Chapter 39 Chapter Thirty-eight "You don't need to learn Japanese, you won't need it after three years"

Minoru Hoshihara was born in Hankawa Village, Shimoshijo County, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan in 1914. His family was poor, and he had to return home to work in agriculture after graduating from elementary school. He enlisted in the army in 1935, but due to his low education level, it was difficult for him to be promoted. After one year, he was discharged from the army and returned to his hometown, earning his living by renting and planting land.Life is like an endless tunnel with no light in sight. Suddenly, he received a letter from his uncle asking him to go to "Manchuria". In September 1936, this tall Japanese youth raised a sum of travel expenses and embarked on a journey to change his destiny.

His uncle worked in the Manchuria Coal Mine Co., Ltd., and recommended him to Fuxin Coal Mine as a security guard at the headquarters of the mine, an armed supervisor who supervised the workers' work and prevented them from escaping.In less than a year, he personally beat and killed three workers. During this period and later, he served as the head of the coal mine management department, recruitment department, and labor service department. I will not talk about how he tortured and abused the workers, but just talk about this poor man How to become a millionaire. When the workers leave work every day, Minoru Xingyuan will issue a work ticket, and at the end of the month, the work ticket will be sent to the office to receive the money.As much as 80%, as little as half, Xingyuan Minor undercounted the time of the work ticket for various reasons, and the workers' wages have never been paid in full.Workers have to work up to 16 hours a day, and overtime pay is only 10% of the actual wages, and the rest is naturally in his pocket.

Minoru Hoshihara has 4 bosses, and each boss manages 300 workers.Workers' labor protection supplies and daily necessities are rationed according to the number of workers. Minoru Hoshihara has no or little hair and seizes it as his own.Eat in the canteen they run, and buy things in the store they run. First keep an account, and deduct it from your salary at the end of the month.In this way, a considerable amount of workers' income goes into their pockets.They also opened a small money shop and lent usury to the workers.For this alone, Minoru Hoshihara can earn tens of thousands of yuan a year.

Minoru Xingyuan and Batou opened casinos to profit from them, and then seized gambling in the name of maintaining law and order, confiscated gambling funds, arrested people and fined them, and put tens of thousands of yuan into their pockets every year. The biggest income is the embezzlement of recruitment fees. Minoru Hoshihara often goes to Shandong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia and other places to recruit laborers, distributes laborers all over the Northeast, and catches "floating waves". After being transferred to the Hunchun Coal Mine in April 1942, he worked full-time on this job.For an honest person, running around is a hard job.For Minoru Hoshihara and his ilk, it's a fat job.To recruit laborers in the Northeast, it costs 35 yuan to recruit publicity, labor board and lodging, and transportation expenses, and the cost to go to the customs is doubled.About 1/3 of it was embezzled by this kid.

I don't know when Minoru Hoshihara's uncle came to Northeast China and how he made his fortune. Before the "September 18th" incident, a large number of people from the pass to the east of the pass every year, to borrow a word today, they are the real "migrant workers".Regardless of whether they are procrastinators or "runners" who come and go in spring and autumn, they are almost all farmers, and they basically come to farm.The Korean (ethnic) people who crossed the border and crossed the Kanto due to natural disasters and wars are probably the same, except that most of their cultivation is rice.And like Minoru Hoshihara’s uncle, relying on his academic expertise, recommendations from relatives and friends, and self-struggle, he got a job in a big company like Mantan or Manchurian Railway, or opened a clinic in a small town.People with military background even joined the beard squad, and even became beard heads, serving as the Japanese special forces during the Russo-Japanese War, and causing trouble for the "Zhang regime" before the "September 18th" incident.But a poor guy like Minoru Hoshihara, without any skills, connections, or background, can't figure out the way to become a gangster and become a gangster. If he doesn't do it, he will just die in that big smoke bubble.No matter how much power Japan has in the Northeast, it is not "Manchukuo" after all.

