Can you believe this?

A mate of mines elderly mother was visiting Pearl Harbour and while she was at the memorial for the Arizona , a pair of Japanese tourists were looking into the harbour and asking where the ship layed, she muttered under her breath "its right where you f..king well left it ". I nearly wet myself :D.

I have always seriously thought that dropping those A - bombs there, was a big mistake...
It should have been tokio !

A couple more on the Whaling fleet ports would have been good too.

Forgive and forget ? Never.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Three of my cousins were in the 8th. Dvn. Second AIF and were prisoners of the Japanese in Malaya and on the Burma Railway. One died there. The surviving brothers suffered conseqent poor health for life. They maintained to the end of their days that the Japanese race should be outside the protection of law. One of them used to say that it was a pity that the Yanks only had two of those bombs.

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I agree with your Cousin.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rick130

The far right in Japanese politics have succeeded in virtually expunging all references to what led up to and happened during WWII out of Japanese School History books.
There is a small section of teachers trying to redress the balance (from our perspective) but they are up against a majority who just don't want to know and a small, vocal minority who think that Tojo was right !

It's interesting to compare the collective reaction to the Germans, who generally appear quite shameful about Nazism and WWII.

The lack of acknowledgement about what happened in Korea, (Japan 'annexed' the Korean peninsula in 1910) China and then WWII is what still flames so much antagonism towards Japan in the rest of Asia.

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That's the Japs for you!
Three blind monkeys..

WATCHING
Getting very close to crossing lines here people.... watch the way you express your views as could be perceived as racist if in the right light :mad:

And I think most are missing (some intentionally) the point of Simon's first post.

As terrible as it is that Japan or any country would try to hide their past we are not entirely different.

I saw a documentary of Gallipoli where a Turkish soldier was saying that he could see into our trenches or whatever and saw our officers/higher ranks forcing our soldiers to get out of the trenches and go to a certain death. After watching wave after wave getting cut down by machine gun fire they just kept pushing them out. I have read that elsewhere too so it is not entirely blanked out of our history but it is not exactly the heroic/romanticised tales we get told in our history books is it?

One day telling the Arabs to up oil production. Next day telling the world to get rid of nukes..... Where has this bloke been? Backflips on his recorded statement wrt Iraq. The leader of a nation of 20+million thinks he's important. Krudd is just another political opportunist of the worst kind. What an inflated ego Elma Fudd has of himself IMHO....

As a matter of interest is there still radioactivity in these places?? (Hirohima/Nagasaki?)

Folks, I wasn't pointing my finger in any particular political direction, it just amazed me that Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem to be almost forgotten places for so long; sounds like forgotten by both sides.

Think of other notorious places, Auschwitz, Anzac Cove, for example, that have become shrines to the past.

Gotta say, every loss in a war is a tragedy. Doesn't mean that it isn't sometime necessary. Some places seem to be needed to reminded of places that we would rather not return to.

Cheers
Simon

I know NZ is a socialist state, but in most circles it still rates as a Western democracy. So Helen's visit in 2001 probably ought to count as a " Western leader" who has visited since the bombs were dropped. More info.

But maybe by "Western" they meant west of the Tasman ;)