For what it's worth dept....

[TheEngineer]

Maybe once they start to recognize their war attrocities that they committed on the Chinese and the Koreans and the,..... They conveniently omit all these things from their standard history text. Many japanese learn of their war attrocities when they leave Japan to study abroad. They need to teach their young their history which might be not so good but it is what happened and must never happen again.

The first English nonficton on the topic was the book The Rape of Nanking by American Chinese writer Iris Chang who committed suicide after falling into a depression which resulted partly from her research into the topic. The sex camps where tens of thousands of women were forced to service the Japanese army, I remember newpaper articles that showed how soldiers walked through the streets and had a contest as to how many people they could kill. Entire towns of people drained of their blood so that the Japanese army could use the blood for their servicemen..... Bruce Lee's entire popularity in Hong Kong was not his martial arts skill persay as was in his first movie, he broke a sign on a Japanese members only club that read, "No Dogs and Chinese Allowed".

For Americans, the attach on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent war. A culture that cannot admit its own mistakes risks making the same mistakes again. If they want to be part of the security council, if the want to be able to have offensive forces again, then you'd think that after 60 years, they would be able to apologize.

Somehow, I'm not so sure I want to wish them a happy birthday,...

Sorry for the downer.

BTW, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and everthing else that is occuring during this feastive sesson. [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

[This message has been edited by TheEngineer (edited 12-23-2008).]