Learning from the Germans

Mr. James Mendiola,

It is not your comments in your recent “letter to the editor” that this correspondence will first attempt to address. My initial challenge is directed at those person or persons who intercepted, changed the title, and placed in both the NMI newspapers without permission from myself nor any member of my staff, what was a hastily drafted and privately distributed e-mail originally entitled, “How do you say Turning Point in German?” There is a malicious proclivity that permeates a tiny, outspoken segment of people in the NMI, who delight in taking aim at any “outsider,” especially those who try to be a friend, asking nothing in return. To those malicious few many I say, be advised. I am not easily deterred.

To you sir and your comments, I know of your Japanese lineage and your ties to the Japanese mainland. I differ with your political and historical views but I do agree with your appreciation of the underlying beauty and wisdom of the culture. I too have a love for all who advance the cause of human rights regardless of race and nationality. I dare say that given our age difference I have had a copy of “The Pacific War 1931-1945,” by Japanese humanist Saburo Ienaga to whom you refer, on my desk a lot longer than you (Published in English in 1978 by Random House). As a proponent of Ienaga, if your true aim is peace and the elevation of human understanding, after all the time I spent providing help to you and those interested in developing Tinian’s 60th anniversary event (evidenced by adopting the name Turning Point that I provided), I fail to understand why you chose to retaliate so harshly, chastising me in open forum? Angered as you were, would it not have been more in keeping with the ideals reflected in the “200 lanterns of peace” to pick up a telephone and call me or at the very least, draft a personal letter, requesting an explanation? Just ask Don Farrell, Paul Zak, or dozens of others whom we both know. There are a few things that I enjoy more than a rousing discussion of history and politics with one so enlightened as yourself. If you wish, the opportunity is still yours. You may find that I haven’t wasted a life looking only at one side of the coin.

There are several points to your argument that I will concede. I apologize fully for using the term “pity party.” It was how a third person who attended this year’s events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, described it to me in a telephone conversation. Had I offered this work for publication, I would not only have avoided repeating the obvious inflammatory remark, but researched the speeches of the Japanese politicians as you had thus avoiding hearsay. In fact, I was hoping that between friends, if corrections were necessary, I would have been so informed privately by those who to whom the message was directly sent.

You speak of lies and half-truths. No one has born witness to more of these than I as Chairman of Azmar International. What we at Azmar have put up with from a malicious few in the CNMI for the past 2.5 years transcends the realm of “worthy opposition,” reaching a vile and abhorrent level that bears no semblance to any kind of human decency. It may interest you to know that not a single person from Pagan Watch, Chamorro.com, former HPO Director Joe Guerrero, nor Rep. Fitial, has ever contacted me, sat down across a table with any of my on-island business associates, or bothered in any constructive fashion to comprehend the Pagan Island pozzolanic ash mining project and the very real benefits to the people of the CNMI that Azmar has offered. As you know, wantonly casting stones at what one perceives to be an evil is reminiscent of Europe’s Dark Ages (450 A.D., to 843 and the Treaty of Verdun). Those that spent time with me like your uncle Sen. Joseph Mendiola, have come away speaking well of the Azmar project and my character. From what I’ve been told of you, you are not one who normally associates with the willfully malicious. If you will forgive the transgressions I made in haste, I will take this opportunity to forgive yours. As two men who seek a higher level of human understanding, we’ll wait another time and indeed, another value to debate our points of view. I look forward to the opportunity. It should be great fun.

Thanks for listening

Kenneth Moore