He who forgets his past is bound to repeat his mistakes. At the core of our history are wars that should remind us that war and violence are not answers to conflicts. They never bring peace. At the heart of these wars were the lives lost or shattered and in the peripheries were people victimized by actions neither of their doing nor desire.
The Nanjing Massacre of 1937 in China by occupying Japanese soldiers and the 1945 massacres in many places in the Philippines by withdrawing Japanese troops, are both remembered in history as incidents of insanity and inhuman atrocities. Japanese troops took out their anger and frustration on civilians -- committed multiple acts of severe brutality, violent mutilations, rapes, and large scale massacres – on the innocent populace, not just on the combatants.
Bahay Tsinoy presents Remembering: two stories of two peoples sharing a dark past, but both emerging from the ashes of war with a conviction that the wars of our fathers should never ever be visited again on our future generations.
7 November – 28 January 2009
