By Jane Otaqui

(This poem was inspired by a conversation we had after our Japanese Daughter-in-law Atsuko’s Dad had travelled to the Fukushima area for a family funeral. He expressed his profound sorrow at not being able to return to the places he knew and loved as a child and my Husband, a Palestinian Father of Andrew, said “I know exactly how he feels!”)

Palestine/Fukushima Japan “I know exactly how he feels”
What unlikely parallels this world of ours produces
Atsuko’s Father travelling near his childhood home but not allowed to enter
Expelled so people say
By mankind’s greed and a failure to take full account of nature
With safety completely disregarded at such cost
When the tsunami swamped the nuclear reactor
Caused his longing for a land and life – forever lost
The same as Andy’s Pa, banned and excluded again by greed
Booted out at the point of a gun and no point for him to visit now and be taunted
By what should have been
His childhood landscape crushed and brutalized
While the world turns a blind eye
In the name of victims of yet another ghastly regime

– Jane Otaqui contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.