The Reason Why

By the time they reached the area near their third mission site, night was nearly upon them. The sun was setting, and after three battles and a day of frantic running, Uchiha Ming signaled for everyone to rest and prepare camp. Perhaps they were tired, or perhaps they were waiting for Uchiha Yo to explain. In any case, hardly anyone spoke until dinner was over.

Uchiha Yo rose to his feet, walked over to the campfire, and stamped it out. Then he said, "You're all confused, aren't you? Why did I have to kill them when they were all shinobi from the same village? Before I answer that, let me tell you what I think about the relationship between the clan and the village. The Uchiha and Senju founded Konoha together. Yet our ancestor, one of its founders, became dissatisfied with some of the village's policies and wanted to lead the entire clan away from Konoha. The clan members did not want to return to the Warring States Era. After all, too many of our people had died or been wounded then. The children might have been sent back to an age where they could die in battle at any moment. So the clan abandoned our ancestor, Uchiha Madara, and refused to follow him into further war. In his rage, our ancestor fought the God of Shinobi, Hashirama Senju, in a battle that shook heaven and earth. The Valley of the End was left behind by that battle. In the end, our ancestor died in battle, while the First Hokage was gravely wounded and passed away not long after. He handed the position of Hokage to his younger brother, Tobirama Senju. Think about it. If your own elder brother had been killed, how would you treat the killer's clan? Even if they had not participated, even if their hearts were with Konoha. Their clan head had defected from Konoha. Their clan head had indirectly caused the death of your elder brother. Their clan head had killed Konoha's guardian deity. They were a cursed clan. Their entire clan was full of lunatics. Even their clan head was a lunatic—how could the rest of them possibly be normal? Madness was the direction in which their clan evolved.

"Without Konoha's guardian deity, the surrounding nations began eyeing Konoha, and the First Shinobi War soon erupted. If you were a Konoha shinobi, what would you think? If it weren't for your clan head, our guardian deity would not have died. We would not have had to go to war. Our families would not have been torn away from us. Tobirama Senju was still deeply wary of the Uchiha then. In such turbulent times, moving against the Uchiha Clan was unwise. So on the surface, he claimed to trust us and had us manage Konoha's police force. In truth, he locked the Uchiha inside the village. Unless there was a war, the Uchiha no longer needed to leave the village to take missions. He also took Uchiha Kagami as his disciple. On the surface, he seemed to be trying to ease relations with the Uchiha again. In truth, he wanted to install an obedient clan head for us. What did the police force do? On the surface, it looked as though we held great power. But that so-called power was aimed at civilians and those small shinobi clans. Our clan was proud. We handled matters with fairness, and when we believed we were right, we never explained ourselves. But in the eyes of those small clans and civilians, we were a violent clan, an arrogant clan. That only deepened the hatred and dissatisfaction other shinobi clans and Konoha's civilians felt toward us. After graduating from the Academy—or without even attending the Academy at all—we reported directly to the police force. It was filled entirely with our clansmen. That meant that before becoming jonin, the backbone of the village, we had basically never formed bonds with anyone who was not an Uchiha. How do you think others would treat you on missions? And our clan would never grovel to win anyone's favor, because we are Uchiha!" At that point, Uchiha Yo looked over everyone's reactions. Uchiha Retsu and Uchiha En were listening intently, while Uchiha Ming's brows were tightly furrowed, as though he were chewing over Yo's words.

