The Battleship of Compassion: Remembering the U.S.S. Missouri & American Strength
What would you do if you found the body of the failed suicide bomber who tried to kill you and your coworkers? Would you treat the remains with respect and compassion or with revulsion and contempt? Such questions were not hypothetical for the World War II crew of the U.S.S. Missouri and their battle-tested answers have almost been forgotten.
The kamikaze who crashed into compassion. During the Battle of Okinawa on April 11, 1945 the war literally crashed onto the Missouri’s deck in the form of a kamikaze piloted plane. Although the pilot successfully hit his target (only 11-14% of kamikaze pilots did during WWII), the 500-pound bomb his plane was carrying fell into the water just before his suicidal crash. With nearly 400 American ships being hit by kamikaze attacks during the war, the Missouri’s experience wasn’t too unique or unusual.
What made the experience historically special were the crew’s actions, under the leadership of Captain William Callaghan, after finding the body of the Japanese pilot as they were cleaning up the wreckage off their main deck: they gave him a full honor guard burial at sea. Not only did the ship’s doctors stitch and cleanup the body but several crew members stayed up all night sewing a Japanese flag so that he would be shrouded properly. On the morning of April 12, 1965, a 6-man burial detail carried the flag-draped pilot’s body to the rail near where he crashed his plane, a Marine honor guard fired a three-rifle volley salute over him, “Taps” was played by a lone bugler, and as his body was “commended to the deep” the crew stood at attention and hand-saluted him one last time. War brings out the worst in humanity but Captain Callaghan and the crew of the Missouri showed that even in the worst of times compassion and respect are signs of strength and honor.
Dead men walking to peace. The Missouri, also known as “Mighty Mo,” was destined for compassion at the end of the war as well. The surrender of Imperial Japan occurred on the Missouri when their country’s representatives signed the Instrument of Surrender, which finally brought peace between the two nations on September 2, 1945. A unique twist of compassion regarding the ceremony was that the Japanese dignitaries thought that they were never coming back alive from the Missouri and participated in their own funerals with their families just days before: since Imperial Japan instigated the war with America by attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese delegates thought that they would be executed for the transgressions of their country. But when General Douglas MacArthur said the following words during his speech, they knew they would see their families again:
“Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve…It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding—a world dedicated to the dignity of man…”
Where the Japanese believed there would be revenge, the Mighty Mo once again became the stage of American compassion.
We are often told that some of the main lessons of war are that man’s brutality knows no limits and humanity’s drive for self-preservation is our strongest motivation, but there are other—and arguably more important—lessons to learn such as compassion and brotherhood that should never be forgotten. The men of the U.S.S. Missouri were not only destined for but also captained by compassion during World War II. The Missouri’s compassion goes against the idea that you can only have empathy for the people of your own family, tribe or country. Her sailors were American heroes whose compassion took them to new levels of patriotism…they became patriots of humanity. On this Memorial Day, let’s remember the warriors who made compassion a sign and symbol of strength. For a hero is not only made by the life they may have sacrificed but by the life they chose to lead.
Every society has certain books that help define—in broad terms—their cultural identity. Some include holy books such as “The Koran” and/or epic stories such as “The Odyssey” and American society is no different. The United States has a holy book (“The Bible”), a secular book (“On the Origin of Species”), and a founding document (“The Constitution”) that altogether help define American culture. One problem (other than the fact that some will inevitably disagree with my book/document choices) is that we misread important sections of each work in ways that demean others thereby weakening ourselves.
The Good Book—The standard way of reading the biblical story of Adam and Eve, and the way I was taught in Sunday school, has been that Eve was subservient to Adam because she was made from one of his ribs (the “Second Story of Creation” in Genesis 2:21-23). This gets translated into a large segment of American society believing that men are ‘first and foremost’ relative to women not only in the eyes of God but also in the daily lives that we lead. This erroneous translation has had negative practical effects (i.e., women get paid only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men) and horrific consequences: one study calculated that the number of women killed by a male partner between 2001 and 2012 was “nearly double” the number of American soldiers lost during the same time period in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s a misreading of “The Good Book” because it emphasizes the “Second Story” over the “First Story of Creation” where it shows that Adam and Eve were created simultaneously on equal ground (Genesis 1:26-28). “The Bible,” like many holy books, is filled with contradictory stories but shouldn’t we emphasize the stories that promote respect and compassion for one another instead of those that appear to highlight the judging and subservience of others?
