Replies

If we are sure enough of ourselves, then we ought never to demand an apology from today's generation for what a grand parent's generation inflicted long ago. Instead, we can find assurance of our steadfast ally of today that we will be friends without polarizing into unresovalbe conflicts, and we will compromise upon what we cannot completely agree.

I was stationed on Okinawa during the anniversary of the 50th year of friendship. There's no need to drag our present Ally's dignity through the mud over battle history. The Japanese have suffered their own defeatist attitude long enough. Objective history can restore honor to the honorable soldiers and rightly condemn those who've acted criminally. Many soldiers from all human history have suffered for having fought in a losing battle.

We don't vilify our Vietnam Vets (Sen Kerry does, but we're not like that are we?), so we don't have to drag those honorable Japanese's dignity with snide remarks of politics they could never have controlled.

Some refer to Japan as America's Great Britain of the east. Japan's Emperor and Navy opposed the belligerent Army as it embarked on empire building leading up to WWII. After WWII America found it convenient to continue to use Japanese bureaucrats to administer Indochina and surrounding areas, which caused resentment among native populations.

I was stationed on Okinawa during the anniversary of the 50th year of friendship. There's no need to drag our present Ally's dignity through the mud over battle history.

For quite a few years I lived at Ishikawa on Okinawa. Loved every moment of it. And, I believe I visited the majority of battle sites and shrines accessible and a few which were actually not. I was startled to be hiking in the hills above what was then Ojana t stumble upon a concrete shrine (not an Okinawan tomb but shrine) in which Japanese had placed their dead. Animals or desecraters or both had broken into it. The skeletons and bits of equipment were exposed to the elements. Rather sad and haunting.

But, I also have good friends, some of whom were members of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, which was captured on Java. Most were sent to Thailand's slave labor camps. Others were sent to Japan, including a Texas boy named Frank Fujita who I never had the pleasure to meet. Foo's story and drawings have been published by the University of North Texas Press.

I liked and thoroughly enjoyed knowing the Okinawans and Japanese I met during my life on the island. I really liked them a lot. But, because of the harm and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army, there are some who cannot neither forget nor forgive. As difficult as it is, I must respect both.