THE PROOF IS IN.....

No uncle of mine ever yearned for their mother’s home cooking. My grandmother never baked cookies or stood over the hot gas stove making borscht, stuffed cabbage, brisket or kugel.
No Passover Seders in my atheist family. Instead we had delicious lobster Diablo, a famous recipe from my Italian Uncle Charlie Camedeco’s family.

Everybody knows my reputation. When it comes to parties and pot luck events I bring the paper or ready made desserts. Green Salads and coffee are my only specialty. I own no large pots, or fancy cookware. I learned this from my mother who would call Abe the fruit and vegetable man, Jack the kosher butcher only for chicken or hamburger meat, and Jake the non-kosher butcher for all other cuts of meat. The meal of the day was determined by the day of the week. Tuesday we ate hamburgers, spinach and baked potatoes. My brother and I always fought over the potato skins which my mom burned, and we loved because they were crispy.

I don’t understand, and I don’t mean to be irreverent because I adore good food, why people enjoy standing at the sink peeling and spicing, slicing and dicing when Trader Joe’s and Costco have food that is cooked, enticingly packaged, perfectly seasoned and lo and behold it is ready to go. Turn on the oven, set the timer or put it in the microwave oven, sit down on the couch with a really good book, or watch reruns of Law and Order. I’d rather read the dictionary from A…aardvark and aardwolf to Z…zymotic and zymurgy than open a cook book. Thank goodness for loud timers since I have been known to burn a bowl of Oatmeal in my microwave oven.

One day I decided to follow a recipe for rice pudding. I measured the rice and followed directions exactly as it was called for. {I can’t remember if I cooked the rice first.}I even added a little cinnamon and raisins, optional of course. I then put it in the refrigerator and waited for it to solidify. According to the recipe it should have formed a pudding consistency in a few hours. Eight hours later, twelve hours later, nothing. It was watery. It remained watery forever. What went wrong? It’s no mystery. The females in my family were born without the domesticated cooking gene. How do I know? Well the proof is after all in the pudding.

My computer died about two weeks ago and I decided I would clean out the armoir. The computer, disconnected from all its wires is on the dining room table. I began sorting through the CDs, the floppies, the stacks of papers. I look at the papers under my CCTV deciding which to keep and which to discard. Next, I picked up a pile of manuals. A snapshot fell out of the printer manual. I picked it up. The date on the back, 1978. A picture of me and Jack, but where were we, who took the picture.
Then, memory flooded back. In 1978, when I was sixty-one, we visited Martee and Sherm in their new home near Philadelphia. Martee sent us two round trip tickets for my birthday present so we could fly from Arizona, interrupting our trip to Mexico. We also planned that my sister, Lil, the only one left of my six older sisters, would fly from Florida at the same time.
When we arrived in Phoenix we found "No Vacancy" signs on all the travel trailer parks because Mexico was restricting American tourists to only a 30 day stay in Mexico. The tens of thousands of American who usually would have been scattered within Mexico waited in Arixona, and Texas in border towns and adjoining towns, waiting through the red tape of obtaining documents to enter Mexico. Finally, a friend of a friend allowed us to park our Airstream travel trailer on a vacant lot and we flew to Philadelphia. Martee met us and drove us to her new home. A split level home, it had five levels, six bedrooms and five bathrooms, located on a two acre
hillside. Lil arrived the next day.
I've often said Lil and I shared ESP. Without discussing it at all, I'd brought along six nice outfits, including a beautiful Chinese style gown, which no longer fit me after I gained fifteen pounds. At the same time, Lil brought me six very nice outfits which no longer fit her because she'd lost twenty pounds.
The day after Lil arrived, it began to snow, wet, heavy snow while the temperature plummeted below freezing. Lil and I both became ill and kept Martee busy bringing us juices, hot tea and meals on a tray. Martee bundled us up and managed to drive through snow-choked streets to a doctor who prescribed just what we'd been doing, bed rest, aspirin, plenty of fluids and light nourishment.
The snow cont9inued, roads were blocked and impassable, schools and businesses closed, runways at the airport were buried under snow and no planes could land or take off.
Five days later, both Lil and I felt better. We went shopping with Martee and Martee took some pictures with her new Polaroid Color Camera. In the picture, I am sitting on Jack's lap with my right arm around his neck. He is wearing a black suit, white shirt and red striped tie, with the gold nugget tie chain centered on the tie. I am wearing a turban, which I crocheted, a red turtleneck sweater and a black knit vest. I wear earrings made from small "olive" type seashells and a much larger seashell is suspended from a gold chain around my neck. On my wrist is the carved ivory bracelet which Jack gave me for my birthday in 1958. My hair, although almost completely concealed by the turban is already white. Jack, seven years older than I, still has dark hair, receding a little at the temples. We are both smiling and look happy.
A few days later, I hug Lil before she boards a plane to return to Florida. I never saw her again.
Two days later, we flew back to Phoenix. We did not want to have to return to the border after only thirty days in Mexico. I called the consulate and insisted on speaking to the Consul. I told him, truthfully, that my husband and I traveled thousands of miles from Alaska and how much we enjoyed the winter months we spent in Mexico, but we usually stayed between three and five months, not just thirty days. I outtalked him and finally he said, "Take a photo of yourself and of your husband, like a passport photo and come to my office at one oclock this afternoon.
Promptly at one, we arrived with the photos and were shown into his office. We shook hands and he said, "Senora, here are your permits for three months in Mexico, you are most persuasive."
I don't remember his name, but I remember, he kissed me hand after handing the documents to Jack.
Now, nearly thirty years later, so much happened, not all of it good. But, in the moment when this photo captured us, we were together, in good health, and happy about being able to visit Martee and Sherm, with having time with Lil, and with continuing on to Mexico for the winter. We had many friends in Mexico and enjoyed fishing and shelling and activities in the Kino Bay Trailer Park on the Sea of Cortez.