But now it is different.No matter how impoverished or how shitty you are, as long as you are a Japanese, if you set foot on this black land, you can make your stomach grow taller, and you are a master. In May 1932, the "Kwantung Army Command's Hopes for Chief Komai and other Manchukuo Officials" (draft) stated: "In terms of economic development, although the door is open and equal opportunities are advocated, the most important thing is to seek Japan and Japan. human interests." For the Japanese in "Manchuria", the regional subsidy allowance is 50% to 100% depending on the working area.In addition to the supply of housing, the price is cheap, and the living standard is about twice as high as that in Japan.War criminal Sakata Yoshimasa and others wrote "The History of Puppet Manchukuo Police Crimes": "In 1935, the monthly salary of Japanese police officers in Wuchang County, Binjiang Province was 90 yuan, while that of Chinese police officers was only 8 to 12 yuan."

The Japanese in "Manchukuo" have compulsory education, and the schooling situation is better than that in Japan.The pioneering group only had two students, and they wanted to run a school.Naoki Hoshino, head of the General Affairs Department of the Puppet Manchukuo, said that "all Japanese in Manchukuo" must go to university. "Manchuria Reader" compiled by Manchurian Railway, when talking about the life, education, and medical care of the Japanese, said that "Manchuria" is the "heaven on earth" of the Japanese. Japan had so many spies in the Soviet Union and the Far East, and the 1.5 million Red Army assembled and marched in four directions, and the Kwantung Army was unaware. The news of the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan on August 9, 1945 was learned from the Manchurian News Agency's wireless communication afterwards.General Yamada Otosan, the last commander of the Kwantung Army, an unattractive little old man, was watching a kabuki performance in Dalian that day.It reminds people of Zhang Xueliang during the "September 18th" Incident, and his gang of Northeast officials, and the Kwantung Army and the Japanese began the total defeat and escape.

The "Xinjing" railway station is no longer "overcrowded", it is full of people from "heaven on earth".Passenger cars, tank trucks, convertible cars, no matter what kind of car, as long as they can squeeze into it, they will be "blessed" by Amaterasu.One train after another drove away, and more people continued to come, blocking the road.Soviet planes came to bomb from time to time, and the radio station played military music all day long, which felt like mourning. After August 13th, it rained continuously. Men, women and children squatted in the rain like a drenched chicken. The adults held the children in their arms and did not dare to move their nests. They were afraid that they would not be able to get in the car when it was their turn, and be thrown into the heaven of yesterday. , today's hell.

Worst of all were the people far from the cities and rail lines, mainly settlers from pioneer groups, especially near the border. In Paoziyan Village, Sanchakou Town, Dongning County, there is a pioneering group.The old people in the village said that they came in the "Three Years of Kant" (1936). There were men, women and children, and they lived in a family. , Three-foot hook or something.Looking at it like that, the days I lived in Japan were no better than ours.But people got better in those days, "Manchukuo" was toward them, and all good things belonged to them.Later, I saw that they still had guns, and besides farming, they also trained. What kind of peasants are they?On the night when the Soviets came to fight, the cannon rang, and the common people were all at home, and they didn't know who made the first move and who hit whom.In the second half of the second day, someone said that something was wrong with the Pioneering Group, and went to see that the bowls in the room were on the sky, the ladles were on the ground, and the pigs were all on the kang.As soon as the cannon fired, the man ran away.

There is a railway in Dongning, a military railway, and a group of those who moved quickly traveled by car. After the railway was blown up, they used the number "11" (referring to walking on two legs-editor's note).From Dongning, head north to Mudanjiang and Harbin, then go south to Shenyang and Andong to North Korea, and return to Japan by boat.It was such a route when they came.The Soviet army occupied North Korea and was blocked. Most of them were sluggish in the large and medium-sized cities in the northeast, panicking like a bereaved dog. Some old people said, we are the subjugated slaves who guard the house and sit on the ground. They came all the way to our place to be subjugated slaves. What is it like?No matter what it feels like, whether you know it or not, you will be a subjugated slave when you go back to your country. At that time, you have completely understood that only the home in your own country is the safest and most reliable.

