Tora, Tora, Tora--Zero Pilots Return to Pearl Harbor

Drudge | 12.7.01 | Bob Whymant

[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

[meandog]

Ah-h--so-o-o, they're still Ah-h-s-s-s-holes in my book!

[Arthur McGowan]

If you think these men are assholes just because they Attacked America, you need to grow up. They carried out a military operation, directed by their superiors and their government, against a true military target. They commandeered no civilian airplanes with civilian passengers. If you say the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were and are assholes, then you have to say the Americans who bombed Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were assholes.

[Vigilanteman]

They've at least got the guts to show up and behave like gentlemen. The movie Tora! Tora! Tora! is a must see for anyone interested in a balanced and accurate view of the attacks. The militarists hijacked the government. The diplomats were supposed to deliver the declaration of war in Washington prior to the attack, but were delayed perfecting the English wording in the document. The pilots were simply instruments of a misguided expansionist policy which will never rise from Japan again.

[Jaxter]

The low number of civilian deaths show that they were interested in military targets. If the Pearl Harbor vets can forgive tham, then I sure can.

[Valin]

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.

He's got to be kidding!

[Valin]

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”.

That's because there was no folow-no attack. Even if they had attacked the repairyards and pol tanks all they would have done is prolonged the war.

[Cyber Liberty]

I can't speak for meandog (he can do that himself very well), but I don't think they're a-holes because they attacked America. I think they are a-holes because of this line from the article:

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.

That's the "official line" that Japanese children today are taught in school in reference to the war. It's a very superficial way of looking at the causes of the war in the Pacific.

[fish hawk]

Does that mean that white people are assholes for taking America from the Indians?????Are you White????

[chimera]

I don't know, its kind of a mixed bag. Those pilots were in the military service of their country and were doing what they were ordered to do by their superiors. The leaders of Imperial Japan took a gamble and lost, big time. History has shown that they believed America didn't have the intestinal fortitude to fight what turned out to be a long, cruel, bloody war. They were wrong and their nation paid a horrific price. In that sense, there are parallels between recent events and those increasingly distant days of the past, but they may not be the ones people think of when they compare 12/7/41 and 9/11/01.

[Poohbah]

The Imperial Japanese Navy didn't make the decision to go to war. They merely fought as bravely and as skillfully as they could.

The people who bear responsibility for the decision to attack Pearl Harbor are all long dead.

Incidentally, one of the supreme ironies of serving in the military is that you will, on behalf of your soft and fearful countrymen who frequently despise you, fight against people who share your values and beliefs about duty and honor, but happen to be in another country's military.

[reagandemo]

The first time I went to the Arizona Memorial my wife and I were shocked at the bad manners that the Japanese had during the film in the Memorial Center. I thought that there was going to be a fight when some older men (probably WWII vets) told them to shut up or else. Out on the Memorial the same thing, the Japanese were irreverant and were cracking jokes and making fun of the place. On the Memorial there are Peal Harbor Suvivors that put them in their place. I'm sorry but I feel that the Japanese bring a lot of thier problems on by thier own actions. May God bless all the men who fought andlost thier lives for this great Country!

[Tis The Time''s Plague]

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.

I object to the term "victims." They were warriors who were standing the line for their nation.

[MJM59]

Good Answer!!!

[ThomasMore]

surprise attack

It was a friggin SNEAK attack! geeeeesh with the verbal engineering!

[meandog]

They carried out a military operation, directed by their superiors and their government...

"I was just following orders..." Ribbentrop, Goering, et al!

[meandog]

I object to the term "victims." They were warriors who were standing the line for their nation.

...just like the nearly 20,000 American and Filipino troops on the Bataan Death march?

[Arthalion]

Big difference. The pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor believed that Japan had declared war on the U.S., and that the U.S. would be expecting hostile actions. Given the high regard for honor and duty that existed in the Japanese military of that day, it's likely that a large number of those pilots would have refused to fly if they had known the truth...that they were about to bomb a completely unsuspecting people who thought they had a peace treaty.

The guards at the Bataan Death March were simply evil, no better than the guards at the Nazi extermination camps. They were not warriors, they were butchers and slavers.

[fish hawk]

The way I see it is that Love and Hate are both an attatchment. The longer one stays attatched by hate the longer it takes to get your life together and move on with peace of mind. People going through a nasty divorce usually find this out eventually. Some never do.

If anyone should or could hold a grudge it would be the American Indians. In fact I know a lot of them that almost hate whites. I say, the past is the past and cant be relived, so , lets grab our bootstraps and hold our head high and see what we can do to make the world a better place for us all.