Never forget.
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Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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Lex, my father was involved in the WWII Pacific theatre as well. He was only eighteen when he traversed that ocean on a large ship and went to fight (he was a pilot, too). Time passes on…he’s on his forth Japanese made car now.
This recruitment add for the Japanese Maritime Defense Force might make you smirk. Was it this blog that had some corny US military Dungeons and Dragons style recruitment advertisements from Christmases past? Don’t remember, ah well. At least we aren’t the corniest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjAXJaFydwM&eurl=http://rokdrop.com/category/japan/
I found the above link when I googled ‘neuter’.
I was on Oahu at Schofield for 11 days on an exercise a few years back. To date my only time in Hawaii. My duties had me prisoner for all of about 5 hours. In that 5 hours a lifelong friend of mine who now lives there picked me up and we made a beeline to Pearl and the Arizona. It was an honor to visit her memorial. It gave me the same feelings of awe and respect I had experienced when walking the entire low water mark of Omaha Beach and while standing in silence while among the fields of white crosses and Stars of David in the US Cemetary above it. And of being in the company of the heroic unseen.
And it was in mid December of all times!
Never forget, yes. But never forgive? I’m really surprised at you Lex. If that’s how you really feel, then I’ve just lost a lot of respect for you.
Good post, Lex.As I did last year, I read again your experience at Pearl that day.I’ve been there several times and always the hair on my body stands up and I get that lump in my throat.It’s like walking past the Viet Nam memorial.Brothers standing watch until that day when the sea shall give up her …
My father was a pilot in the Pacific theatre. He bathed himself in DDT and died at the age of 63. He loved his country.
Timmeeee,
My father was a Pharmacist’s Mate in WWII, assigned to the Marines in the Pacific. He served up through Leyte, then went stateside until the war ended when he was sent to Japan to escort and tend to American POW’s being sent back home.
To this day, he will cross the street rather than give the time of day to a Japanese. What he witnessed in New Guinea, the Philipines, and with repatriated POW’s were things that even his devout Christianity cannot allow him to ever forget or forgive.
The Bishop of New Guinea and more than 2 dozen nuns were kept on a starvation diet, and held in a pen built beneath the hut that their Japanese captors used for a bathroom. That was the easiest of the examples he had to deal with.
To his mind, what his comrades endured was bad enough, but to have Japan treated easier than Germany for similar war crimes, and to see Japan unrepentant to this day, is galling.
He’ll be 89 on his next birthday. He’d like to hear the Japanese officially apologise for their actions in WWII, but he isn’t holding his breath over it.
Neither should we.
Timmeeee
If you have never had to bleed for a cause, it is easy to forgive. Those who passed before you bled a lot so that you could forgive what happened a long time ago. Unless you have served in their footsteps how dare you lose respect for any serving now.
Timmee,
The God that I serve requires me to confess my sin and ask for forgiveness before he grants me dispensation. He did this so that we mere mortals would have a model for our behavior. I’ve neither seen or heard this coming from the Japanese government….hence, the lack of forgiveness for the Japanese government. To the above, add the fact that there is still a large element within Japan that would have Japan return to it’s old militaristic ways and you have a recipe for trouble.
I suspect that the above argument in favor of the no-forgiveness proposition is shot full of holes and can be swept aside quite easily; but, it’s the way things look to me.
Japanese leaders have issued many statements of apology over the years. There is a list of these on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, these apologies seem to fall on deaf ears.
Japan has stood with the U.S. to the limits that their constitution allows in our current conflict. We should not forget the past. But we should not let our past blind us to the present either. Japan is our friend.
Timmeee, if you lost respect for Lex, then WE just lost ALL respect for you. I’m with everyone else, I’ll forgive when the Japanese government apologizes and tells the truth about it’s war crimes…but I ain’t holding my breath, and hell will freeze over before I buy a car from the same company that build warships and war aircraft that did the deed on Dec. 7.
Oh, I don’t hold the current day Japanese responsible for Pearl Harbor any more than I hold current day Virginians responsible for slavery. But I’ve no intention of forgiving the ones who attacked us.
On December 7 1941, my father was reporting to Pensacola for flight training and flew P-Boats out of Alaska and Australia as an Enlisted Pilot and retired as an LCDR his last squadron being VX-6 for Deepfreeze I and II.
He transfered to Pensacola from VJ-3(Lahaina Roads).
A fortuitous PCS indeed!
Lex,
Certainly the average Japanese man on the street does not owe us an apology for the atrocities and war crimes committed 60 some odd years ago by the previous generation. However, by default, the ones that attacked us are represented by the current governmet; and they, because of their position of authority are responsible for the issuance of that apology.
Correct me if I’m wrong though. Sometime my powers of reasoning and logic are a bit bent out of shape.
“Oh, I don’t hold the current day Japanese responsible for Pearl Harbor any more than I hold current day Virginians responsible for slavery. But I’ve no intention of forgiving the ones who attacked us.”
So you’re holding a grudge against dead people? I’m just shaking my head.
So by your logic, the Japanese should never forgive America for incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese women and children. And I ain’t interested in hearing any arguments about how the Japanese brought this on themselves or how a million American casualties were prevented. The women and children who died in those firestorms had no say in the matter.
