George Matsuoka

August 22, 1942

PREPARATION FOR PEACE

Today's Niseis, and Isseis too, find ourselves under circumstances peculiar and unprecedented in the annals of democratic institutions. We have staked into this and into every other center our ideals, our hopes, and our sacred honor. Everything that we do, everything that is done to us will leave a lasting impression upon us and within us. The outlook for us is very confusing. In this storm what can we do? Yes, there is something which we can do; that is for us to prepare for the future.

This evening I wish to point out to you some of the ways in which we can prepare for peace.

We can prepare for peace by fostering the ideals of education. Education does not merely mean for us to be schooled in an occupation or trade, though this is vitally necessary. It also means for us to be enlightened to the great task before us. We must be educated in the understanding of our problems, and in the understanding of the problems of others. We must come to comprehend the complexity of finding our place in the peace that is to come. Through education leadership must be built to strive for our equal rights without delusion and, as Lincoln put it, "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right."

That is what education can do but also we can prepare for peace by strengthening ourselves within through religion. Religion has been the cornerstone of civilization itself. It will continue to represent everything that is good and honorable. The church must not be neglected in the keeping of our morale and in the burning away the seeds of bitterness and hatred. It must not become for us a property, as Thomas Kelly, the Quaker philosopher, said "The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God."

Moreover in our preparation for peace there is another point more significant than education or religion; that is, family unity. Dr. Gordon Sproul of the University of California once said, "The fireplace no longer represents the symbol of family love and devotion; it is merely a place where one flicks the stub of a cigarette on the way to the movies." In normal life this was the tendency; for us the problem is much more acute. For example: we no longer have what can be called a real home; the family dinner table does not exist. Many families, parents and children, brothers and sisters, very seldomly get together to spend the evening or to discuss matters of the day. The closeness of family relationship is widening. We must guard against this seemingly inevitable breakdown of the family circle. For unified families are the foundation of a unified society. It is through unity of families that unit in larger and greater things come.

Thus the ways to prepare for are through the channels of enlightened education and morale rearmament, and through the maintenance of family unity.

Let us find that way. Let us not become one of the great tragedies of this war. And to paraphrase the words of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, let us move together with unbounding hope and determination into the storm and through the storm toward the light that's ahead.