Posted on 09/09/2020 1:13:01 PM PDT by Ozguy1945
Internationalising The Greatest Generation Australian veteran calls for more respect for WW2.
Chinas maritime claims in the South China Sea mean that it is primarily Indonesia that stands between Australia and the Peoples Liberation Army of totalitarian communist China.
In an open letter published in the link accompanying this post, former Australian army captain, Demetrios Kitsiou, supports my contention that sharing better respect with Indonesia for the heroes of World War Two is one way for Australia to be more secure in an uncertain future.
In Indonesia the most sacred national holiday of the year is August 17 in memory of the day in 1945 where independence was proclaimed as Japanese imperial power collapsed after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is very important that we in The West remember that we stand for justice and freedom and have done so for a long, long time.
September the ninth is perhaps an underrated day in that story.
In 1776 on this day the United Sates first became known as the United States. In 1945 the Japanese Second Army surrendered Australian General Thomas Blamey on the island of Morotai where my father had been stationed for three weeks three months earlier. In 1949 Susilo Bamaabng Yudhoyono was born in Pacitan, Indonesia. He rose to the rank of general in the Indonesian army and was then elected to be a two term president. He holds an MA in business from Webster University, Missouri and is a graduate of courses at Fort Leavenworth and Fort Benning.
I have created art displays celebrating World War Two in both Pacitan and Morotai.
The maintenance of freedom faces enormous challenges now both within and outside Western Countries.
So what we owe to the heroes of the past is a matter of both national and international pride.
Agreed, and thank you! Neglecting our duty to educate a younger generation opens the way for dangerous revisionism. We must teach the true history of the world wars to every generation. Neither World War I nor World War II were chains of unavoidable events. The wars were started by members of a would-be empire who saw themselves as being inherently, genetically superior and intended to dominate and control the world. Other nations with dreams of empire followed on to join the first.
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