"Do people in elite positions not understand the sadness felt by average people who have suffered during times of war?"
Kobe resident Asako Zaii, 87, has found that her feelings regarding the security legislation passed by the Lower House on the afternoon of July 16 are almost unbearable.
"Mr. Abe, you really have no idea what war is, do you?" her letter asked pointedly.
Zaii's history -- what she refers to as her "real experience with war" -- involved relentless bombing during U.S. military air raids in March 1945, which instantaneously turned the city streets of Kobe into a sea of fire.
She was 17 years old at the time. Wrapping herself in a futon for protection against the fist-sized sparks of fire flying all around her, she ran to seek safety.
Her house, which was located near a new district in Kobe's busiest area, burned down -- reducing to ashes the chest of goods that her parents had prepared for her to take with her when she left home to marry.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry testifying before Congress about his time in Vietnam:
When he came home, he protested against the war, and in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, famously asked: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
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