The Survival Guide—In the late 19th Century there was, as Randall Fuller spotlights in the title of his new manuscript, a “Book that Changed America.” It was Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” By the early 20th Century, according to Fuller, “Darwinian theory had become an indisputable aspect of American cultural life…it provided an ordering principle for a society that seemed to grow more complex each year.” We translate Darwin’s hypothesis into American society by emphasizing self-interest over all else and by following euphemisms such as “if you want to be number one, you have to look out for number one.” The irony is that Darwin did not only NOT coin the term “survival of the fittest” but he argued against the idea in research he later conducted to try and prove his thoughts in “Origin.” Darwin would later write in “The Descent of Man” that “it hardly seems probable that the number of men gifted with such virtues as bravery and sympathy…could be increased through natural selection, that is, by survival of the fittest…I perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest.” He actually wrote in support of a “survival of the kindest” theory: “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Shouldn’t we read what Darwin actually discovered in his research and not simply what he hypothesized about? We have misread Darwin’s initial hypothesis as an answer for how to “order society” that he, himself, did not agree with when he concluded his research. A consequence of such misreading is that we are building a society on the misguided notion that you can be either successful OR someone who helps others…and American children are learning this all too well. A 2014 Harvard Graduate School of Education study of 10,000 middle- and high-school students found that “almost 80 percent” said that their parents and teachers taught them that their personal “high achievement or happiness” were more important than “caring for others.” Do we really want to construct and live in a society of self-absorbed achievers?
The Founding Document—President Trump has consistently made the argument that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents are not American citizens. There is a ‘slight’ problem with the President’s reading of “The Constitution” and that would be the 14th Amendment, which says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” One consequence of interpreting or ignoring the 14th Amendment is that it betrays who we are as a country: a country of immigrants and a beacon of compassion and hope for the “tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The Prime Minister of Ireland, Mr. Enda Kenny, said it best this past Saint Patrick’s day with President Trump at his side: “Saint Patrick was an immigrant, patron saint of Ireland and for many people around the globe he’s also a symbol of, indeed the patron of, immigrants…Ireland came to America because…we believed in the shelter of America, in the compassion of America, in the opportunity of America.” To misread the words of the 14th Amendment so that it divides naturally born Americans not only weakens our country but also demeans its legacy and the people who built it.
When we disrespect others because we misread the books that we believe define who we think we are as a people, we are at least ten to twelve chapters deep into our own “Paradise Lost.” If we misread and do not take the time to carefully reflect upon the great books and documents that we use to “order society,” our policy choices will seemingly appear to be always stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. America has successfully navigated its way through history, as Mr. Kenny reminded us, by following its own beacon of hope and compassion. It’s time that we not only follow that beacon again but also use its light to reread the blueprints of how and why our ship was built.
NOTE: This article originally appeared in Thrive Global.
Do you see gorillas? There are gorillas in the midst of the refugee crisis but all some American politicians can see is fear (see recent statements and proclamations from numerous presidential candidates, governors and mayors). When there is a focus on fear, politicians and their followers create a blindspot where facts and even dancing gorillas go unnoticed.
In a famous study known as the “invisible gorilla” experiment, psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons demonstrated that when most people fix their attention on something they are told they are supposed to see, they tend to overlook anything outside their scope of focus. Chabris and Simons asked their study participants to watch a fast-paced video of people passing a basketball and count how many times specific players within that group received the ball (click here for the 2 minute video). The problem was that at least half the observers didn’t see the person dressed in a gorilla suit dance a jig in the middle of the video; their focused or selective attention on counting caused inattentional blindness. Most people see only what they want to see or are looking for. When our politics are focused on fear, our policies are filled with blindspots where facts are overlooked. Inattentional blindness is running rampant in America’s corridors of political power.
We have a gorilla problem in American politics, especially when it comes to refugees and immigrants. There are at least four factual gorillas in the refugee/immigrant issue that some of our current and ‘wannabe’ political representatives just simply do not see because of their focus on fear.
The Sprouting Gorilla. Nearly all the terrorists responsible for the Paris attacks sprouted from within France or the European Union. The argument by some American politicians that we need to “halt” and “ban” Syrian refugees because of what happened in Paris is neither logical nor based in fact. As Francois Hollande, the French president, said in a speech before the joint session of parliament following the Paris attacks: “it was Frenchmen who killed other Frenchmen.” The November 13th terrorists were homegrown and that fact seems to be lost on Governor Christie and others who would ban even Syrian “orphans under fiver [years old]” from seeking refuge in the United States. Shouldn’t we be concerned about why and how ISIS can recruit people from some of our neighborhoods rather than with refugees, who happen to be mostly women and children, hoping to be our neighbors?
