When I came across the book, and looked at the rarely designed red on black jacket cover, The Fugu Plan, I said to myself, don't know much about it, but probably should hurry up and get up to speed.
Now that I've read through it, let me rephrase the abovesaid paragraph. When I came across the book, with what appears to be red Hebrew lettering in the background, set on a dark background reminiscent of other books that try to tell truths many books written for no other reason than fame and popularity don't tell, I said, shamefully, don't know much about it...
What do you mean, haven't heard much about, if you are who you say you are? How did this underinformed case come about?
Okay, so I've been to about 7 colleges and universities, master degreed, blah blah, and firmly hold on to the belief that what I was taught as a child, a reference to deep roots in the heavy trenches from the startup, came from individuals that actually formed history, not just wrote or talked about it, was and pretty much forever will be, the last solid as a rock word, of course giving some room for maybe more understanding of it as time moves along, and never once, as far as I reasonably can remember, ever heard of the Fugu Plan.
Now when reading through it, it turns out there are some aspects I have been at least introduced to, however terms Fugu per se may not have been spoken.
The part about being 'ashamed' of not hearing about Fugu and the book, is not a matter of hey I'm disappointed at what was taught to me before and through the college years, but it sends a message that in general, in the education system here in the US, there is some catching up that could be stand [stood] to be done.
What is the Fugu Plan, the referent book, and the plan itself?
Before going into that, let's briefly discuss, the colloquial cliche, 'if I was walking down the street in any town in America...', maybe with the exception of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as that is where some renown schools are, '...and did a random survey' of 20 kids between ages 15 and 20, and asked them, tell me in 20 to 50 words what the Fugu plan is or was, how many of them do you think, today, September 2024, would have a substantive answer in the ballpark?
The answer to how many kids would have an answer, is probably easier to answer, because unfortunately the answer is likewise unfortunate.
Emphasizing again, strengthening education for all Americans can help the strengthening of America.
The Fugu Plan is a book written in or about 1979, -it took a minute to pull all that data together to form the book up, including research at Washington's Library of Congress, so it might not have all been crammed into '79.
Incidentally, I resided within an hour's drive of LOC for many years, and did an internship that involved regular visits to that library, and can imagine that the process to pull the covers off some of the materials the author did, may have been in short wording, painstaking.
Some other quick words about I, before the next step,- I've sat in the classrooms with either Holocaust survivors, or people that new survivors or about Holocaust survivors, certainly did extensive studies about the events in the era. I've been in the education setting, formal or informal, with more WWII veterans than I will share the number with here.
Okay, I haven't heard about the very words 'Fugu' plan until going through the book, still haven't told us what the book is, a half dozen paragraphs into the blog post. [Google it, there are reviews out there.] This book, and there are other writings about its subject, as well as, now, Wikipedia articles on the subject, in brief words is about a plan to involve immigrants that were escaping types or aspects of persecution, who arrived into Japan in an era that preceded the culmination of WWII events.
Take note of what was said and not said.
Persecution from roughly the end of WWI to and through the end of WWII, occurred to many persons, groups, and in numerous places. I did a whole movie, put on YouTube, that includes discussion about Roma persecution during the era. Most popular history sources, such as magazines, textbooks, videos, about post WWI through WWII persecution, will cite and maybe focus on the 'persecution of Jews', and say if going into the subject, most of the persecution was 'perpetrated by Nazis'.
Just exactly who was exactly who, (such as people, nationalities, ethnicities, heritages, religions, and ancestries) in and during every ripple of what happened when people fled persecution from roughly 1917 to 1947, might not ever be known by one sole individual outside the Creator himself.
The rest of what could go into filling up more space in this post, can have some of it self-evident.
Things like, the geographic span of the Japanese territory or influenced regions then, compared to now. There were was a plan that involved Jews that involved Japan back in roughly the 1930s.
Of course there are different 'meanings' of what Jew is, plus the somewhat new English alphabet that provides us with those letters.
Leaving the rest of this post blank for now, and letting readers do their own research, another section of this post broaches on what might be relevant connections of the Fugu Plan to today.
Relevance today
Well, sometimes it is hard to accurately analyze events of the present if you did not analyze events of the past. It is hard to analyze something you did not know was there. Hence, knowing about an event or development can be an obvious start.
We are in a time here in the end of summer, start of fall days of 2024, that is coming up on 1 year since the start of a crisis that got timeline marked on October 7, 2023, reference music festival storm. It is captivating the magnitude of students on college and university campuses that have rallied for certain causes thereunto.
The cause for peace and best conditions for fellow humans is year round, with or without an October 7th-like crisis, before October 7th, every day in the entire decade before October 7th, and every day after, even if widely agreed on peace agreements are finalized and entered into.
Books like The Fugu Plan, (Tokayer and Swartz), allow readers to see the different ways individuals were fragmented into different areas of the world, and see underlying principles that concern the treatment of others.
(It is my personal opinion that) 11 months into the crisis, although coming closer to a peace solution being nearer may be true, there is still a ways to go before a condition that can be described as, at peace, is in place.
-Today, September 7th 2024, news has been circulated that within recent hours an American citizen, Turkish as well, and young lady was killed in the West Bank amidst a protest rally, reported to be the result of a stray bullet.
