I have a fond memory of my naivete 35 years ago. I was about to sail to the Orient on my first WestPac cruise with the Navy, and went to a used book store in San Diego to stock up on reading material, especially books about things Oriental. Besides Snow Country, The Sound of the Mountain, and a few others by Yasunari Kawabata, I was attracted to some books on Buddhism, about which I knew little. I had this image of Buddhism as a belief system populated by very kind people throughout Asia practicing equanimity and universal compassion.
Hah! The people of all these countries, steeped in Buddhism for two millennia, simply hated each other! The frequent recent rejection of Buddhism in a number of countries, in favor of a more secular attitude, had no demonstrable effect on the phenomenon either. Everywhere I went, those people hated the people of the countries across their borders speaking a different language. The Japanese hated everybody, and everybody hated the Japanese. Everybody admired the Chinese, or at least some fantasy of the old Chinese culture, but nobody liked them. The Chinese, in turn, looked down on everybody, and hated the Japanese more than everybody else. Everybody looked down on the Filipinos, who hated the Japanese but no one else (they were never influenced by Buddhism).
The Buddhists in Cambodia, if I recall the details correctly, would only go to a temple run by a Cambodian or Vietnamese monk. The Vietnamese would only go to a Vietnamese monk’s temple. Thais would have nothing to do with Cambodian or Vietnamese monks, but would tolerate a Burmese monk, and vice versa. (I saw this STILL played out years later when I began going to a Buddhist temple in Nashville, in an abandoned church purchased by some world federation of Buddhists or some such: It was set up to serve the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, but the federation had made the mistake of putting U Vimila, a Burmese monk, in the outpost. None of the refugees would go to his “Burmese” temple, so he had nothing to do until a few of us Westerners came along asking him to teach us meditation. LOL!).
So now the big boys of East Asia are ratcheting up the pre-hostilities in their time-honored, multi-factional, mutual hatred society. Doesn’t surprise me in the least, but I hope like hell we stay out of it and just let them kill each other off this time.
I saw that too back in the 60s, although I encountered Thais, but not Vietnamese, Cambodians or Burmese. Had a very ugly incident in Japan - pure race or ethnic or historical hatred.
The only mellow people I encountered in Asia back then were the Thais, and obviously things have gotten seedier and nastier in the past 4 decades for them too.
Oh, some ROK officers took care of us when they realized were were returning unaccompanied; carried out bags and cleared the way for us. Whether that was because of the war or because we were dependents and they were military I don’t know. Wherever they are I wish them well. Their kind gestures were more important for their courtesy and moral support than for any material effect.
Odd places and circumstances. Your post triggered a host of bizarre recollections.