Uchiha Yo continued, "After the Second Hokage died, several members of the escort unit returned with news that he had passed the position to Hiruzen Sarutobi before his death. Do you think the Senju Clan believed that? The escort unit had Uchiha, Sarutobi, Shimura, Akimichi, Utatane, and Mito members—but not a single Senju. Then they turned around and said that the Second Hokage had died in battle. They had not even recovered his body. They said whoever was Hokage was Hokage, without a single document to prove it. Konoha had been founded by us and the Uchiha. If they were choosing a Hokage, it should have been chosen from our two clans. Once those words were spoken, both the clan members and the Senju set their sights on the Hokage position. At the time, Uchiha Kagami had the strongest support. Yet Uchiha Kagami, an Uchiha and a candidate for Hokage, publicly supported Hiruzen Sarutobi and withdrew from the race. Whether he did not want Konoha to fall into civil strife over this, or whether the Hokage faction had promised him something substantial, I do not know. But what he did was betrayal. He betrayed the Uchiha. He betrayed the trust his clansmen had placed in him. That was also the Uchiha's only opportunity to change our fate so far. Once Hiruzen Sarutobi took office, the small clans had usurped power. What would a man who could not receive much support from his own clan do? He would weaken the Senju and Uchiha as much as possible, while establishing a council of advisors to hollow out the council of elders. The advisors were all from the escort unit, yet Uchiha Kagami, also from a great clan, and Akimichi Torifu of Ino–Shika–Cho were the only ones excluded. The first Uchiha to die in the entire First War was Uchiha Kagami, Hiruzen's rival for the position. The clan that suffered the greatest number of deaths in that war was the Senju. Originally, with Lady Uzumaki Mito, the clan matriarch, protecting them, the Senju could have remained sheltered until they rose again. But what did the Hokage faction do? They ignored the strongest supporter of Uzumaki Mito. The Uzumaki clan was exterminated, and their nation destroyed. That was a whole country—one of the great clans of the shinobi world—and they were wiped out. Even the symbol on our forehead protectors was based on the Uzumaki clan emblem, representing the friendship between Konoha and the Uzumaki clan, a friendship as close as that between clans joined in cultivation. And they were destroyed. We only symbolically sent a rescue team of a dozen or so people! Konoha was the strongest village in the shinobi world and spent more than anyone every year on intelligence across the shinobi world. Yet by the time we received the news, it was already too late. We could only go meet them and search for Uzumaki survivors. Why are there still quite a few Uzumaki clan members in the shinobi world today, yet none of them come to Konoha? Because they do not trust us. Konoha betrayed the Uzumaki, who had fought alongside us in blood during the First War. It betrayed the oath of friendship between clans. When they saw a Konoha shinobi's forehead protector, what do you think they felt? Happiness, or hatred? To curry favor with Lady Mito, the Third Hokage took Tsunade as his disciple. Was he sincere? Not a single ninjutsu Tsunade knew was taught by him. It was merely a political gesture of goodwill. The carefree Tsunade was fooled into staking the last strength of her clan on the war. Then when the Second War ended, the Senju Clan was nearly wiped out. The young clan head of the Senju was blown to death. Heh, blown apart so completely that not even his organs remained? Who would be next? Who else remained as a mountain pressing down on the heads of those small clans that had usurped power? Lady Mito and the Uchiha. Lady Mito was already advanced in years, and she had also been turned into the cornerstone of the Hokage faction's suppression of the Uchiha. What if Lady Mito was gone? Who would suppress the Uchiha? No one! Uchiha being invincible in one-on-one combat against anyone of the same level is not merely our own slogan—it is recognized throughout the shinobi world. So what would they do? Make geniuses disappear? Curry favor with a few snot-nosed brats and turn them into informants? No matter what they did, they could never be better than the Uchiha. Root was affiliated with ANBU, yet operated independently under Shimura Danzo. Shimura Danzo was a staunch supporter of the theory that the Uchiha were a threat. He opposed our clan at every turn, openly and covertly targeting the Uchiha. He was an expert at manipulating public opinion. Whenever words unfavorable to someone began circulating, they would spread across the entire village before long. There was no need to think about it—it had to be his doing. I have always suspected that several geniuses from our clan who vanished were secretly murdered by him. The reason we are still alive is, I believe, that the clan head, our teacher, and our clansmen have silently sacrificed a great deal. The Uchiha's enemies have never been the other shinobi villages. Our enemies are right beside us, right behind us as we fight. That is why I had to kill those Root shinobi. So long as something can weaken our enemy, no matter how small it is, it must be done. The path for the Uchiha Clan to change our fate is not compromise. On the contrary, it is struggle. Peace is the goal, while struggle is the means to achieve peace. Peace is relative, while struggle is absolute. Only through struggle can there be true peace. Therefore, seek peace through struggle, and peace survives; seek peace through compromise, and peace dies."