Having read through the thread, I know that this was already pointed out to you, but, I’ll add my 2 cents worth anyway. You totally and completely misread the author’s intent of his words. He was attempting to compare the difference between the two cities hard hit by large earthquakes - the Japanese, after suffering significant damage to Tokyo (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki), managed to rebuild. Whereas, despite all the foreign aid that has poored into Haiti, nothing!! I’m at a loss for how some on FR manage to fail to see the forest because of the trees.
Yep, derailed the thread pretty well, too.
The history of WWII includes the unimaginable barbarism and cruelty of the Japanese, just as it does the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe, yet we are not taught the former. You have to go out of your way to read about them.
My Dad served in the U.S. Army in Southeast Asia in WWII, and he almost never talked about it, but I inherited his "trunk" of Army keepsakes and such, and know some of the stories behind them.
Those memories and that history are all true, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with the current Japanese people and their efforts to recover from the earthquake and tsunami, and deal with the reactor troubles.
I think it was rather gratuitous of the article author to throw in the line about Tokyo being burned in WWII, true or not, but it is even more pointless for us to be ruining this thread arguing about it.
As you say, the comparison between Haiti and Japan is the point...
Of course, the fact that we did much of the rebuilding after defetaing their imperial rulers and civiling the Japanese population is glossed over.