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Posted on 12/07/2001 6:24:49 AM PST by meandog
FRIDAY DECEMBER 07 2001
Japan's pilots bring peace to Pearl Harbor
FROM ROBERT WHYMANT IN TOKYO
JAPANESE pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, have returned to Hawaii to mark the 60th anniversary of the first surprise attack on American territory alongside survivors and victims’ families.
The elderly Zero fighter veterans in Honolulu for today’s remembrance are acutely aware that this year’s ceremony has been given a special resonance by September 11, which left America similarly stunned.
The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have been likened to Japan’s audacious raid on the US base at Pearl Harbor, etched in American minds as the touchstone of evil and underhand tactics. But the pilots who flew the mission 60 years ago reject the comparison between the two attacks that shattered America’s sense of invulnerability.
“There is no parallel between the two events,” Zenji Abe, 85, said. “Pearl Harbor was a military target. The outrage in the United States (on September 11) was an attack against all humanity.”
The raid on Pearl Harbor by Mr Abe and his comrades, launched without a declaration of war by Japan, crippled the US fleet, killed 2,390 Americans and propelled the US into war.
Mr Abe, who flew a dive bomber that hit the battleship Arizona, discovered ten years ago how Pearl Harbor had seared the American pysche when he tried to join the Hawaii memorial services to mark the 50th anniversary. The Japanese were told to stay away.
That did not stop him visiting the site where the Arizona lies just below the surface, a tomb for 1,102 men, and visited by thousands of Japanese tourists each year.
“I didn’t realise until then how deep the anger and mistrust was,” he said. That rebuff spurred him to contact American survivors and seek reconciliation. His efforts were rewarded.
This week, as a guest speaker at a symposium sponsored by the USS Arizona Memorial, he will tell Americans that Pearl Harbor was “bold” and “well-executed” but “strategically a big mistake”.
But most of the former pilots, like Japan’s conservative leaders, feel little or no guilt about the attack, a “date that will live in infamy” in Franklin Roosevelt’s words but a “victory”, however shortlived, for the Japanese.
Members of the Unabarakai, the association of Pearl Harbor veterans, argue that Japan had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive strike on the US which was applying intolerable pressure, including an embargo that cut off oil supplies to Japan in the summer of 1941.
While the former dive-bomber pilots, mostly in their eighties, travelled to Hawaii without qualms, millions of their compatriots have grown too nervous to fly. Numbers of Japanese visitors, the backbone of Hawaii’s tourist industry, have plunged by 54 per cent since September 11
Actually, I believe I'm a mixture of several ethnic origins--including a drop of two of Powatan. Yep, a lot (a lot, not all) of white people were real a-holes in conquering this country. But some of the blame must go to the Indian for allowing it to happen. There was a real opportunity, when Tecumseh and his brother "The Prophet" were trying to organize the tribes in to one mighty force in the old Northwest territory back in the early 1800s, for the Indians to really open up a can of whoop-ass on the whites. There were also ample opportunites afterwards as well. But, instead, tribal hatreds and mistrust of one another ran too deep, and, so like the arabs, the tribes fought against themselves as much as they did against white settlement.
PEDRO DE VARGAS: (long pause) I’m afraid I don’t have any answer for that. (pause) It isn’t right for men to worship idols. There’s only on true God.
COATL: Maybe your god, and my god, same god.
DE VARGAS: Perhaps. But you and I are friends, Coatl.
COATL: I give my life for you, señor. But you hurt my people, I fight you.
DE VARGAS: Well, I guess I can understand that. If I were in your place, I’d probably do the same.
from Captain From Castile
Fortunately in our several visits down there I have yet to observe any disrespectful behavior on the part of either American or Japanese. We attended the 55th anniversary memorial, and I have to admit it was an odd feeling to see so many elderly Japanese in full ceremonal silk kimonos. It was not specified at the time of the ceremony if they had been pilots or what role they had played.
I'm currently taping the proceedings live on one of the local stations so my husband can see it when he's home from Korea at New Years for a couple of weeks. Particularly in the light of the events of September 11, the whole thing gives one shivers.
No "assholes" that I see.
At least the Japanese Kamikaze were brave enough to just kill themselves in their own plane rather than hijack a civilian airliner!!
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