COLLECTORS
The American liberal weekly The Nation published a letter in its February 8 issue from a Japanese Buddhist priest appealing to Americans to return the relics they took during World War II. Two examples are cited:
“Life magazine for May 22, 1944, published a picture of a skull of a Japanese soldier that an American soldier had sent from the South Pacific as a souvenie to his fiancée in Phoenix, Ariz. Further, Time magazine of June 26, 1944, described.-how a U.S. Congressman sent President Roosevelt a letter opener made from the forearm of a Japanese soldier = killed in action.
The Buddhist priest believes that "true and lasting world peace can never be achieved" until "thoughts of hate and bitterness" are "removed from one another's hearts." Perhaps the time is ripe for this, since World War II ended twenty years ago. To further these aims, he is devoting himself "to returning such mistreated relics to their homeland't to be "treated with the utmost solemnity. .. "
"Tf among your readers,’ he says to The Nation, "there is anyone who has received and possesses such relics, or anyone who has any information regarding such, please be so kind as to inform me."
All Americans -- if they have an ounce of Christian feeling -will respond to this moving appeal, even if it comes from a source re-_ sistant to the Christian ethos. The address is Shinko Sayeki, 1-68
Horinouchi-machi, Minami-ku, Yokohama,
While the appeal is being circulated in the USA, it might be well to bring it to the attention of any Americans now collecting relics in places like the Congo and South Vietnam. Co-religionists of those who become processed as raw. material may eventually ask that the finished relics be returned for solemn final rites in the country of their origin. In the interests of brotherly love and-world peace, good Christian Americans will, of course, wish to be in position to respond. . Please do not mistreat the relics in your collections from expeditions to other lands.
ON