Something being lost in this hobby

On Aug 20, a good and old friend of mine, John, W1ITU, has submitted an interesting story to Facebook as quoted below.

On that day in 1968, the Warsaw Treaty Organization, lead by the USSR, has invaded Czechoslovakia which was in the process of democratization named Prague Spring. Ham radio has worked as almost only information transmission medium when the other media like broadcasting were shut down at that time of this historical incident.  

John has experienced the exciting event through ham radio as he described here. 

Quote;

 I was out on a very late college date when the news came over the car radio that the Russians were invading Czechoslovakia. A few hours later, I went over to our college ham radio station and fired it up. There was a Czech station on, sending in Morse code, who had attracted a very large crowd of mostly West Europeans (we had both short and long skip that morning) and he was working one after another, repeating the same short message in English “I protest the Russian invasion and occupation of my country.” The reactions were very sympathetic, even from the Yugoslav stations. Then he was called by a Russian ham from the Moscow area. I thought, “this is going to get interesting.“ The Czech just repeated his same message. But the Russian didn't respond, and he just went away. The Czech worked a couple more stations and then all of a sudden, UA3KAA, the USSR Central Radio Club station in Moscow called. I recognized the station even before the callsign, because it had a very peculiar rattle on its signal. And it was almost never in the main part of the 20m code band. It stayed up higher, running a USSR-wide Russian morse code net. I used to copy them to practice receiving Russian morse code – and the Russians send beautiful code! Anyway, the Czech went right back to him, repeated his message, and then added, in Russian, “Pochemu? Pochemu? (Why? Why?) The Russian op answered in English, “Because old man your country has been in crisis.” I can still hear it! Everyone thought the contact was over, and started calling again. But underneath, I could hear UA3KAA still sending, but now in Russian, and he was flying! I would have given anything to able to have copied that, but the others calling over him made it impossible. And, then, suddenly, the Russian went down, and the Czech went down. It was over!

Unquote;

Everyone knows the Western countries or the UN have not substantially succeeded endorsing and supporting the democratization in Czechoslovakia. The USA was deeply involved in the Vienamese war and could not go out of the line of the detente with the USSR at that time. The other Eastern communist countries were concerned to be influenced by Prague Spring and were strongly against the democratization process.

The people in Czechoslovakia should wait for the reformation for democratization until 1989.

I remembered of this news at age 19 years, when I was going to wind ham radio up and to start getting ready for the entrance exam to medical school. Without knowing such an exciting drama has been on ham radio.

Ham radio was an important tool for communication world wide at that time. Such a historical event as this invasion of the USSR to Czechoslovakia has been handled by ham radio operators. In personal perspective, ham radio was more humane then. Ham radio was almost the only way to communicate with others in real time. There were a lot of chances to know the others in person.

I am afraid this human aspect of ham radio has been lost, if not all. It has become like a game without humanity itself. If they say it is just a trend irresistible for us in the history, we should accept it as it is. I still wonder if we are doing anything to go against it and to keep something essentially human, seemingly being lost, in this hobby.