The molding of a hero By IAN O'CONNOR
(Original publication: Nov. 22, 2001)
The bombs were exploding all over Osaka when
a 5-year-old boy found himself wedged between
fear and patriotism, between being young
and being Japanese. Nagayasu Ogasawara was
waiting on line for a ride away from certain
death. Fifty-six years later, he remembers
the fierce devotion to a wartime cause as
easily as he recalls the unmitigated terror
that gripped his soul. "I was afraid
but I also wanted to grow up and fight,"
Ogasawara said. "Everyone was patriotic.
Everyone was ready to die for their country."
American B-29s were pounding his dear Osaka
home in 1945, some 1,300 planes firebombing
their way across three days in June. This
was a month before Harry Truman wrote in
his diary that "the Japs are savages,
ruthless, merciless and fanatic," and
two months before atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and claimed a quarter-million
lives. Ogasawara had escaped when his parents
ran an end-around on the endless evacuation
line leading to a train, a bus and a boat,
the mother and father racing to the front
and screaming that they'd lost their children,
all while their only sons remained one frantic
pace behind. Now Ogasawara laughs over the
memory of his parents' successful ruse. |
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It began a journey that took a fleeing Japanese
boy from the inferno of American rage to
the very heart of American heroism, to the
small martial-arts studio he runs above a
New Jersey Ford dealer ? a dojo that produced
one of the first United States citizens to
do what Ogasawara's people did in a faraway
war.
"Jeremy Glick became a hero by dying
for his country, but I didn't make him that
way," said Ogasawara, who taught five
of six Glick children at his Kokushi Dojo.
"I didn't do anything; he did."
On the morning of Sept. 11, Jeremy Glick
did indeed join a small band of freedom fighters
on United Flight 93 and launched America's
fight back. An air-phone conversation with
his wife, Lyz, confirmed what two other passengers
had learned in calls to the ground: Hijacked
planes were bringing death and destruction
to the nation's symbols of economic and military
might. Suddenly a prophecy was in play. On
Nov. 24, 1987, Glick's English high school
teacher wrote a letter on his behalf, a letter
Freda-Lee Hubler said yesterday included
a sentence she'd written for three or four
college applicants out of 400 who had requested
her recommendation over 20 years. "In
fact, it is not hyperbole to say (Glick)
is exactly the kind of person in whom we
adults may feel confident in the future of
the nation," Hubler wrote then. So it
was that a 31-year-old sales and marketing
man drafted himself into combat. A fellow
passenger, Todd Beamer, had listed Glick
on his roll call of briefcase-wielding soldiers
in a conversation with a phone operator.
After Beamer said, "Let's roll,"
Glick is believed to have attacked the terrorists
who had seized control of the cockpit, and
a plane headed for the White House or Air
Force One or a Chernobyl-times-a-thousand
disaster at a nuclear plant came crashing
into the Pennsylvania countryside, blazing
a legend the Glick family believes was shaped
by the revered judo instructor who wouldn't
bring himself to see it that way. "It's
never about Sensei," said Jeremy's sister,
Jennifer, using the martial-arts term for
a respected teacher, "and that was always
his appeal. He had a great impact on our
family. The dojo was a second home to Jeremy
and his brothers; they all wanted to prove
themselves to Sensei. "What's amazing
is that in Jeremy's most incredibly stressful
situation, when he knew he had minutes to
live, he said goodbye to his wife, expressed
his love, and told her he trusted the choices
she'd make with their baby daughter. Jeremy
kept his focus and concentration and wasn't
overwhelmed by the situation. That's all
from his training. Sensei's an incredible
man. He trained an American hero whether
he'll admit it or not." Ogasawara would
only admit that Jeremy was among the best
students he's had in 35 years at the dojo
that delivered two recent Olympians ? Sensei's
daughter, Liliko, and Celitz Schutz. Fate
brought together teacher and student. Ogasawara
had left Tokyo's Kokushikan University for
the States and planned to return after a
two-year stay, before Jeremy was born. Ogasawara
chose to stay in America long enough for
a neighbor of the Glicks to recommend him
as a molder of disciplined and confident
kids. Jeremy was 7 when he walked through
the door of the Westwood, N.J., studio, 18
steps above the Ford dealer and across the
street from a memorial to the locals who
served from World War I through Vietnam.
