viewpoints » GET THE FACTS about active retirement living at FOX RUN in Novi. FREE 38-PAGE BROCHURE WRITTEN BY THE RETIREMENT EXPERTS! The comprehensive Fox Run brochure is packed with the crucial information you need—and the exciting details you want—about carefree senior living in Novi. ner, and I went to bed not under- standing the day’s events any more than I understood how the jelly gets into the Chanukah jelly rolls. But the next morning in our third-grade homeroom at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School on Linwood Avenue, we began four years of les- sons about the “Yellow Menace.” And about hate. In the 1949 musical play South Pacific, based on James Michener’s 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, a song says, “You’ve got to be care- fully taught … to hate and fear.” Along with dozens of other 11-year-olds, I was carefully taught. By week’s end, posters were up around the school. On one, two faces side by side. “This man is Chinese. He’s yellow but he’s our friend. This man is Japanese. He’s yellow and he’s our enemy. See the difference?” I caught on. We hate Japanese people. And we were at war with them. There also was war in Europe, the work of Adolph Hitler, pos- sibly the inventor of hate and fear. He was German, but I don’t recall school posters teaching us to hate all Germans. Learning to hate Japanese people was an ongoing course of study, especially as the war with them grew more vicious and spread across the Pacific Ocean. This war, to even- tually bomb Japan and drive the Japanese people into submission, was a war of strategies and tactics based on the capacity of fuel tanks in American warplanes and their functional ranges. It became neces- sary to capture a Pacific island, build an airstrip and a fuel depot and then repeat on the next captured island in a connect-the-dots route to Japan. Not so easily done by America and her allies as the Japanese forces con- tinuously intensified their responses. At home, we went to the movies and saw depictions of the brutaliza- tion done to American and allied fighters. Hate the Japanese? The Japs? Movies showed us why and how. So did the news reports. Bataan Death March. Battle of the Coral Sea. Kamikazes. We were carefully taught to hate and fear. Then the war ended — in violent fires never before seen on Earth. Tens of thousands of Japanese died in the bombings of two of their cit- ies. Has the Yellow Menace been destroyed? Is it no longer necessary to hate the Japanese? I was carefully taught to hate and fear. To this day, I continue to struggle to get past the lessons. If only I’d done so well in math. * Norman Prady, 82, is a journalist a nd author living in Berkley. Yiddish Limerick TU B’AV Call 1-800-917-8169 or visit EricksonLiving.com to request your FREE brochure! (Beginning the evening of Aug. 18) Dos iz nisht* Valentine’s, Tu b’Av is today. Mir Yidn yetzt hobn* our own, we can say. Zog, “Ich hob dir azey lib”*** any way you can do. With hugs un mit smooch- es,**** a serenade or two. Gib a kush***** don’t be shy, it’s undzer****** own lovers’ day. * Dos iz nisht — this is not ** Mir Yidn yetzt hobn — We Jews now have *** Zog, “Ich hob dir azey lib” — Say, “I love you so much” **** un mit-smooches — and with kisses ***** Gib a kush — Give a kiss ****** undzer — our Novi EricksonLiving.com — Rachel Kapen 11495988 2061780 8 August 18 • 2016 continued from page 6