The Screening Gorilla. Refugees already go through between 18 months and two years of an intense screening process (including interviews and biometric data) by intelligence agencies. It takes some refugees much longer than two years to clear the process so the argument of making it even stricter is surreal when you combine the sprouting gorilla idea of why this is akin to climbing up the wrong tree with the reality of the extensiveness of the process. While we screen, many seeking asylum in western countries don’t make it through … alive. The image of 3 year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body washing ashore in September generated a wave of civic compassion throughout the western world. Approximately half of the 4 million Syrian refugees are children. Too many politicians running for our country’s highest office and running our states’ executive branches, however, seem to be running in fear from families needing our help (I am fortunate to live in a state where the governor has followed a compassionate path on this issue). Politicians ride fear to build their own careers but statesmen redirect fear into building a stronger, united world. Do we want more statesmen or politicians?
The Reversing Gorilla. The front-runner in the Republican presidential campaign, Donald Trump, has called for a “big & beautiful wall” across America’s southern border to stem the influx of Mexican immigrants. It appears that Mr. Trump’s fear of immigrants has blinded him to the gorilla of reverse migration. As recently reported by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, “More immigrants from Mexico are leaving the United States than coming into the country…All told, the number of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. has dropped by more than one million since 2007.” Immigration reversal is a fact but we still have leading political candidates such as Mr. Trump calling for constructing a wall to stop immigrants from coming into the United States. If we follow Mr. Trump’s blind lead on building a “big & beautiful wall,” wouldn’t we be building it to keep immigrants in the country? We all know what happens to walls throughout history anyway: they fall (Berlin Wall, The Great Wall, etc…). In contrast, there’s a statue from France overlooking New York that is doing pretty well standing the test of time. Our politicians might want to focus on her for a little inspiration on the topic of immigration; some might even be inspired to become statesmen.
The Repeating Gorilla. This is Yogi’s gorilla: “It’s like déjà vu, all over again.” We seem to be repeating the same mistakes with ethnic groups all over again. The United States turned away Jewish refugees on the eve of World War II and we are considering doing something similar with today’s refugees? The recent call for creating a special I.D. for Muslims (Mr. Trump) and the Mayor of Roanoke’s not so subtle recommendation for modeling America’s World War II internment camps bring back to life our national embarrassment of how we treated fellow Americans of Japanese descent. We can’t let our fears blind us to literally and figuratively walking into the same mistakes we made in the past. We need to learn from fear rather than continually learning to fear.
When politicians make decisions and policies out of fear, the results are usually outside the realm of logic. Under current law, for example, if someone is on America’s no-fly list, they cannot board a plane but they can still buy a gun. Because of their fear, some political leaders can’t see the gorillas of fact because they apparently can only see guerillas of terror everywhere (even in five-year old refugee orphans) except in their blindspot; and homegrown terrorists are very thankful. Maybe, just maybe, when more of our politicians start seeing gorillas, our world will have less … guerillas.
Words sometimes help people see and pictures sometimes speak messages everyone can understand. Words do matter and pictures can speak. There was one picture this past week that spoke to the hearts of people everywhere and made me see words that were hidden in plain sight. The image was of Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body being carried by a Turkish policeman. The words I finally saw (words that I had looked at since I was 7) make 
up the Latin motto of my state’s (Connecticut) Great Seal or coat of arms: Qui Transtulit Sustinet. I didn’t know what they meant before this past Labor Day weekend but, for some reason, the image of Aylan made me notice them more and pushed me to discover their meaning: He Who Transplanted Sustains.
The dream of Aylan’s father (Abdullah) was to transplant his family from a worn torn country into a place of peace where he could sustain and nurture his family. Aylan, as the world now knows, didn’t make it through the journey. Abdullah’s dream became every father’s worst nightmare. We can only imagine what it was like to be the Turkish policeman carrying Aylan Kurdi’s limp body in the photo that has appeared in almost every social and traditional media outlet in the world. You don’t have to be a father to feel Abdullah’s pain of loss when he not only had to identify Aylan in the morgue but his wife (Rehan) and older son’s (Galip) bodies too. The wave of refugees from conflicts in Africa and Middle East (especially the Syrian conflict) into Europe has had a severe undertow of suffering for years but Aylan’s death, captured in a single image, made it impossible for people to ignore any longer. A wave of empathy has finally met the wave of refugees (over 2,500 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea this year alone).