AW1, your father sounds like mine. He served in the British army and fought against the Zionist terrorists in Palestine, 1946-7. Now he is bigoted against Jews. So the war turned your father into an anti-Japanese bigot and mine into an anti-Semite.
I think there is something in the Bible about forgiving your enemies. If you don’t then you end up with the Balkans.
Timee (etc), I’d feel so much more reduced about your loss of respect for me had I ever previously been sensible of it. As it is, not so much, even if your tone of smug preachiness was not in itself off-putting. Which it is.
Most people who die in firestorms or bombings have no say in the matter, and moral people generally can choose between alternatives bad and worse. So it’s regrettable that you’re not interested in hearing arguments about causation and relative merit. That will make things harder on you, in the long term. Learning new things, I mean.
That a pretty good ad hominem argument you got going there Lex.
But let’s get back on topic.
1. You’re holding a grudge against dead people.
2. If you don’t learn to forgive, then you end up with the Balkans.
I’ve seen many WWII vets reconcile with their former enemies, both German and Japanese. They are much better men for it.
Timmee,
You want ad hominem? You got it. You are a self-rightous condesending prick. Go bother some other people somewhere else. You lost your audience.
GreyEagleO6
Timmeeee , I’ve been told I deserve “niceness” awards, so I’ll do this gently.
I’ve seen you around here before, so I know you’ve read other things Lex has written. That one seemingly out-of-character statement from Lex should lower your opinion of him would seem to indicate it wasn’t a carefully-considered opinion in the first place.
I’ll admit, I don’t quite understand where Lex is coming from here, but he’s brings a very different mindset and experience to the table than I. However, what I see in the rest of his writing led me to send him an email yesterday asking if he would elaborate. He may or may not respond (questions of religion and character are very personal), but coming at someone with a respectful, “Would you be willing to explain what you meant here, as it doesn’t fit with my understanding of you as a practicing Christian?” often gets one a lot further than self-righteous condemnation. And if he is wrong/unreasonable , it might even have the effect of softening his heart–a very Christian thing to do.
~ quietly applauding ~
Timmeee,
Once again, let me remind you that forgiveness requires that the wrong-doer (Japaese hierarchy) admit wrong (acknowledge war crimes and atrocities) and then ask for that forgiveness.
Tick, tick, tick.
Still waiting.
GEO6,
I second your opinion…
Jim C
Here is a list of some of the apologies expressed by the Japanese government over the years.
FLATLANDER — Apparently, the overwhelming majority of that list (possibly the entire list) is aimed at Asian nations (China, Korea, comfort women, etc and so forth). Simply won’t cut the mustard for our side of WWII.
Correct me if I’m wrong, please. Is it not so that Congress does not need to declare war in order to wage war? Is it not so that some intel services in the UA had prior warning that the Japs were about to go postal? Were there not cultural barriers that meant numerous Japanese warnings went unheeded?
For their harsh mistreatment and various abuses of POWs and sundry other targets, the Japanese should apologise. For just about every other damned thing they did during WW2, they should apologise. For not surrendering immediately after Hiroshima, they should damned well apologise. For Pearl Harbour? I am not so sure. But I enjoy being enlightened and corrected, so long as such correction is not too…ahh…forceful.
As for the current government apologising… well, I’m sure you have heard other conservatives in the US speak about the futility of such gestures in relation to slavery and the South. Further, it would be just like my demanding the UK govt apologise for colonising Malaysia and then leaving us Chinese to fend for ourselves in a Malay Muslim majority country. Which I understand one of my Indian co-citizens is trying very hard to do. So it is maybe not my place to say this.
Further, I am unsure it is Lex’s (or anyone else’s) prerogative to forgive (or in this case NOT forgive) these long-dead Japs. Let the WW2 veterans and their descendents make that choice. If, of course, Lex, your family WAS affected, then the prerogative IS yours.
I’ll shut up now.
Old School, so now an apology is not enough. Only a majority of the apologies will do? I say, you don’t want to hear it/read it. That’s your choice, but don’t demand an apology and then ignore it when you have it.
Flatlander – take a deep breath .. slow down … think about what is being written.
One: the discussion is about Japan apologizing to USA about WWII.
Two: you posted a link of apologies.
Three: the first several pages of that link apply specifically to China and to Korea .. none applied to USA.
Four: honest questions were raised about your link, seeking clarification and/or specifics (help me wade through all those to find the one for the USA … I have not found it yet).
Five: Your spirited response neither clarified nor resolved the situation for several obvious reasons. Not quite in the spirit of the chats in this site.
Next time you have the option: reach for the decaf instead.
Oldschool Sends
I have lived and worked throughout most of Asia and came across many surviving members of the WWII Japanese occupation and many people are STILL seething with anger and hatred towards Japan. The unfathomable savagery and brutality the Japanese inflicted upon others is STILL resonating throughout the subjugated Asian nations. The evil Japan dispensed is still reverberating, all these years later– it’s amazing. And when I worked in japan from 1990-1991, I saw evidence that the fundamental core values and beliefs of the Japanese people have NOT significantly changed since WWII. The changes in Japan are all SUPERFICIAL , surface changes and the Japanese are capable of the same blind allegiance to leaders and authority as what occurred during the war. 50-60 years cannot negate 3,000 years of cultural indoctrination and conditioning…..