The pioneer regiments were empty, as were the usual Japanese housing estates everywhere.People dragging their children and carrying their daughters, and those pushing carts to carry burdens are like the flow of people during rush hour, but they are not.Because they have to dodge steel-winged aircraft and race against the ground's rapidly advancing motorized army.Seeing the dust flying from a distance, fleeing teams mainly composed of women and children hurriedly hid in nearby forests or green gauze tents, watched the cars and tanks go away, and continued on the road.The case is repeated.Some encountered the defeated Japanese army, and some felt that they had relied on them, which often led to greater disasters and even massacres.When encountering villages and villages, they mostly avoided them at first, and then went to beg for lodging and some food.Some are accepted, others are rejected, and sometimes attacked.People kept getting separated, the brigade became a small team, reunited, and then separated.Some people fell into "Ma Da Mountain", some fell into the swamp, some died of illness and starvation, and some were kidnapped by wolves and dogs. Junpei Gomigawa, a Japanese writer who was a soldier of the Kwantung Army, and Ahma, one of the main characters in his novel "War and People", were thrown into the car by Soviet soldiers on the way to escape from Hulin. Throw it down again. There are countless orphans adopted by the locals who stayed behind to become "northeast daughters-in-law".No one can tell, how many people died in the wilderness.A more consistent statement is that after the Soviet Union sent troops to the Northeast, among the Japanese, including the Kwantung Army, the death rate of the immigrants from the pioneering regiment was the highest. And many people who were far away from the battlefield, including some pioneering regiments in the border areas, who were still immersed in the hustle and bustle of "Iron Manchukuo" and "The Japanese Imperial Army is invincible", learned that Japan had surrendered and was finished, like a thunderclap.The road is long, there is no means of transportation, and there are many women and children. Where are you going?In desperation, there were one or two leaders who clamored for "jade broken", and some pioneering groups paid homage to the emperor, then poured gasoline on them, and collectively set themselves on fire. The national anthem of Japan is called "The Generation of Kings". The Japanese flag is called "Hinomaru". Generally known as "Nizhang Banner", also known as "Sun Flag", in countries and regions that were invaded by Japan, it is called "Plaster Flag" "Hinomaru", with a pure white background color and a red sun in the middle. In August 1945, when American planes dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and the Soviet Red Army sent troops to the Northeast, from Japan to Southeast Asia, the Korean Peninsula and China, there was only a piece of white cloth left on the flagpole held by the "Imperial Japanese Army". The "Great Japanese Empire" is over. Some people may not be able to hold back for a long time, saying that many of the things written in your book were done by Chinese people. That's right, there are many pseudo-policemen in Huanren's "filling up the great river", and many of the "cleaning up the big ditch" in various places are all pseudo-military and pseudo-policemen.There are almost no counties in the Northeast without "mass graves" and tragedies. Many of the people who have seen it come forward are puppet troops and various traitors called "big troops".The executioner who killed Wang Fengge on the execution ground was a false lieutenant. The Tulongshan riot was one of the biggest lessons for the invaders. In the words of Furukai Tadashi, deputy director of the Puppet General Affairs Office, it was to "avoid the superficial exercise of power by the Kwantung Army and Japan." But Ben Zhuangfan said just over a month after the "September 18th" Incident: "On the surface, the Chinese are in charge, but the real power is in our hands for the purpose." On January 9, 1937, the Military Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Army Ministry made it clearer: "The commander of the Kwantung Army is the center for displaying imperial prestige and guidance, but if he publicly invades Manchuria It would be a huge mistake. Manchukuo is an independent country centered on His Majesty, who is united with the Emperor of Japan and enjoys the mandate of heaven. Perhaps the Kwantung Army unintentionally attacked the Manchukuo government or agencies. There is too much interference in work, but on the whole, it still promotes Manchukuo’s own work. The Kwantung Army maintains its power secretly, and does not interfere directly with Manchukuo’s politics and economy as much as possible.” Those low-level beasts in Pingdingshan's "photographing", Laoheigou's "killing the ditch", and Huanren's "filling up the river" are really coming. People who have been to Japan come back and say that Japan is a "land of etiquette". The author has never been abroad, but I know that the Japanese in "Manchukuo" were also very polite. There was a pioneering group in Pulebao, Huanren County. After 1943, all men who looked good were conscripted away.Every year when spring plowing, summer hoeing and autumn