Editor, San Diego Jewish Times: 

This letter is in response to the article by Don Harrison in the Dec. 15 issue of the Jewish Times regarding the swastika shaped building at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.

I would be outraged had the building been overtly designed as a swastika with the attendant message it would deliver. But, having read the architect's comments in Harrison’s article, I don't think it was purposefully so designed. It’s entirely possible the designer bent the wings of the building as a practical solution to accommodate the physical space available. Busy designing the trees, he failed to see the forest.

It seems to me that while our society is becoming more and more sensitive to the many communities of which our country is comprised, undoubtedly a good thing, it is also in some cases becoming too reactive to what are often inadvertent infringements upon those sensitivities.

Buildings come in many shapes: the Marriott Towers on the harbor are crescent shaped — and since that particular configuration has religious meaning to over one billion of the world's people, some might find that shape offensive. There are star-pointed forts and prisons. Pentagons, which may be taken as desecration of someone's religious symbols and circles and octagons, have meaning for others.

In my opinion, this increasing clamor of differing sensitivities over inadvertent offense tends to Balkanize our country. Careers and lives have been ruined by a slipped word or a misplaced joke. We are all inadvertently guilty at one time or another and the danger is that we are growing fearful of talking across group lines. The key word is "inadvertent."

As I see it, we are at a time in history when our civilization — our Judeo/Christian philosophical base — is being tested by another religious ethnic framework, and we need to be united to successfully meet it. If we don't hang together, we shall surely hang apart, as Ben Franklin said over two centuries ago. That advice is as cogent today as it was then.

That all being said, the views expressed in the article are certainly of valid concern and if nothing else will serve as notice for future architects to be more aware. But to pressure the Navy to alter the shape of this building 40 years after it was built, I think not.

Sheila Orysiek
San Diego