I felt that General MacArthur was an egotist. MacArthur made sure that the Japanese would pay their respect to him by leaving his office in Tokyo to go to his home in the outskirts for lunch every day at about 1:30 PM. A crowd, both Japanese and Americans, would gather in front of his office building to get a glimpse of him. The Japanese would bow respectfully as he departed. This was a five-days a week occurrence.
I retuned to America from the occupation of Japan to find my way in life. The relocation camp and the subsequent service in the army had interrupted my schooling. My thoughts were on how to get into a university crowded by all the returning veterans, where to live, and what I could afford to eat. The occupation chapter in my life was closed.
It never occurred to me to explore what really happened in Japan during the period that I was there nor what took place after I left (1945-47). All I knew was that the occupation was peaceful to be sure but all screwed up otherwise. That was the opinion of a twenty-three year old, who worked diligently in the tasks assigned to him but was not supervised as he thought he should be in the very serious tasks of the occupation. Nor did it seem were others…. Strangely enough there were enough serious and conscientious people there that made things improve as time went by.
Years later (around 1988), a friend spoke of this book “Remaking Japan, the American Occupation as New Deal” by Theodore Cohen that piqued my interest on what really happened in Japan during that period, 1945-7. Cohen was at the right place and had the right civilian job position to be able to write at length of the happenings then. He was MacArthur’s labor relation chief while he was in the service. Cohen remained in Japan after his stint with the occupation in a civilian capacity. He married a Japanese and remained in Japan for three decades representing a Canadian firm after his service days, long enough to see the results of the occupation.
Did the events happen as he describes them? The following are the facts related by Cohen that have some relationship to my experience in 1946 as I now remember them.
In that year the first item of importance was FOOD for the starving Japanese in this war-torn country. All over the world there was a food shortage right after the war. How was MacArthur to provide food to the Japanese when the world’s priorities were with allied countries and not the axis countries? “Damn the Japs; let them starve” was the attitude of the other hungry countries. But MacArthur wondered: “How could a nation on the edge of starvation be remade into a democratic mold?”
The Japanese by cooperating with the US helped themselves. To keep order this cooperation reduced the need for a large contingency of US troops. The unexpected reduction of troops from 600,000 to 200,000 resulted in 800 thousand tons of surplus army food. MacArthur used this surplus and the allowed meager allocation that first year to feed the Japanese.
In the area where I was stationed I recalled hardships but no starvation. I was amused with the way army food was consumed. The Japanese applied peanut butter on wheat and oats steamed like rice. When some Japanese families invited us to dinner, we were surprised to be fed a little rice mixed with mostly oats. Japan had a shortage of rice, the food associated with the orient. To a Nisei that spoke volumes about the food shortage during that period.
By happenstance MacArthur’s staff exaggerated the minimum food requirement that the Japanese would need the following year, 1947, the second year of the occupation. MacArthur punctuated this need to his conservative friends in Congress that he required this amount of food or he would need more soldiers. MacArthur got his full requirement, which turned out to be two and half times the amount of the army surplus that he had in his first year.
MacArthur had his “food” in the first two toughest years of his rule. How could the Japanese not love him for this? As a result they treated all the American soldiers very well. There was no need to place restrictions and controls on every thing, which resulted in what seemed a very lax occupation with not enough experienced armed forces running the country. The annoyances for me in my job must have been the result of this. The Japanese, however, cooperated with my corrective requests and in the main things ran well.
