In fact, there was a documentary a few years ago called “Return to Iowa Jima.” They took some marines back to Iwo to meet some Japanese soldiers the fought on the island. Some of the Marines said they didn’t want to meet the Japanese veterans because they were still bitter. At the end of the show virtually all the marines had changed their mind. Once they talked to the Japanese veterans they realized they all shared a lot of the same memories. The Japanese veterans had the same experience meeting their former enemy.
My most interesting years in the Navy were 1994-95 when the ship I was on supported 50th anniversary commemorations at Saipan, Guam, Palau, Leyte Gulf, Manila, Iwo Jima and Okinawa (the last being extremely low key due to political considerations). During this time I met a lot of the WWII vets who had returned for these events. I never directly asked them what their current feelings about the Japanese were but it often came up when the vets found out our ship was homeported in Sasebo, Japan. I would say their opinions were about evenly split into three groups-those that still bitterly hated anything Japanese, those that simply disliked the Japanese and those that felt enough time had passed to hold nothing against the Japanese of the present.