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To: maineman

They’re in their eighties. But not too late to hang them, I suppose. Get real.


95 posted on 11/03/2007 9:36:22 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (Elections have consequences.)
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To: Mad_Tom_Rackham
They’re in their eighties. But not too late to hang them, I suppose. Get real.

At this late stage in the matter it's true that the number of meaningful options is diminished from what they were in, say, the 1950's and 1960's when so many top Nazi officers and blatant war crime perpetrators from WW2 were tracked down in South America and successfully prosecuted in American and European courts..

I think that for a great many people, a significant amount of pain exists today because Japan has not ever come to terms with it's innumerable war crimes in any meaningful way, certainly nothing like what Germany has done to admit to and make efforts to atone for it's wartime sins.  This in fact is a significant focus of the featured book and article here:

Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.

One thing that really stands out to me, as I read so many passionate posts in this thread as well as the similar thread from September

Beheaded at whim and worked to death Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs

is that there is a very special, raw anger reserved for the Japanese which is not in evidence for the Nazis or the Russians, and it's being passed down through generations of people with little of it being diminished.  A common thread among the posters here at FR is anger at the breathtaking brutality and the scale of it all to be sure, but also a white-hot anger at the modern Japanese for failing to come to terms with what they have done in even the most basic, minimal sense. I have a feeling that a bit of honesty from Japan in these matters would go a long way toward allowing the victims as well as the sons and daughters of victims to have just a bit of peace in their lives.  The boiling anger at the Japanese is palpable in both threads and makes it painful to read through them all, as well as heart-rending at times to respond to those posting to me. It doesn't strike me as an irrational anger in most cases, but an anger that is evidence of a deep wound that has been kept open and has become terribly infected, never having been allowed to heal at all.

105 posted on 11/03/2007 10:19:30 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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