The long, narrow hallway leading to the dojo
is now graced by American flags and pictures
from Jeremy's youth, snapshots of him holding
trophies and smiling under his wild and free
Woodstock hair and posing with the Ogasawaras
on tournament trips ? outside a blue van
aimed toward a 21-hour drive to Illinois;
outside the Gateway Arch; outside the Air
Force museum in Ohio and near the war jets
parked in more peaceful times. The train
that once carried so many World Trade Center
commuters to the river still rattles the
windows of the dojo, a dark 38-by-60 room
with a large beige mat, a jammed trophy shelf,
a bulletin board covered with write-ups of
Glick's judo triumphs, and framed Japanese
sayings such as, "Softness can control
hardness." It is a training camp in
stark contrast to those belonging to the
hooded, cowardly terrorists, the Afghanistan
camps now being reduced to lunar-landscape
dust. When Jeremy unwittingly began preparing
for an unfathomable fight, he proved more
durable than the vast majority of his peers.
"He was so physically and mentally strong,"
Ogasawara said. If judo means "the gentle
way," it still demands a toll most aren't
willing to pay. "In some classes I'll
start off with 10 students and be down to
one at the end of a month," Ogasawara
said. "We get a lot of crybabies. Jeremy
never cried." At 15, Jeremy took third
place at the junior nationals. As a senior
at the University of Rochester, a school
that didn't even field a judo team, Glick
entered the national collegiate championships
in San Francisco, where he unexpectedly found
his mentor and leapt into his arms. Ogasawara,
the boy who fled America's war machine, was
now the head man at West Point. Ogasawara
agreed to coach Glick when his cadets weren't
engaged in competition. Jeremy won the national
title. Nine years later, Ogasawara is certain
his black-belt student defeated those black-heart
terrorists. "I don't know how he did
it, but I do know that he did something not
many people can do," Ogasawara said.
"Jeremy probably grabbed them and hit
them and smashed them, because knives would
be no problem to him. "The terrorists
made a big mistake. It was very unfortunate
for them that Jeremy was on that plane."
Like his lost student, the teacher doesn't
cry. Ogasawara said his eyes tear up three
times a day but that he doesn't let them
spill over. He wants the good times to win.
He wants to remember when he jokingly told
Jeremy he was Jewish-Japanese, and when the
Glicks insisted he come to Jeremy's bar mitzvah
to prove it. Ogasawara's students are as
young as 4 and as old as 67, and between
the throwing and pinning on Jeremy's old
mat they hear tales of the ultimate sacrifice.
As the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor nears,
the students also hear Ogasawara lecture
them on something his father, a Japanese
factory worker bombed out of his home, never
would've believed. "I tell them the
United States is the best country in the
world because of its freedoms," Ogasawara
said. "If any student has a choice of
citizenship between America and Japan, or
America and any other country, I tell them
to stay in America." Today Ogasawara
has much to be thankful for. He escaped the
wartime poverty and perils of Japan ? "We
just wanted to survive and find enough to
eat," he said ? to build a successful
life in the States. He became an eighth-degree
black belt, an author of judo textbooks,
a father of an Olympian, and a trainer of
cadets. More than anything, Ogasawara became
a molder of a patriot. Jeremy Glick's sister,
Jennifer, has established a fund and a Web
site (jeremysheroes.org) devoted to school-aged
children who need financial support for the
training and discipline Sensei gave her brother.
This cause will be a topic over Thanksgiving
dinner ? the first Thanksgiving dinner of
the rest of America's life. The Glicks plan
on playing the annual games of flag football
Jeremy cherished before gathering by the
TV to watch the real thing. "It will
be quiet," Jennifer said. "We'll
make the most of it." A few miles away,
Ogasawara plans to gather his family for
a simple feast. The man said he probably
wouldn't cry. True American heroes never
do. |
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