long forgotten roommates, a Floridian originally from Jamaica. I just wish I could remember his name, but anyway…

My very first assignment after Marine basic training was my technical training at Meridian Naval Air Station in the deeply southern U.S. State of Mississippi. Our barracks were nice, more like dormitories than a spartan military barracks. Even so, as civilianized as they were, we still called them our barracks. You’d never catch self-respecting Marines refer to their quarters as a dorm—that’s way too sissified; although the Air Force seems to have no qualms with calling their quarters dormitories. I guess airmen just don’t get all that worked up over what’s sissy and what’s not.

Anyway, the relative luxuriousness of our accommodations surprised me; I certainly wasn’t expecting it. It had more the feel of a nice motel. The red brick buildings were less than a year old, three stories high with outside exposed walkways for room access. They had put up several quadrants of them and right in the middle of a pine forest—I think loblollies or long leafs—and they managed to keep many of those big old trees in place. The lofty pines dominated the base; they made it a very beautiful and tranquil place to be on foot.

Our sleeping rooms were arranged in groups of three, with each of the three rooms opening into a common area. The common areas were basically living rooms setup with two couches plus a dining table and chairs. I thought it was a pretty sweet setup after having just lived for more than 3 months with 74 other recruits in a single open squad bay.

Each sleeping room accommodated three Marines. I thought it was great that each room had a separate bathroom, which was a luxury not yet often found in the fleet back then in the mid 70’s; although, over the next 20 years that toilet arrangement eventually became the standard for all the armed forces. Aside from the bathroom, our room had three wall lockers, one bunk bed and a single bed. A lighted study desk was also available that we took turns using. Taken altogether, it was a very collegial arrangement; not bad at all for 1975. I didn’t realize it back then, but it was way ahead of its time for the U.S. military.

Even after 32 years I clearly remember the faces of my two roommates, although unfortunately, I don’t remember either fellow’s name. One was a rather pompous self-assured lad from just outside Atlanta, Georgia; the other was a Jamaican fellow who had moved as an older lad to Pompano Beach, Florida. Both guys were good roomies. I had no problems getting along with either one. Oddly enough, all three of us wore glasses.

I had never met a Jamaican before, and it turned out that there were two of them on station. The other guy from “the islands” was a sailor. Just like the diaspora of Filipinos always manage to do throughout the world, these two Jamaicans quickly found each other and became fast friends.

I was quite amazed and fascinated the first time I heard those two Jamaicans talking together. They were sitting in the common room across from each other and in a language of which I had absolutely no comprehension, they spoke loudly with great excitement, interspersed with continuous laughter and dapping hand slaps.

“What is that you guys are speaking, some kind of Caribbean French or something?” I asked them.

“It’s English!” my roommate declared in his more understandable (for me) brand of Americanized English flavored with his cool-as-hell Jamaican brogue.

“No way!” I insisted. “I couldn’t understand a thing you guys were just saying. Is that how you guys talk down in Jamaica? Say something again, only slower this time.”

The sailor Jamaican gave me a sentence or two of his supposedly slowed down Jamaican English but it still sounded like complete jibber jabber to me. My roommate gave it a try, even providing a translation, but for the life of me I could not hear words that made any sense. I don’t know why, but I was delighted. I gave up trying to understand them and left them to go do some studying. I had the distinct impression that they were having some fun at my expense, but it was cool.

The night before my Jamaican bunkmate (he had the lower rack) was due to ship out after graduating from his supplymens course he decided to have a final blowout at the enlisted club. Not being much of a drinker myself, I opted not to go with him and instead went to a movie at the base theater, after which I had a late night snack and a combination BS and study session in a classmate’s common area.

It was fairly late, just after official “lights out, around 9:30 p.m. or so, when I entered our common area from the outside walkway and then went to my room door and unlocked it. When I entered the darkness I knew immediately something was not right. First was the strange sound, and second was the awful puke smell.

‘Oh my God,’ I thought, ‘Now what!’

Normally, we would never turn on the lights after "lights out." It was considered rude and it was against the rules anyway, but from what I was hearing and smelling I knew immediately that I was about to make an exception. Anyway, there was only the Jamaican and I; the Georgia boy was not yet in. I turned on the lights.

With the desk lamp switched on, the source of the awful sounds and smell was immediately evident. Jamaica had overindulged in some kind of milk based alcoholic drink, probably Kahlua. It seemed that most of what he had consumed was now all over him, on his pillow and splashed all over the floor, and even on the wall. The biley Kahlua vomit covered him from lower chest to the top of his head.

I saw too that the weird sounds were emanating from him; he made a sucking slopping sound as the whitish film of clotting sludge glazing his nose and mouth caused puke bubbles to noisily form. Snoring contentedly, these bubbles grew big, popped audibly and then reformed in an endless cycle. His alcoholic-induced oblivion allowed him to curl up contentedly in the fetal position with both vomity hands clutching his barf-slickened pillow to the side of his spew-coated face. Only a few months passed my 18th birthday, I had never seen anything remotely as sickening.

I yelled at him, “Hey, Jamaica, wake up man! You puked all over yourself dude. Get up and clean yourself off man!”

I tried everything to wake him up. I yelled repeatedly. I even tugged and kicked violently on the one part of his body that had almost no regurgitation spattered—his sock-clad feet; but no matter what I did, I could not rouse him from his stupor. After more than a few minutes of this fruitless activity I got mad and quit trying. I could see he wasn’t going to asphyxiate on his upchuck, and in fact he looked quite comfortable sleeping that way.

‘Let him stew in his own spew!’ I reflected angrily looking down on his disgusting form.

Stepping carefully, I grabbed my pillow, sheets and blanket and made a nest on one of the couches in the common area. My last thoughts before falling asleep were curse words directed at my puke-slimed Jamaican roomy.

‘You rotten bastard!’

When I woke up the next morning it was as if the Jamaican marine had never existed. His rack was stripped of all sheets and blankets, and even the pillow was gone. There was still a hint of puke in the air, but it wasn’t all that strong. Puke boy was gone for good. He had an early flight out of Meridian and had evidently made it. I was relieved to see him out of there and all vestiges of the previous evening vanished as well; or was it?

A week later we had one of our many “field days” where everyone turns out and turns to accomplishing a thorough cleaning of all living areas and spaces. Every corner—behind, on top of and under everything—was cleaned with detergent, steaming hot water, mops and scrub brushes. I pulled my bunk away from the wall so I could mop under it. As soon as the hot soapy water on my mop hit the floor against the wall I erupted into a string of the foulest Marine curses I had yet learned up to that date.

In his hurry to depart the premises in time to make his flight, my Jamaican roomster had missed cleaning up a considerable swathe of his Kahlua-laced throw-up. It was directly under the radiator vents and the dry heat had quickly preserved it into a dehydrated hardened mass. The load of hot mop water had awakened it back into its original smelly disgusting state and there was a considerable amount of the stuff.

Me and Jamaica had been pretty good pals all the way through our months together, but to this day I have unambiguously bad feelings toward the guy.

Spew me once shame on you, spew me twice and STILL shame on you!