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The part that got my suspicions going was the “printing the photos in leaflets” for schools as part of a “peace study”.

The Japanese often refuse to face up to their role in the war and focus on our efforts to get them to quit.

I remember vividly watching Japanese war movies on Japanese TV while I was a guest of the Tachikawa USAF Hospital in 1967. In each of them, swarms of Japanese ships and aircraft sank our aircraft carriers, one after another. Damn movies made me angry - apparently, the lesson wasn’t fully learned.

My uncle was a P-51 pilot during WW II and flew escort missions out of Iwo Jima. He told me that on those very long range missions (1500 mile round trip) that he had three enemies: "the plane, the ocean and the Japanese, in that order".

The Air Force realized quickly that the justification for having the 6,000 dead Marines and sailors taking Iwo and about 25,000 wounded on Iwo was predicated on how many B-29 crews they saved and the value of Iwo as an airfield to support their fighter escorts.

To aid the single-engine fights get to and from Japan, a mother ship B-29 was detailed to do their navigating for them. On one of those flights, my uncle got his only confirmed kill, a Tojo that flew into his guns.

Since the Japanese started husbanding their aircraft for kamikazes for our invasion, the Air Force directed the fighters to get down on the deck after the B-29s turned for home and strafe any target of opportunity. I have some color video of some of my uncle's strafing runs and he established a record by setting three Japanese aircraft on fire in a single run.

There was a downside to strafing down low: it's a liquid-cooled engine and if any of the thousands of rounds fired at you hit some part of that vulnerable cooling system, you were going to stay in Japan or land in the water, neither of these were welcome options.

He told me that as soon as they were clear of land, they would take turns flying underneath each other to check on that small flap at the rear of the radiator scoop: it's automatic - and if it begins to open, you have about 60 seconds to leave the plane before the engine seizes and falls uncontrollably into the ocean. He remembered friends bailing out, climbing into their liferafts, waving at them and never being seen by anyone again.

The Japanese often refuse to face up to their role in the war and focus on our efforts to get them to quit.

Right after the war, the Japanese started an international campaign to lay a guilt trip on America for dropping the A-bomb.

Some liberal American newspaper sent out reporters to ask Asians how they felt about that. For those who suffered under Japanese occupation, the replies were variants of "Why did you drop only two?"

The Japanese often refuse to face up to their role in the war and focus on our efforts to get them to quit.

I used to be bothered by such things. But now I realize, that nothing good comes from it. Why dwell on the past? It only demoralizes people of the modern age who had nothing to do with it. We can see the fruits of this on this country right now.