From Buddha to Bullets

Life is full of contradictions. A Big Mac and Diet Coke. Those with the most want more. Greenpeace's boat badly damaging a Philippine coral reef it had sworn to protect.

Japan has many contradictions, too. Old homes brimming with new technological gadgets. One style of Japanese is taught to foreign language students; quite another kind is spoken by the citizenry.

World War II brought about many contradictions, horrors and ironies, perhaps none more striking than the fate of Hyogo WardÂ’s original Daibutsu, third largest among the sitting Buddha images in the country. (#1 is in Nara, #2 in Kanagawa Prefecture).

It was 1944, and the war was slowly being lost. Metals are a chief need in wartime, such raw copper, iron, steel and brass are chief ingredients for the bullets, planes and tanks of any proper war of imperial aggression.

This dilemma at the forefront of the collective military leaderships' consciousness, the idea popped into their heads- What better source of metal than the Hyogo sitting Buddha?

Yes, you heard it here first. From Buddha to bullets. In some cataclysmic case of terribly bad karma, some allied soldier may have met his doom with a bullet made from his lordship, the Great Buddha of Hyogo Ward.