The demands by China and the Philippines as well other allied nations for reparation by the Japanese were significant. It was a plan to destroy Japan’s capability to recover. Due to planned and unplanned stalling MacArthur was able to reduce significantly the agreed reparation requirements placed upon Japan. While initially the delay was due to the complexity of reparations (Who gets what and why), later the delay was a need for a rejuvenated Japan to protect Asia against Russia and China. Japan would need their capital equipment to recover. Distributing all this machinery and manufacturing equipment, as reparation to other nations, would have crippled Japan for years.
I did not see the greater picture. I noted that vast amount of material and capital equipment was being hidden by the people without punishment. MacArthur must have felt that the use of it would enhance their recovery and a successful occupation would result. Our military government, which we in CIC in each prefecture lived nearby, was to me a disgrace. Fortunately by just being there, was all that was required to keep order.
In my youth I didn’t value that the essence of democracy is to allow the working groups to bring their grievances to the fore in some manner within the rule of law. MacArthur chose to allow the Japanese to fight the battle among them in order to balance the labor class and their employers unlike how it was prior to the war. He gave legitimacy to the working class and gave them some independence, which was completely at odds with Japanese history. We in CIC couldn’t understand the turmoil that was allowed.
Unfortunately MacArthur opened up “a can of worms.” The Communists within the labor group rallied the masses against the ruling class creating a situation that was preventing the orderly progress of recovery of the Japanese economy. Eventually MacArthur was forced to turn against the laboring class and disallowed disruptive activity. Yet some years later when normalcy returned to the economy, the labor groups were legally allowed to bargain collectively. What MacArthur had allowed initially came back into the Japanese life but in a calmer Japanese manner. The Japanese themselves screened out the Communists among them.
There are many theories as to why Japan recovered dramatically from their defeat in World War II. Some of the contributing factors in Cohen’s judgment were: the generous food allocation to the Japanese in 1946 and 47; the release of the working class from the grips of the ruling class; the freeing of debt of the farmers; the assistance in collective bargaining of the working groups; the unselfishness of the American Occupation allowing the Japanese to use stored war material for peaceful gains. I saw for myself the minimal retaliation of the people for hiding materials left over from the war to be used in their civilian economy instead of confiscation and shipment out as reparation. This greatly enhanced their recovery.
In later years mass-market consumption by the workers allowed Japan to improve their products in the process. From my personal experience I learned that with the help of American quality control techniques, high quality products were produced for international consumption. I am familiar with the quality techniques that Japan improved upon. For seven years as Quality Assurance & Reliability Engineering Manager of a manufacturing firm in the states I helped install some of these very same techniques into our manufacturing processes.
While Cohen gives Ambassador Harriman most of the credit for keeping Russia out in a partitioning attempt, the presence of MacArthur allowed Harriman to hold a hard line. My belief is that “THE” most significant contribution by MacArthur (and Harriman) was their steadfastness in preventing Russia from partitioning Japan a la Germany and Korea. One can imagine the mess Japan would have been in had partition taken place and the added hardships that Russia’s portion of the country would have endured.
It is also stated “MacArthur and the Occupation by their invasion of all facets of Japanese life inspired the Japanese and freed the dynamism of the Japanese people.”
Yes, General MacArthur was an egotist and seemed unable to run a country. I now have difficulty faulting him.

