Purpose Part 2

The calendar year is 1953, my years are eighteen.

I lie in a Hospital bed at the U.S. Army Hospital in Tokyo, Japan. A bleak room, the view from the window, a brick wall about four feet away. I have many hours to contemplate my Life Cercumstance, dwelling on Whys and Purpose. Many Whys enter my thoughts throughout the long days and nights, being confined to this depressing little room. How had I made it through the Korean War, the horrific encounters, Human Beings inflicting the most inhumane things onto other Human Beings? Plus fourteen months as a prisoner of war, how and why did I survive this most horrific time on my Life Path?

As I have told you, all things have Purpose.

Actually this Paradox of Purpose goes back many years, starting in the calendar year 1939 through the year 1941. During this time in my Life my Father would beat me severely, because, I could not or would not conform to His Ways. As long as I can remember, I knew who I was, a proud and honorable Human Being of the Onondaga People, not a white Euro-American, that he and the State run School system tried to make me into. A phenomenon of the time, it was called, "assimilation", taking American Indian Children and placing them into State or Federal Schools, that they believed would take away their Indian-ness and the Children would somehow, miraculously be assimilated into the dominate White Society, no longer Indian.

Yet, neither my Father nor the School System could break this Spirit that I knew who I was. Some called it, stubborn. If I would just say the Words, it would all go away. Honor, this was stronger than any beating or anger toward me by the school teacher. Should you loose your Honor all is lost. I endured and I am sure it made me a better Human Being because of it.

At that time I truly did not understand the Purpose of the beatings nor the anger.

From my Hospital bed, contemplating my Life situation, the Hell of War and my time and torture as a POW. How and why was I the one who survived, when thousands did not.

The Purpose, as I see it, after much deliberation, the beatings as a Boy, gave to me, Strength, Perseverance and the ability to overcome and tolerate pain. This equipping me for what was to come later on my Life Path, War!

I know this may seem to be the extremes of Purpose, yet the Truth of it is, if what had not happened as a Child, would I be here today, a Proud Onondaga Indian? I do believe with all of my Being, these circumatances occured, these encounters, for the Purpose, SURVIVAL!

White Crow December 1953