Richard Flanagan is an esteemed Australian writer. My son recently gave our family a copy of Flanagan's recent book, Question 7. It is a personal memoir that masterfully weaves together a wide array of topics, from nuclear physics to the Tasmanian wilderness. The most striking part of the book was the following beautiful passage (page 140).
"Three Japanese women to see my father many years later. They came with gifts. They asked him to tell his story and they listened they said they were sorry.
There was a sense of strange ceremony, the awkwardness of ensuring something exquisitely fragile was not dropped before being given and received. There was a reserve on the part of both my father and the women, perhaps explicable as a nervousness about giving offence when none was intended.
They were part of a group of Japanese women committed to exposing Japanese war crimes. Two were middle-aged. One was elderly. They were brave and dignified. The eldest was their leader. She had survived the the Tokyo fire bombing. My father expressed his sorrow.
His children and his grandchildren were all there. We watched this with its strange weight of human dignity and goodness. I could not ever have believed that saying sorry might mean so much. None was the government. None bore responsibility. No one spoke for anyone other than themselves. Nothing said had had any national consequence. Yet in that strange communion lay liberation. What other answer can any of us make to the terrible question of history?"
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