Our country is the most racist and least racist country in the world. To me, racism is the ultimate cruelty. Until racism is eradicated, mankind will remain imprisoned by hate and claims of freedom a hypocritical hoax.

“In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden―the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain. . .” Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In an early 1960s experiment, Harvard researcher Stanley Milgram recruited college students to help “teach” slow “learners.” A white-coated “experimenter” instructed the students to deliver increasingly powerful electric shocks to a learner each time the learner made a mistake. In spite of believing the shocks were real, two-thirds delivered the highest level of shock labeled “danger-severe shock,” as they watched the learner writhe in (pretended) pain.

Could you or I be importuned into participating in this ugly “experiment” and administer electric shocks to slow learners and watch them writhing in what we perceive to be intense pain?

Could you or I attend a public hanging with our wives, children and a picnic lunch to witness the painful death as the trapdoor opens and the lethal rope knot snaps the neck of the victim of our primitive love of human torture? Could Dostoevsky’s demon inside us all let us relish the sight of hungry lions tearing apart and devouring the bodies of Christians in the Roman Coliseum, a monument to man’s inhumanity? Or stand by and do nothing as Nazi Germany slaughters six millions Jews?

The United States of American would be denied membership in the European Union, which does not admit any country that still practices the barbaric custom of capital punishment.

What if all the slow learners in the Harvard “experiment” were African-Americans and all the participating recruits were white? Would the infliction of “danger-severe shock” be administered―not two-thirds of the time―but 100 percent of the time?

Is racism so deeply imbedded in all of us, so institutionalized, that when it’s crunch time our innate racism emerges?

I am enrolled in an adult history course at New Trier High School. The subject is African-American history. The instructor is young black man. We are discussing the Ku Klux Klan killings of three students lynched in Philadelphia, Mississippi on August 4, 1964. The instructor asks us if we are familiar with this murder. All of us are. He then asks us to write down the names of the three student victims. Most could not recall any names.

I write down the names of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, but I cannot recall the name of the young black student. I dig as deeply as I can into my memory bank and come up blank. James Chaney. Why can’t I remember the name of the black student? Institutionalized racism on a small scale, but institutionalized racism nevertheless.

I decide to do a rigorous self-examination. In the process I turn to the three wisest men and greatest leaders―in my opinion―of the twentieth century―Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr. I watch the movie “Gandhi” with Ben Kingsley portraying this diminutive little man in the loin cloth woven from his own loom who brought the British Empire to its knees with nonviolence. Remember the horrible scene at the gates to the salt factory? I watch a documentary on South African apartheid and Archbishop Tutu’s conduct of reconciliation in a country tortured with racism and I listen to and read Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered to more than 250,000 people (one-fifth white) in Washington, D.C. on August 23, 1963―the most moving and powerful please for an end to racism I have ever heard. Please recall with me his final plea:
Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow
freedom ring―when we let it ring from every village and every
hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children―black and white men,
Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics―will be able to
Join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at
Last!”

One of the saddest days of my life occurred in a congregational meeting of the First United Congregational Church of Wilmette back in the early 1970s. In the absence of the congregation’s president, I, as vice president, presided over a meeting that would decide whether this all-white North Shore Chicago church known for its political and social liberalism would make a decision that would demonstrate decisively that we as Christians were willing to merge with an all-black Chicago inner city United Congregational church and share our spiritual and financial resources. The Reverend Jim Kidd, our pastor, had laid out the merger plan with loving skill and care.
This was the test of our Christianity. Martin Luther King had challenged us. Could we accept that challenge and do the right thing? Could this congregation that claimed to be followers of the man who delivered the Sermon on the Mount send a message of hope and inspiration to the whole world? Could we share our bricks and mortar and financial wealth with a desperately poor, small black sister church?