harvest are very busy, the pseudo-village office sends the common people to work in the development group.The old people said that after a busy day, before leaving, those Japanese women thanked them a lot, nodded and bowed their heads, and said "Arigado Hoho Yimasi" (thank you) one by one. Qin Hongyi, who lives in Dongning County, used to be an electrician for "Manchurian Electric Industry".The old man said that when there was a problem with the lighting in the unit or individual's home, they had to be repaired quickly, and everyone came into contact with it.The Chinese people are warm-hearted, you are a guest when you enter the door, and if you catch up with dinner, you will be invited to eat.It’s different when you go to a traitor’s house. Usually, they just ignore you. Sometimes the bigger the official, the less you will be treated as a human being. “Hawho” (rebuke, frighten) you are not doing well or slow, like “Hawho "Like a dog.It's the same when it comes to Japanese residential areas.The girl rushed to the door to greet her, bowed 90 degrees, and said, "Kongyou Qiwa, Erasia Imase" (Hello, welcome).When you're done, I'll send you to the door again, saying "Arigado and Yimasi" repeatedly.Usually a bar of soap, or a box of cigarettes is also given.If you don't, she bows endlessly. Many older people speak of similar situations, not just women, of course. It seems that there is no connection with the bestial behavior of those two-legged beasts. It is obviously wrong to say that the Japanese with a lot of etiquette were a minority, individual, or even very individual in those days, and it is even more wrong today. On July 11, 2007, the "Global Times" published an article "Learning to Do Small Things from the Japanese", saying: "Recently, there have been media reports that in many foreign surveys, Japan's national image is among the best in the world." They are polite, trustworthy, clean, and socially moral, and their crime rate is extremely low.It is said that Japanese women are not afraid of walking at night. If there were few two-legged beasts back then, why are there almost all counties in Northeast China without "mass graves" and tragedies? — How many times have I said that? On February 19, 1935, "Kwantung Army Commander Nanjiro's Speech at the Governor's Meeting" said: "The officers and soldiers of the Japanese army are the emperor's army, and their mission is to bring justice to the world by ordering chaos." Article 2 of the 5-article "Soldiers' Rescript" is that soldiers should be polite. Soldiers are not soldiers. In the island country of Japan, they may be polite and courteous, and there is no one to engage in "courage training". If you come to China, you will become devils and two-legged beasts.In the words of the Japanese writer Junpei Gomikawa whom I admire very much, a man who doesn't even dare to show his air usually dares to rape women from other countries on the battlefield.However, after returning to China, they were still so honest, a kind husband, a kind father, and still so polite. The Japanese do not regard the Chinese as human beings, but the Chinese do treat the Japanese as human beings. From February 2 to March 19, 1940, the "New Outline on the Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement in Northeast China" was passed by the representatives of the Jidong and Beiman Provincial Committees of the Communist Party of China. and the soldiers to make due publicity, especially pointing out the following points: A. Do not abuse the captives and release them through publicity and education. B. Sponsor Japanese soldiers and Japanese immigrants to resist the revolutionary action of the Emperor's government. C. Kill Japanese immigrants innocently D. Japanese immigrants who openly sponsored the Chinese liberation movement are allowed to have the right to live, equal and free after the restoration of China's territorial integrity and the loss of Northeast China." On December 25, 1941, "Wang Minggui and Wang Jiemin's Report to the Commander-in-Chief of the Third Route Army on the Activities of the Three Detachments" stated: "We also adopt a joint policy with regard to the Japanese working people. A Japanese bridge repair worker was released after giving him leaflets to promote him. On the 26th, more than 80 Japanese wood pickers were released." There are reports of this kind everywhere. Our policy toward war criminals and postwar Japan is unparalleled in the world. Even in the difficult three-year period, the Chinese, including the correctional cadres, "substitute melons and vegetables" (using melons and vegetables instead of food) and eat bark (the author's family and neighbors have eaten it), and the war criminals in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center still enjoy "Special Offer". "Anyone who has been imprisoned for more than 5 years can be allowed to live together if the war criminal himself and his wife want it." "One of the Japanese war criminals is not sentenced to death, one is not sentenced to life imprisonment, and very few are sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment." The infirm, sick and elderly should be treated preferentially and given special care.And those who are good in all aspects, do they need "special offer"?It's not because they were the only ones who could