“I agree with you. I never understood the resentment anyone would have against a foreign country that hasnt been an enemy of ours in decades.”
When they apologize for all of that, then we can talk about moving on. Until that point, their failure to apologize for the actions of their grandparents and great grandparents is a strong signal that they think it was OK to do what they did - and I simply cannot understand how you both feel that such an implied statement by the Japanese people SHOULDN’T be resented.
Did the U.S. ever apologize to Great Britain for "starting" the American Revolution?
Has the U.S. apologized for several million dead Vietnamese and Cambodians? For that matter -- has the U.S. government even apologized to its own citizens for p!ssing away 50,000+ American lives in that stupid war?
“When they apologize for all of that, then we can talk about moving on. “
If you weren’t in the war, you aren’t owed any more of an apology in order to “move on” than you owe blacks an apology for slavery or Jim Crow from every random white person in order to do the same.
The generation that fought the war extracted what they wanted from the Japanese and the Germans and the Italians. If they got their satisfaction and “moved on” then there is no damn reason for someone born in the 50s-now to be hot under the collar trying to be a victim by proxy.
Japan got what they deserved. A destroyed military, flattened cities, two A-bombs, decreased territory, a reconstructed political system, generations of demilitarization, American overlordship, and rights to our military being there to this day.
It’s one thing for people that experienced the brutal force of Japan directly to be resentful. Heck I’ll even give it to the Chinese and Koreans, and people’s of SE Asia for being less than cordial. That’s just going to have to work itself out, or it may take until that war generation completely dies off. But I can see that Chinese, Korean and Japanese kids aren’t still fighting the war because they have a life they need to live themselves and a future they want to live without ever experiencing those horrors. The world reality in 2016 does not give us the luxury of unaffected generations pouting like leftists demanding “apologizes” for every wrong under the sun from decades and centuries ago.
Israel sends people out to capture old Nazis, not into high schools to harass German kids for apologies for stuff they didn’t do.
I can understand vets wanting something, or anything to ease the suffering, but they aren’t asking for us to fight WW2 FOREVER for an apology.