The motion to effect the merger was made and seconded. I gave everyone a fair and full opportunity to express their views. Then I knew the answer.Given the opportunity to act out their professed opposition to racism, the membership of the First Congregational Church of Wilmette failed the test, voted down the merger and clearly revealed it was not ready to discard its racism and reach out to the members of a sister congregation. I was devastated.

I left that church and its hypocritical membership and so did Jim Kidd. That’s the story.

We have a long road to travel before racism―overt and covert― is eradicated and Martin Luther King’s dream comes true.

Brett & Brian

The candles and pictures of the two boys sat atop the television like a strange Dia de los Muertos celebration. One could understand it if it was just that November day, but the pictures of Brian and Brett were there perpetually. The small shrine their mother had erected stood silent as the television blasted one of the popular crime shows like America’s Most Wanted or Crime Solvers that was a regular to this household. It was a macabre experience when the room’s lights were dimmed and there was nothing but the ghostly glow of the television and the haunting flickering of the candles on the two boy’s faces.
This tribute had moved from it’s original place in another city and state to their new home thousands of miles away but the shadowy cast of their faces on this monument to their lives never varied. It was akin to a headstone at a cemetery but, it is obvious, this remembrance will live on in full view for any and all onlookers to gaze upon and pray to.
“Tim, “ Ma started, “Brett and Brain are missing in Mexico and the police have called because they think something terrible has happened.”
“What are you talking about, Ma? What police?” I asked.
Brian and Brett were my older brother, Jack’s youngest of four sons.
“No one knows what’s going on. The police could hardly speak English. They were way down in Mexico. Jack and Greg are going down to find out what is going on. Meet them at the L.A. airport. You can help them with their car. Here’s Greg, he can tell you more about where they’ll be,” informed Ma, her voice cracking and shaky from the experience. She handed the phone to Greg, Jack’s second son.
“T.J., we’re leaving Santa Barbara now and should be in Los Angeles in a couple of hours. Can you meet us a Mexicana Airlines?”
“Sure Go Go,” Greg’s nickname graced upon him, as a baby, by his father. “I’ll get a ride there and I can take care of your car. Do you know what’s going on?”
“We’re not sure, but the Mexican police think they found Brian and Brett on the beach. They were shot. We have to go down to make sure it’s them and try to find out what happened.”
“How’s your Mom?” I asked, knowing the answer, as Audrey was a mother who lived for her children.
“She’s a wreck, we hope going down there will help. T.J., pray that it’s not them and that it’s all just a big mistake,” finished Greg, holding back tears and his fear of knowing this was probably true.
I met Jack and Greg at the airport. I could see that Jack was holding himself together with the thinnest of veneers maintained only by the blustery rough shell that he had always showed to hide his gentle soul. He rarely showed emotion and lead his life and provided for his family with this false bravado that he loved showing off. He had been strong twenty years before when he returned home to bury our father and help his mother. For the first time I could see that this façade of strength and courage had a fissure in it.
When we met he held me tighter and closer than he ever had before. His outward macho portrayal had always been a rive between us as, I was the younger gay brother who didn’t like to hunt and shoot animals or talk about female conquests around him. I knew, holding him and looking into his eyes, that he knew what had happened in Mexico, and he was only doing his duty as a father and husband to bring his sons home and to be done with the part of the pain of not really knowing what had happened.
For almost a week Jack and Greg were gone. I called and talked with my mother, who lived with Jack and his family. and in the first few days she told me they were traveling as it was such a remote part of Mexico. After the third day she confirmed that both of the boys had been shot to death on a beach in southern Mexico. My brother would bring them home and Greg would drive their van back. She told me to wait for Jack and come up with him as they had arranged for the funeral home in Santa Barbara to pick up the boy’s bodies at the airport. They would ride back from Mexico in the same plane as Jack. He said he would not be separated from them again.