It takes more than empathy, however, to make a difference in the lives of refugees and immigrants throughout the world; it takes compassion. It appears that the image o
f Aylan’s little legs and shoes dangling from the arms of a Turkish policeman has ignited citizen compassion where there has only been political callousness in many of the world’s capitals. While most developed countries have been trying to keep back the waves of refugees attempting to enter their borders by walls of ignorance (strict border patrols and immigration policies with few exceptions), the citizens of European countries have decided enough is enough and have transformed their empathy into compassion.
Examples of citizen compassion have been reported from Hungary to Austria to Germany to England. National Public Radio (NPR) reported how Hungarian citizens were lining up along the road where the refugees from the Budapest train station were walking 110 miles to the Austrian border and providing food and clothing. We’ve all heard the empathetic saying of “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” Well, one Hungarian woman, according to the NPR report, went one compassionate step further and took off her sneakers and gave them to a refugee woman wearing flip-flops. While British citizens have taken to social media with pictures of themselves holding #welcomerefugees signs, Austrian and German citizens have been lining up with their cars along their respective borders waiting to drive refugees into their countries. We should all be riding the wave of citizen compassion. It appears that European governments are now following their compassionate citizens with the announcements of new and more humane immigration policies over the last few days.
Mahatma Ghandi said “Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.” We should all live by our words. If we did, a handshake would still mean everything in the world to more than just a few of us. Trust, which builds strong societies, would gather strength. People would feel at home no matter where they are in the world. We all would know what Qui Transtulit Sustinet means.
Some nations are beginning to build paths into their countries for fellow human beings where all can walk no matter what type, make or size of shoes being worn. When you meet a refugee or immigrant from another country, are you a shoe giver, taker, thrower or ignorer? My hope is that you and I always have the compassion to answer in Hungarian. There is, however, at least one pair of little shoes no one can ignore.
Will the real Atticus Finch
please stand up? He stood up on July 11, 1960 when Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird and he has not sat back down since, even with the publication this month of Go Set a Watchman. Many book reviewers of Go Set a Watchman have echoed the thought that “This is a story of the toppling of idols; its major theme is disillusion” because Jean Louise’s Atticus is the darkness to the light of Scout’s Atticus. However, because Go Set a Watchman was the first draft of Mockingbird, the Atticus of Watchman came before the Atticus of Mockingbird. This is important because the context of the two novels is what makes me fill with hope and keeps my idol on a pedestal even as he becomes more human; the context reminds me of the saying that darkness is not the opposite of light but simply the absence of light. The callous bigotry (the dark) of Jean Louise’s Atticus was simply missing the compassionate understanding (the light) that flowed from Harper Lee’s pen into Scout’s Atticus. Atticus represents, in raw form, how compassion can evolve.
While compassion is certainly about kindness, it is also about anger and callousness. Compassion is not the absence of anger, callousness, indifference or even hate but a way of thinking and acting that overcomes them all. Just as courage does not occur in the absence of fear or conformity but in the moment of overcoming each of them, compassion’s strength arises in conquering ruthlessness and indifference. Compassion is the courage to be kind. With the release of Go Set a Watchman we now can see the depths through which Atticus’ ‘courage to be kind’ had to evolve from. If Atticus can transform from a racist hypocrite to a compassionate hero, we all can become better people; we all can write a narrative for our own lives that is filled with compassion and kindness. No longer is Atticus “a god” or heroic figure out of reach for us mere human beings to model, but he is one of us with all his imperfections. He is still the same hero that many of us have idolized for decades but now his character is more of a human hero … a hero that we all can choose to be.
There aren’t two Atticus Finches, there is the one and only Atticus. There are many first drafts in life and Harper Lee’s Atticus represents how we shouldn’t let them define who we become but we must acknowledge that they do make us who we are. Our strengths and weaknesses as individuals help to define the character of our communities. We choose to be divided or united.
How do we make the world a better place if we don’t acknowledge our weaknesses and foibles just as much as we celebrate our strengths? Atticus is based on Harper Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a man who “was a Deep South Southerner” and segregationist until middle-age. Mr. Lee evolved into an advocate for integration in the last half of his life so much so that his words of “Equal rights for all, special privileges for none” became one of Atticus and Scout’s most famous quotes in Mockingbird. Atticus is the literary parallel of Amasa. Just as the first draft of Atticus in Watchman does not define who he becomes in Mockingbird, Amasa’s first part of life did not define who he became in his daughter’s eyes (I and my fellow Atticus idol worshippers are grateful for that). Watchman is simply the first draft of Mockingbird and not the toppling of Atticus.
