Brothers

Every year, I read "The Sniper" by Liam O'Flaherty with my students, and every time we make our way through the story, I choke over the last line: "Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face."

The story illustrates the intimacy of civil war. Two opposing snipers head off in Dublin, Ireland, and ultimately one sniper must kill the other to survive. Curiosity gets the best of the victorious sniper, and when he wanders over to see the face of his enemy, he realizes that he killed his own flesh and blood.

As much as I accept the reality that in every civil war siblings could potentially be pitted against one another, I still struggle to stomach it--to imagine how the issues of a nation could position someone to kill his own relative.

Today, scanning through CNN.com, I came across an article called "Brothers Went to War, but Not All on the Same Side," which was a true story about 7 brothers who fought on both sides of World War II. Five fought for the United States, but the other two--left behind in Japan--fought for the Japanese. All seven were drafted by their respective governments.

This headline caught my attention, but its resemblance to "The Sniper" gripped my heart.

Don Oka, one of the brothers who fought for the US, said that "[o]n Christmas Eve, 1944, he remembers running for cover while his younger brother Takeo--a pilot--dive-bombed an American Camp on Tinian Island in the Marianas...As [Takeo] returned to his base in Japan, he was shot down. The wreckage and his body were found on an island near Iwo Jima. I knew he must have been serving because he was at the age, but I didn't know until it was all over and I came back and found out he died."

His story led me to think about war on a much larger level--neither man chose to enter the war, and neither man actually chose his side. And in this war they were both forced to fight, both Don and Takeo were squaring off against an enemy very much like himself--his brother. On a more general level, how often does this happen? How often do opposing soldiers fight against people who are more similar than different?

Despite being fictional, the fact that O'Flaherty's sniper killed his own brother in the Irish Civil War saddens me year after year, but the improbability of real brothers in a world war attacking one another provoked a whole host of other emotions. In a global society, our wars abroad are far more intimate than many civilians probably stop to consider. The intimacy is heart-wrenching. And the intimacy ignites every idealistic sentiment I've ever possessed about diplomacy. After all, despite our differences, if we go back far enough, we all share the same blood. Maybe one day we'll find a way to stop shedding it.