When I met him at the airport he looked as if he had not slept for the week he had been gone. He nearly collapsed into my arms crying. He asked, “Do you know if the funeral parlor is here yet? They were supposed to meet me to bring my boys home.”
I told him to sit and I would make the phone calls and ask at the airline desk if they had any information. After thirty minutes I returned and he was almost asleep on one of the benches. I had found out that the hearses had already picked up Brian and Brett and were on route to Santa Barbara. I took Jack to his car and he said he wanted to be alone. I told him he could drop me off in Santa Monica, where I lived, but I thought it better if I drove him.
“No,” he replied, practically pleading with me. “I need some time alone before this mess starts. Mexico was hell. I had to standby as they loaded the boys into the back of a pickup truck to take them to a mortuary and watch as their bodies jumped around the truck beds because of the rutted roads. They had to nail them into plywood boxes so they could be put on the plane. Everyone, the mortician, the police, the drivers, everyone, stood in line with their hands out for money. I could only pay and hope that they would release my boys so I could get them out of there.”
At this, he broke down completely and held me. He began crying and gasping for breath and I could tell that his grief was so complete that nothing I could say or do would lessen it. I held onto him and again tried to persuade him to let me drive.
“No, T.J., I need to be alone. I still have to tell their mother and all the others what happened. I’ll be okay. I have to stay strong enough to get through this. Come up tomorrow and you can help.”
I called his home and let Ma know that he was on the way. Ma said, “The doctor came out and gave Audrey some medicine to help her rest. She is overcome with sadness and keeps saying that it was a mistake. I don’t know how she will ever get over this.”
I explained, “Jack brought the boys back on the plane he flew on, and it’s not a mistake. I’ll be there tomorrow. Jack should be home in less than two hours. I love you, Ma.”
The week leading up to the funeral was compounded by the fact that it was taking Greg longer to get back than expected. The police in Mexico wanted to go over the van and make sure there was nothing that might lead them to the murderers.
The funeral took place without Greg. The caskets, both closed, were lined up in front of the altar. Pictures, which would end up as the homemade shrine, sat on top of the coffins. Flowers filled the room, some displaying ribbons lettered; Brian 21-Forever Young and Brett 19-Mother’s Son. The funeral home was full of Brett and Brian’s school friends as well as those of their parents. The eulogies only heightened the sorrow with many of the younger classmates breaking into near hysterics from their feelings of loss, sadness, and the despoiling of their optimistic belief of eternal youth. Nothing could be said that would help people deal with the fact of the boys dying so young. Nothing could make it better or less hurtful. It was what it was; a tragedy. Only time would have any impact in lessening the sadness of the loss that was felt by all that attended the service.
At the funeral’s end our family stood huddled together as if the world had died around us. It seemed that we were our only comfort and warmth from a planet that had finally frozen over and left reason behind. Tears fell freely and if you listened closely, you could hear a sound that could only have been hearts breaking from our collective grief.
Fifteen years later I sat in a chair, looking at the pictures of the boys on top of the TV. I sat next to their mother who was crippled and wheel chair bound from rheumatoid arthritis as she watched another crime program on the set. Five years later she decided to use Oregon’s right to die initiative and finally rid herself of the acute pain of her disease and the mental torture of the loss of her sons.
I knew that my brother was in his bedroom, lying in bed, reading a book, and smoking one of the sixty cigarettes he would inhale that day. He was clinically depressed and had been since the boy’s deaths. The makeshift monument was a sad remembrance of the two boys and the utter devastation it had reaped upon their family. I tried to make some sense of it but realized there was no sense to be made of it, grief had it’s own manifest and stood alone to mock any future happiness for this family as if it’s destiny was to be locked into this melancholy orbit. .
I understood what had happened and could see it was obvious the bullets that killed these two young men had never stopped moving and had maimed the rest of my family in a quest for perpetual motion. Their only purpose was to seek out more flesh and bone to strike and destroy before they would finally come to rest.