Preface
One night, i was listening to radio, a talk-show animated by shiro shinobi, this night, the main guest was wan-shi-tong, the millenial spirit of knowledge, known as the one who knew ten thousand things, it was a late-night talk show, but it had been 4 years since wan-shi tong came from the spirit world, thus, the old shinobi tried to make him talk as much as possible on every subject he could, as always, the spirit of knowledge itself gave calm, well thought answers in a heartbeat, and told them with this deep and fierce voice we all know. Then, shiro shinobi oriented the conversation towards kuvira, a subject that wan-shi-tong had avoided during his last visit, mostly due to the fact that tensions started to rise in one of the new earth kingdom republics, but this time, he had to face a problematic, which, like the anti-bending movement, casted shadows and brought questions more than we were used to.
Wan-shi-tong answered as always, with a second of silence, and then an anecdote to introduce his story, now, i do not remember the exact words, but what he said was that he had seen countless rulers try to force their will upon others using knowledge, strength, and that to him, kuvira was no different, just another human who made the mistake of toying with a strength she had no right on, but that in the end, this war was, as it always had been before, a victory of the avatar.
Though it appeared wrong to me, i did not think much of it, but the following days, i found myself thinking about it more and more, what troubled me was the manicheism in wan-shi-tong's argument, that the avatar won wars to protect humanity from humanity, because the avatar was after all the wisest of humans, for he had a spirit within him. However, my knowledge of the past avatars, kuruk, kyoshi and roku, most notably, showed me that the avatar made mistakes, horrible mistakes, but the reason behind them was the avatar's humanity, something that i witnessed when meeting (lucky me) Mrs & Mrs sato, and to me, wan-shi-tong was wrong, however, it was not, i found out, the main reason i was concerned with this thesis, it was because it was all around me, the world had accepted that the avatar saved the world, and nothing else happened.
Sure, i am exaggerating here, the kuvira trials permitted us to see what happened during the war, and we journalists had the chance to be here to record around us, but still, it was factual, as it happened mostly in wars, the « good guys » and the « bad guys » had faces, Avatar Korra & Earth Empress Kuvira were the perfect faces, but as always, the ordinary civilians had no identity, while at ba sing se university, i found it normal, because it was easy to tell the story, but living through war, i felt as if my face had been ripped out (once again, i'm exaggerating, my face is still here, and still handsome).
But to me, the most troubling thing was what kuvira tried to do, destroying our idiosincrasy, our individuality, our humanness, by the work camps and the discriminations, we, the free citizens of the united nations, we did too, in the way we told the story of our war.
This is why i interviewed us.
Now, here, by us, i do not mean the survivors, the firebenders or the waterbenders nor we, as people today, but us in the sense of the people back then, those who inflicted suffering, those who watched, those who did good, those who did bad, those who did wrong, those who survived, those who fought, those who did not know, and those who knew, those who didn't want to get involved, i had the chance to interrogate every person who mattered to me in this story, the story of the humans in this war, the why, the how, the before and the after, to me, it was a story that mattered to me, it was a story i could transmit, so i did.
These interviews range from 186 to 188AG, it took me two assistants ( Setsuo Oshikawa & Hidemi Takahashi), 83 bands of tape, most of my wife's patience [laughs]. For some of the interviewed, i had to go in a various range of places, the fire nation royal quarters, a cave in a swamp, the spirit world, and two prisons in locations i cannot reveal, happily, all of the people i wanted to interview accepted, i do not know wether they shared the same feelings as mine towards this war, but i could see they wanted to talk about it, i showed all of them the script of our interviews, only three asked for corrections, which i made, even though i tried to reach compromises, but i respected all of their decisions in the end.
The interviews are not presented in chronological order, but in the order that made the most sense to me, i think it is possible to talk about an emotional order, if such a thing exists.
158 people & 4 spirits were interviewed in the making of this book.
I won't really dedicate it to them, because this book is not their story, it's ours.