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Massacre and Atrocities in Hong Kong during WWII

April 2007 57 Comments

Hong Kong was a British colony before and after WWII, but from 12/25/1941 to 8/15/1945 when Japan surrendered, Hong Kong was under the control of Japan. This article recounts the massacre and atrocities committed by the Japanese troops during those three years and eight months of occupation of Hong Kong. The purpose of recounting these events is not to bash Japan or to generate hatred of Japan, but to make sure that we do not forget the lessons of history so that similar events do not occur again in the future. This is especially important taking into consideration that Japan’s current prime minister recently denied any major atrocity committed by Japan during WWII and Japan’s school textbooks have been rewriting history.

Japan started its invasion of Hong Kong on 12/8/1941 (or 12/7/1941 U.S. time, the same day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor). Great Britain surrendered Hong Kong to Japan on Christmas day, 12/25/1941, on a day that the people of Hong Kong called Black Christmas.

Racial Group Staff Disparities in NJ School Districts

February 2007 Comments Off

Using public domain data (http://www.state.nj.us/njded/data/) from the NJ Department of Education (DOE), I have performed an analysis of the racial group (RG) distributions for the students and certificated staff of several school districts in NJ, and have found that there are systemic racial group staff disparities in NJ.

For example, for the Middletown Township School District (where I live), the results are shown below.

Middletown Township School District: 2004-2005*
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
92.0	97.6	1.8	1.0	3.5	1.4	2.6	0.0	0.2	0.0
Total number of students = 10,272. Total number of certificated staff = 913. * Data came from the NJ Department of Education (DOE) web site: http://www.state.nj.us/njded/data/

The above table clearly shows that for all minority RGs, the % of certificated staff is substantially less than the % of students in Middletown. The NJ DOE website contains data from 1999-2000 to 2004-2005 (it also contains the student data for 1998-1999 and 2005-2006, but no certificated staff data for those two years). The above disparities basically have remained steady during these years. The NJ DOE website does not provide RG data for the non-certificated staff.

I have also done a similar analysis of five other school districts in the central NJ area, and have found similar disparities. These five districts are Asbury Park City, Edison, Holmdel, Long Branch City, and Marlboro. Their number of students/certificated staff are, respectively, 2812/427, 13563/1248, 3561/291, 5401/585, and 6012/492. With a few small exceptions, all minority RGs in all the school districts that we have analyzed are under-represented. The analysis results for these other five school districts are shown in the next table.

Asbury Park City School District: 2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American/th>
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
1.7	66.0	79.6	31.4	18.4	2.1	0.3	0.2	0.0	0.2
Edison School District: 2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American/th>
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
38.5	89.3	8.6	2.6	8.2	5.0	44.5	3.0	0.1	0.0
Holmdel School District: 2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American/th>
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
76.8	96.6	0.5	1.0	1.2	0.3	21.3	2.1	0.3	0.0
Long Branch City School District: 2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American/th>
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
33.1	83.1	31.4	9.9	33.9	5.6	1.5	1.2	0.1	0.2
Marlboro School District: 2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American/th>
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
74.4	94.5	2.1	1.2	3.1	3.3	20.3	1.0	0.1	.0

What are the major reasons for the above under-representation? Without access to appropriate data (e.g., data on recruiting and hiring policies and procedures and the corresponding statistics), we do not know for certain. We speculate that the reasons may include:

Small pool of qualified staff from these minority RGs
Lack of proper advertisements of openings that can adequately reach these minority RGs
Assessment standards that may not be fair to minority RGs
Interviewing and selection biases, including subtle ones.

We urge the NJ DOE and the various school districts to look into this issue, and find solutions that can remove the above under-representations of minority RGs, thus providing a fairer and richer diversified staff to serve the diversified student population in NJ.

The conclusion is that it seems that the under-representation of minority RGs at the certificated staff level is a systemic issue in NJ, and is not limited to just a few school districts in NJ.

Breathing and Taijiquan

February 2007 5 Comments

Although in introductory Taijiquan classes the instructor would often tell the students to just breathe normally, proper breathing techniques are very important as one goes beyond the introductory class. Since beginning students already are very much pre-occupied with trying to learn the various Taiji forms and also trying to relax their bodies and minds, requiring them also to learn when to breathe in and breathe out would be counter-productive. There is just too much to learn, and adding the requirement of breathing would just cause them to tense up and forget the forms they are trying to learn.

Before I continue, I want to emphasize that there is not necessarily just one way of teaching breathing in Taijiquan. As a matter of fact, different instructors may teach it differently. In the rest of this article, I just want to discuss my interpretation to the approach of integrating breathing techniques in learning and practicing Taijiquan. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on this subject, and I welcome the readers’ comments, criticisms, and suggestions on this article.

Can NJ Be a Major Tourist State?

February 2007 Comments Off

Many people may immediately answer this question with a big no, and some people may even laugh at the naiveness of the person raising this question. As a resident of NJ for over 28 years and who on many occasions have pondered what to show out-of-state friends and relatives visiting us, I have also always answered this question in the negative. However, recently after returning from a vacation cruise in the Caribbean and just as the plane was flying over NJ and almost ready to land at Newark, I revisited this question. Mentally I started to list all the potential major tourist attractions in NJ. To my surprise, I came up with a very long and fairly impressive list, and it caused me to revisit the above question.

Don Tow's Website

Massacre and Atrocities in Hong Kong during WWII

Breathing and Taijiquan

Can NJ Be a Major Tourist State?

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