eat rice back then, and Chinese people are "economic criminals" if they eat rice, and they are not allowed to eat refined grains today, but to seek truth from facts.During the three-year difficult period, how many people were swollen, and how many elderly people starved to death. Wouldn’t it be humane to give them the average Chinese standard, or slightly higher?They are not our guests, but robbers and executioners who broke in to burn, kill, rape and loot! At least, those butchers who wrote about Pingdingshan's "photographing", Laoheigou's "washing the ditch", and Huanren's "filling up the river", no matter what level of war criminals they belonged to, they all deserve to die. On August 15, 1945, Chiang Kai-shek published the "A Letter to the National Military and Civilians and the People of the World" on the Victory of the Anti-Japanese War published by Chongqing Central Radio Station. The most noble virtue. We have always declared that we only regard the Japanese militaristic warlords as enemies, not the Japanese people. Today the enemy army was defeated by our allies. Of course, we must strictly oblige him to faithfully implement all the terms of surrender , but we do not seek revenge, let alone insult the innocent people of the enemy's country. We can only show pity for them being fooled and driven by his Nazi warlords, so that they can extricate themselves from mistakes and crimes. You know, if you answer with atrocities The atrocities committed by the enemy in the past, using slavery to answer their false sense of superiority in the past, will be rewarded with grievances, endless, and it is definitely not the goal of our benevolent teachers." This is Chiang Kai-shek's famous victory speech of "repaying grievances with virtue"-of course, this is true, but it's done, is it over? It is said that one of the reasons why we gave up asking Japan for war compensation is that if Japan is required to pay compensation to China, the burden will eventually fall on the Japanese people. In this way, in order to pay compensation to China, they will be forced to live for a long time. tough life. In 1874, Japan invaded and occupied Taiwan, and we had to compensate it with 500,000 taels of silver.Since then, how much white silver and colorful banknotes equivalent to silver have enriched Japan. I will not list them one by one here. The 230 million taels of compensation for the First Sino-Japanese War was equivalent to Japan’s total treasury revenue for four years at that time. Stalin said: Germany must pay 10 billion US dollars in compensation to the Soviet Union. Ask for neither more nor less. Seek truth from facts, and pay as much as you should. Neither the most serious and the quick, nor the light and the slow, the death penalty is not guilty, and the law is followed. ——Is this the defense and respect for the dignity of human beings, including the peace-loving Japanese people? If human beings choose the "Ten Best National Flags", "Hinomaru" should be one of them in terms of national flags alone. Many national flags, no matter how profound their implication is, or how they can embody the characteristics of the country and nation, it takes a lot of words to make people understand, and it is still difficult to understand the meaning. "Hinomaru" is simple and clear, with a pure white background and a red sun in the middle, no matter what skin color, language, or culture, people can understand it at a glance and leave a deep impression on them. But history has proved that it was not a sun at all, but the bloody mouth of Japanese militarism, a huge wound piercing the peace of mankind, with blood spurting like waterfalls and corpses piling up like mountains! "You don't need to learn Japanese ("学" sound xiao), and you won't need it after three years." During the interview, many old people said this sentence.The old man Chen Lei told me that shortly after the Japanese invaders occupied Jiamusi in 1932, this sentence spread like wildfire in the local area. "Three years later", if this is a fixed number, there are still nearly 10 years before the fall of "Manchukuo", which seems to be a bit ahead of time, but didn't the invaders say that it was "Iron Manchukuo"? "Photography", "killing the ditch", "washing the ditch", "filling up the river", and "purchasing" land by Tulongshan——by any one of them, the Japanese are doomed. In the words of many old people, "the Japanese are not finished, and there is no reason for it". There is a Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan, where 2.5 million "national gods" who died fighting for the country since the Meiji Restoration are concentrated, and about 2.13 million "gods" died in World War II alone. In the autumn of 1978, the tablets of 14 Class-A war criminals headed by Hideki Tojo were officially moved into this shrine for worship. Since Prime Minister Takeo Mifu visited the Yasukuni Shrine for the first time in a private capacity in 1975, Japanese prime ministers such as Fukuda Takeo, Ohira Masahiro, Nakasone Yasuhiro and Hashimoto Ryutaro have all visited the Yasukuni Shrine, each time causing an uproar in neighboring countries. On August 15, 1985, Nakasone officially visited the shrine as Prime Minister. At the beginning of the new century, it was Junichiro Koizumi's turn. On April 7, 2001, Koizumi said