War sometimes causes people to do things they never would otherwise, like torture. In the video, an ex-prisoner of war named Eric Lomax tracked down and confronted one of his torturers after 50 years of trying to track him down.
In the video, the two sit next to each other with a strange sense of familiarity. When the torturer grabs Eric’s hand, he remarks about how smooth Eric’s wrists are. Eric tells him that’s because the bones that were broken in the torture are on the other side.
The rest of the video is heartbreaking. His torturer tells Eric how sorry he is for what he had done and how he had been living in despair for years because of it.
Regardless of who wins or loses, war is never a good thing. The loss of life on the part of soldiers and the loss of trust between people resonates for decades and even centuries after a war’s end. Hopefully both Eric and the Japanese soldier in the video find peace eventually.
