Dear Japanese Reader!                             26 October 2004     

Write a Letter to Defend the Honor of Kamikazes and of Japan!

This is a call to the Japanese public, suggesting You to write letters protesting any unfair comparison of "suicide bombers" and "kamikazes", whenever made by the media (newspapers, TV) or by politicians, in the whole world, and sometimes even in Japan. 
In fact there is a polar difference, and therefore such comparisons unfairly besmirch Japanese kamikazes and hurt the honor of the whole Japanese people on the one hand, and unduely whitewashes suicide bombers on the other hand.

 Below we present an Example Letter on the subject in English, based on the actual Reader's Letter of Take-A-Pen I wrote, which was published in the Jerusalem Post (in 30 April 2004).   This Example letter can serve as a basis for Your letter, which you can write whenever you see such an unfair comparison of kamikazes and suicide bombers. This example can help even an un-experienced letter-writer to write easily his or her own letter.

 

We present this Example Letter and Letter-Writing Call to you both in English and in Japanese;

- If you write to an international paper or personality, do it in English.

- If the offensive comparison was made in Japan, you can use our Example Letter in Japanese*.  

The Example Letter is:

To: The Editor,    (ADD HERE the Newspaper's Name)

Sub.: Suicide bombers and Kamikazes

Re:     (ADD HERE the Title and Date of the article you are responding to, for example: Re:"The Israeli Separation Wall" , 28 July 2004)

 Dear Editor, - I am a reader of your paper for many years. I agreed with some points also in the above article.

One thing however I'd like to point out is that your writer mentioned suicide bombers together with Japanese kamikaze pilots. This besmirches kamikazes and whitewashes suicide bombers, since in fact there is a polar difference; Japanese kamikazes, cruel as they were, were self-sacrificing combatants, wearing uniforms while attacking enemy combatants.  Suicide bombers, whether Palestinians in Israel or of al-Qaida in the Bali islands, and also their dispatchers act totally outside the law. They are terrorists, mass killers of civilians and perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

This understanding leads to a further conclusion. Against such dangerous murderers as the suicide bombers, any community must have the right of self-defense, particularly with a passive and non-violent means like the security barrier Israel is building against terrorist intrusions. Any inconvenience such a security fence may cause to people leaving around it is worth saving many human lives. 

Respectfully,

(ADD HERE Name of letter-writer)  

(City, Country) 

 (Most newspapers require, for publication of your letter, that you give them also your Contact Data, like: name, mail address and daytime phone numbers; mobile or regular phone)

So, dear Japanese Reader!

Thank You for reading these lines.

Now you can write your own letter!  Look at our site www.take-a-pen.org  or at our Japanese pages:   http://www.take-a-pen.org/japanese/index.html .

 If you have any idea to help us or for any help you may need in writing your letter, please contact us! (in English)

 Thanking You, Yours,

 Endre Mozes

Chairman of Take-A-Pen 

chairman@take-a-pen.org