Atticus has been standing for our moral conscience for 55 years and now is certainly not the time for him to sit down or topple over. We need him to walk … to walk beyond Maycomb and into the Springfields, the Charlestons and the Baltimores of our country.
A wise old owl sat on an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard
Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?
~Unknown from 1800s
Wisdom and compassion share a common first step: listening. Owls seemingly understand this better than humans. Popularly known as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, many may not know that the owl is also a model of altruism and compassion. We, especially in American culture, seemingly listen more in an effort to reply rather than in an attempt to understand: simply turn on the radio and television or attend a local town meeting and ask yourself if you hear more wisdom and compassion or less. With the sound of our neighborhood barred owl once again echoing in the night and the release of a new book by Tony Angell (The House of Owls), I couldn’t help thinking of not only how owls epitomize the blend or union of wisdom and compassion but also what that symbolism might mean for us in an everyday sense. The basic lesson for me is: we must listen more than we talk because listening is essential for acquiring wisdom and understanding as well as for developing compassion and kindness.
An owl listens to understand its environment. It listens so carefully and intensely that scientists have found that the neurons multiply in the auditory part of its brain; typical neurons in a human simply add. It takes the idea of ‘listening to learn’ to another level. Imagine being so focused on listening that you could pinpoint any change in your environment or in the people you are with at any given moment. It would truly be a heightened sense of awareness. The owl, in essence, improves its understanding and awareness by literally and figuratively multiplying its focus on listening. It synthesizes at least three different auditory signals at once. Although I love and support our use of the owl as a symbol of wisdom, I wish we would understand why our symbolism is correct: it is the owl’s listening ability that makes it wise.
Researchers have recently discovered another owl trait that makes them unique among birds: altruism. A study in the journal Animal Behaviour found that barn owls share food with their “smaller, hungrier siblings.” Although such generous behavior is considered rare in the aviary world, the existence of owl altruism weakens the Hobbesian argument that the animal instincts to be selfish, “nasty and brutish” are the foundation of human action. The way of the owl supports the Lockean notion that the basic instinct of humanity is founded on kindness, generosity and caring. While human social reality is a mixture of both Hobbesian and Lockean ideas, the way of the owl asks us to shift the balance of explanatory power regarding the basis of human action from Hobbes to Locke. From business to politics to sports, most of our culture promotes Hobbesian thinking over Lockean thought. If the Hobbesian argument is right, however, can the owl really be the only instinctually altruistic sentient being? Even Charles Darwin said no. Yes, the same Darwin who many still erroneously believe is synonymous with the phrase “survival of the fittest.”
In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin challenged what he wrote in On The Origin of Species. In the newer work he said “I perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest,” and “it hardly seems probable, that the number of men gifted with such virtues [as bravery and sympathy]…could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest….for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Darwin’s use of the word “sympathy,” in the words of Paul Ekman, “today would be termed empathy, altruism, or compassion.” Darwin even called compassion “the almost ever-present instinct” when a fellow human being witnesses the suffering of another. The bumper sticker way of teaching and labeling Darwin’s ideas as exclusively focused on “survival of the fittest” is not only misleading, but it completely misses his idea that humanity’s success hinges on its compassion or sympathy.
Speaking of Darwin, did you ever wonder why we were born with two ears and one mouth? Just as the success of any owl is based upon the strength of its listening ability so is the success of any person. Are you ready to fly powered by listening and balanced on the wings of wisdom and compassion? Do you have the strength to follow the way of the owl?
BOOKS & ARTICLES:
Natalie Angier, “The Owl Comes Into Its Own,” The New York Times (February 25, 2013)
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (1874), esp. chapters 2, 4 and 5
Paul Ekman, “Darwin’s Compassionate View of Human Nature,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 303, no. 6 (10 February 2010): 557-558.
Paul Ekman, “Survival of the Kindest,” Mindful: Taking Time for What Matters
Kate Wong, “Owl Hearing Relies on Advanced Math,” Scientific American (April 13, 2001)
Julie Zickefoose, “Wise Guys,” a book review of Tony Angell’s The House of Owls in The Wall Street Journal (April 24, 2015)
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