during his campaign for the president of the Liberal Democratic Party: "I don't understand why I can't visit the shrine." The homonym of "shrine" in Japanese is "chicken frame". In those days, people said that visiting the shrine was "push your buttocks in front of the 'chicken frame'".Those "chicken racks" everywhere by the invaders have long been wiped out. Koizumi went to the Yasukuni Shrine where Class-A war criminals are enshrined to pay homage, but he said that he was "sending a declaration of peace."When shells and bombs with the word "Showa" were bombarded indiscriminately in neighboring countries and regions, didn't "Showa" mean "pursuit of peace"? When he was arrested at Hideki Tojo's residence, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Claus of the Secret Service of the Allied Headquarters said to the military police guarding the door: "Go! Tell this bastard, we have waited long enough. Bring this guy out!" Koizumi said that he "I don't understand", and the author really doesn't understand how the gap between war criminals, "dog bastards" and "heroes" who "establish peace and stability", or the ghost worship culture represented by Koizumi, and human axioms and justice Is it that big? Wearing a full set of "Imperial Army" uniforms and holding 38 caps, Japanese veterans lined up in front of the Yasukuni Shrine holding "Hinomaru".Groups of young men and women in the same attire are showing off their might in the crowd.Outside, propaganda vans filled the road, the band was blasting wartime music deafeningly, and the tweeters yelled hysterically: "The Great East Asian War is not a war of aggression!" "The Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands in China) are Japan's inherent territory!" "His Majesty Long live!" Echoing the farce of the annual "End of War Day" is the continuous "gaffes" of Japanese politicians.Such as "It is wrong to describe that war as a war of aggression", "The Nanjing Massacre was fabricated", "Japan did not conduct the Pacific War for the purpose of aggression", "Japan and South Korea merged", "The responsibility lies with South Korea ", "Japan also did some good things for Korea during the colonial era", and so on and so forth. In close cooperation with the constant "gaffes", there are endless "textbook incidents". It is inevitable in many countries to write histories according to their needs, more or less.It is indeed difficult to describe history objectively and fairly.How each country worships its ancestors is its own business, and no one else can control it.The problem is that for Japan, all this is not its own business behind closed doors. In China, North Korea, South Korea, and some countries in Southeast Asia, people living in peace and sunshine today, how many people's fathers, grandparents, and great-grandfathers died at the hands of devils?Just like a robber, he broke into the house, smashed, looted, burned, and killed others, occupying other people's territory.This will naturally be brought to court and sentenced to death.But some of his descendants regarded him as a hero, never forgetting him, and worshiped him.He also told his family and future generations that he went to the neighbor's house for the sake of our family's safety, and even made the neighbors stand up and be liberated, and live a good life.His trial was unfair and the charges were fabricated and imposed. Including the victimized country back then, foreigners are now entering Japan every day. Which one "entered" with a 38 cover, a crooked handle, and a Zero or some other type of fighter jet?And who in Japan created an "independent country that adapts to our country's national policy" and "photographed" Japanese who resisted or did not resist, "killed the big ditch", "washed the big ditch", "filled the big river", Killed?Then "purchase" the land at a price of a few tenths or even less than one percent, and let the Japanese take back the gods they enshrined, and let the Japanese change their names? In the 1970s, Mr. Utsunomiya Tokuma, the president of the Japan-China Friendship Association, once said: "If Japan is required to pay 50 billion U.S. dollars in reparations, it will take 50 years to pay it off according to Japan's economic capacity at that time. That will certainly hinder the growth and development of the Japanese economy, and as a result there will be no Japan today, which should not be forgotten." The Japanese represented by Tokuma Utsunomiya remind people of human conscience.But what can you say to the Japanese who have a completely different "memory"?How can you not keep your eyes open for them? We used to say they were a minority, or even "a handful".At the beginning of the new century, when textbooks once again became political hotspots in East Asia, the four Japanese prime minister candidates, including Junichiro Koizumi, "unanimously supported" the Ministry of Education's decision to release right-wing textbooks. What does this mean? Mei Ruao, a Chinese judge who participated in the trial of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, once said during his lifetime: "I am not a revanchist, and I have no intention of writing the blood debt owed to us by the Japanese imperialists on the Japanese people's account. However, Forgetting the misery of the past may invite disaster in the future."