Funny you should mention that. Just out of OTS (and intel school) in the mid-80s, I was assigned to an F-4 wing. My boss was a Capt who had just returned a tour at Osan AB, Korea. She mentioned going shopping off-base one day in early August, and noticed some of the older Koreans wearing formal clothing and displaying ceremonial lanterns outside their homes.
Back on base, she asked a Korean Colonel if there was a ROK holiday in early August. He smiled and shook his head, then asked: “Don’t you know what happened today? This is the day you dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?” He went on to explain that Koreans who lived through the Japanese occupation and World War II regarded the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as two of the greatest events in human history.
Like many other groups in Asia, the Koreans suffered horribly at the hands of the Japanese. When I was there, the only Japanese-made consumer goods were motorcycles, and all of the Japanese manufacturers had Korean partners. They knew ROK consumers would not buy a bike with a “purely Japanese” name.
I just related this to another Freeper...
I knew an interesting guy one time, who was in his mid to late 80s, and he was an officer assigned to the prospective occupation of Japan once the war was over. He was supposed to be the Provost Marshal of the Hiroshima prefecture (if that’s the right word) but the way things turned out, he never went there.
They sent him instead to Korea, where he was assigned to get the Japanese troops out of the country and back to Japan as quickly as possible… As he said, before the Koreans killed all of them.
I said something once that was relatively complementary about the Japanese, and he nearly spit on the ground. I asked his friend later, and he told me that he absolutely detested the Japanese, even after all these years.
He said that some of the things his friend had told him would make your hair curl, and he wasn’t surprised that his friend felt that way.
Great story.