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Thanks Calpernia.

Old news to us, but absolutely new to the younger citizens of today's Japan. I have worked in three Japanese companies by now, and I can personally attest that:

WWII is simply never mentioned

Japan's role in atrocities is not even on their mental radar

WWII is allotted as little as three pages in Japanese school texts, and is portrayed as a war of liberation waged by Japan against European colonial powers.

When the "Rape of Nanking" was published, I read it and passed the book along to a friendly Japanese colleague. He is now an ex-friendly colleague and his anger was unbelievable. Livid, he screamed (and I ain't kiddin' about the 'screamed' part) that it was a damned Chinese lie!

As far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are concerned, they very much wish to be portrayed as innocent victims of this horrible nuclear attack. By now, however, very thorough research has shown that by ending the war, we saved several million Japanese lives, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Americans.

After the war, we generated the myth that the Sacred Empreror was not involved in all this, and in general, treated the Japanese far less harshly than the Germans.

BTW, another subject: had the Germans and the Japanese even minimally coordinated their efforts against the Soviet Union, it might well have been a different history that we read today!

BTTT for all that you and others have contributed here. We can neither forget nor excuse these atrocities. The moment we do, we condemn our required response to rid the world of the monsters who carried them out.

The destruction of evil and defense of liberty is never something for which we should apologize.

Old news to us, but absolutely new to the younger citizens of today's Japan. I have worked in three Japanese companies by now, and I can personally attest that:

WWII is simply never mentioned

Japan's role in atrocities is not even on their mental radar

It is not 'old news to us'. We were taught in school that Japan bombed us to make us get into the war. I never knew about any of this.

I started this thread for a reason and I am hoping I'm wrong. But there is info here now I want to see if connects to what started me on this crazy thought. Even if I'm wrong, no big deal. I definitely learned something.

JimRob should bill our property taxes for supplementing history the public school system lacked in.

I worked for a Japanese company a number of years ago. The Japanese who lived in the US got one heck of an education about WWII. There was one engineer close to my own age (mid twenties at the time) who honestly didn't know anything about Pearl Harbor, Midway, or any major battle in the Pacific.

He said that it was forbidden to talk about it back home, the shame and anger was to great.