Don Tow's Website

Throughout my life I have been very active on extracurricular activities. The previous
article “Introducing My New Book” in the March 2025 issue of my website describes the first part of my book “The Yin and Yang of the Dragon and the Eagle: Tale of Two Cultures and Two Countries, which I plan to publish later this year in both English and Chinese.” That article discusses the first half of my book. It discusses that my family had to pull up roots multiple times due to the need to escape from wars. It also discusses the period of the 1960s at the University of California at Berkeley during the turpulent times of the Free Speech Movement and the beginning of the worldwide Diaoyutai Student Movement.

The second part of my book describes the many extracurricular activities that I was involved in during my adult life. Most of these activities have centered on injustices and atrocities, especially those injustices and atrocities that were experienced by the Chinese that occurred during WWII. It describes extracurricular activities that involve organization like “The New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA)” and “Ten Thousand Cries for Justice (10,000 CFJ).” This current article describes an example of the extracurricular activities that I was involved in during these 50+ years.

Next year will mark the 95th anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931-1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25-30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, the country that did all of this still has not acknowledged what it did and has been trying to rewrite this part of history. We are reaching the time when all of the people who experienced this tragedy first hand will have passed away. However, many people of different nationalities around the world have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from this part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated anywhere else in this world.

Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. This article illustrates the activities of these two people, Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.

Trump has been in office as the President of the U.S. for his second term for only two months, he has made numerous political moves, both in domestic policies and in international policies. I don’t think many of these policies are well thought out or follow a certain theoretical framework. His policies, besides reflecting on the characteristics of Trump as a self-centered person whose primary interest is himself, his wealth and reputation, and a narrow view on what is good for the U.S., I don’t think that these policies reflect a well-thought-out domestic or international policy, so when these policies receive critical reviews, Trump would backtrack. Nevertheless, I think politically Trump is very much against China, so his policies always reflect a policy that is critical of China and takes measures that impede the natural growth of China and the accompanying growth of the rest of the world.

This is clear from many perspectives. From his cabinet members who are always been severe critics of China, such as Secretary of State Mario Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Although he advocates the Monroe Doctrine that other countries should not have any significant involvement in North America, or even Central America or South America, he is intimately involved in forming alliances in Asia, far from the U.S.’s home base in North America. This includes forming military alliances such as with Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia. One also cannot just take his words for granted. One must see what he is doing with his actions. Even though on the surface he seems to be friends to Putin of Russia, but that may be part of his strategy to create more differences between Russia and China, to split Russia and China, to avoid having to face both Russia and China when conflicts arise.