Homma paid with 1 life. How many died and how many suffered? Did that 1 life pay for all? What I am talking about is how did the survivors fare after the march?

There was justification for dropping the bombs. It cut short the war with less casualties on our side. Justification enough for me.

It is very commendable that you so ardently defend a race that you are not part of, however I have to partially disagree with the above sentiment.
In Japan harmony, "wa" is most important, therefore they have developed a system of "honne" and "tatemae". The first one is their personal view of things the second one is for public consumption, projected outward as to not to offend or insult anyone. I question your assumption that by talking to an average person on the street in Tokyo you will get his/her honest opinion. On occasion, they won't even sit beside me on the train or on the subway, let alone talk to a stranger on the street. Not to mention the fact that English is not widely spoken or understood and even if they speak it they feel very uneasy talking to a total stranger.

The following is an excerpt from an orientation:

"How Japanese view foreigners has always been a subject of debate. Often there is a mixture of admiration, suspicion and a lot nervousness in dealing with someone who doesn't act or look the same a them. Something you will no doubt encounter in Japan if you are spending any time or plan to use the language, although you speak less Japanese than a two-year-old child, you will often be told that your Japanese is excellent or that your use of the chopsticks is really good. The reason for this is that the Japanese are not trying to make fun of you, but rather making an effort to establish a rapport through bombarding you with comments they think you want to hear. Probably the most difficult thing for long-term residents in Japan is being answered in English when they speak in perfectly fluent Japanese. Once again, the idea that a "gaijin" can speak the language, that they are told right through school is incredibly difficult, doesn't compute for them.....
.
.
.
Many young Japanese people will simply freeze in stunned and embarrased silence if they were directly addressed by a foreigner. Unfortunately, the same applies to adults particularly if they have had little to do with "gaijin"."

It is also hotly debated whether "gaijin" is derogatory or not.

As to "ami" being a slur in Germany I can not comment, however I grew up using that term in another country and there was/is absolutely nothing derogatory about it, it was simply short for American.
We called/call the Japanese japcsi. Again not slenderous, just a short form.

Alex

Uhh, I am pretty much one of the most conservative members that posts here.

I understand the concepts of Honne and tatamae, but it doesn't simply extend to the way they treat Americans or "gaijin". Honne and Tatamae affects how they treat everyone: their teachers at school, their co-workers at their office, even strangers on the street.

It still doesn't change how I believe they feel about the U.S. and Americans. Their impression of us is overwhelmingly positive.

And my opinion is not just of someone who has lived there a year or two, or who speaks Japanese conversationaly.

I lived their for five years, have visited on business and family vacations over a dozen times, I have a degrees in Linguistics and Japanese, and am very fluent in Japanese. I can speak in the standard and kansai dialect, and regularly watch Japanese news and entertainment programing. I can even read a newspaper, but with difficulty.

I am familiar with the "orientation" you quoted above. It is not an "orientation". I believe it is taken from a book, and the author's impression of Japan is largely a negative one. We subscribe to a Japanese / English newspaper, and excerpts from the book were published in October.

You know what's funny? After posting the above, and taking my breakfast dishes to the sink and putting them in the dishwasher, it just ocurred to me that I never considered the issue of race when defending the Japanese.

I've been with my wife for 17 years, and we have 3 year old twins. After so much time has gone by, I don't see the race anymore. I felt I had to defend my family.

By the way, how do I get to become a "member of the board" ? :)

i love that gaijin cookin. shrimp, spicy rice and beans!





just kidding.

i thought of another group that uses a shortened name.

british call themselves brits.

and they call us yanks. i dont think it is necessarily a derogatory term. but it could be if the inflection was right.

i am going with japanese from now on though.

tom w

Yes, once. When I was in Japan, and my wife and I were walking back home after eating dinner, a drunk fifty something year old man that was dressed like a Yakuza (black slacks, black shirt, permed hair) muttered something offensive to my wife about marrying a white guy.

Other than that, nothing.

yeah,

i was wondering a little while ago what HER family said about her marrying you?

tom w

I consider being called a "yank" or "yankee" deeply insulting as it is a term I've always associated with arrogance and insufferable self-righteousness.

I usually say, I'm not a yank, I'm from Louisiana.

B

are you a reb?

being from the north it never would have occurred that yank might be considered derogatory.

i think, though that brits wouldnt think of it as derogatory.

a lot of them love our old "yank tanks" from the sixties and fifties,

tom w

I amazes me how easily people seem to be insulted and take offense by mere stupid expressions and words. Very thin skinned in my opinion. Reminds me of the old sticks and stones adage but without the words will never hurt me ending. Is this a sign of some inferiority complex or are they being just overly sensitive.

I am deeply offended that you are insensitive to my offendedness. I am an Offended-American and I have my rights.

B

I'm offended that someone can be offended by what I say!:D :musicbooh

hey, i dont have an inferiority complex.... i really am inferior!

tom w

... "MS KGB" ... doesn't fly, it's got no traction ...

This dual nature of their self-expression is exactly why I think that a foreigner will never be able to get their true feeling or opinion. I haven't been here for 5 years and haven't mastered the language yet, but I had 6 Japanese students living in my house for the last 4 years, I am married to a Japanese national and have experienced this dual nature many times over the years.
I believe that the Japanese are way too polite (I don't know if it is their true nature or just one of the many masks they wear to appease) to offend others, especially foreigners, with their true opinion therefore I can't help but take everything here with a grain of salt.
I am not sure where that quote originally is from, I have received it as part of an information package, but I have to agree with what is written there.
My experience so far ranges from incredible ignorance to wonderful helpfulness
and a few things in between. I guess the same can be said about many other countries, it is just the two extremes are puzzling.
In any case, no country should even remotely find a former occupier and adversary, which dropped not one but two nukes on them, anything but despicable. To add insult to injury their constitution is written by a foreign government and they are yet to change it 50 years after the fact.
They are brainwashed to an incredible extent and the majority of them find this acceptable. The place reminds me of a beehive or an anthill. The national anthem should be changed to Another brick in the wall.

This is not to be disparaging, just a simple observation.

I had my wife read your original post regarding what you think their opinion about Americans are and she said it is somewhat optimistic. :)

Alex

ps.

I am sorry, you haven't been around long enough to be a member of the board. :D
(Take a look around your UserCP)

Of course there is the little known fact that Pearl Harbor got a few bombs on it too as a surprise attack. Well, you are in a war. What do you expect? Pistols at 10 paces?

They lost. That they didn't get wiped out like Bill Halsey would have liked should be good enough for them.

That is a failing on their part and is NOT an issue on our part. It has been 50 years and they could have constitutional changes if they so desired. We don't have an army there to shoot them at dawn should they try such an audacious move so they have no excuse.

I wasn't planning on bringing in the "whys" or "how’s", the point is close to 200,000 civilian died, the Japanese have a reason to hate America with a vengeance (Pearl Harbor was a military target, 2400 dead). Not to mention the fact that the US had no business to be in Hawaii after the Queen was overthrown and the islands were illegally annexed.

The original contention was a total and limitless Japanese adulation of the US, which I don't agree with.

Alex

It was war. What did you think it would be?

Patty-cake.

B

I know its lame, think I should put Gestapo back?

I have no problem with the term yankee, we are yanks up in CT!:D

I'll post a poll :D

How about honoring different death squad organizations on a rotating basis? CIA, MI5, Savak, FARC, Mossad, ORDEN . . . I think you'd be able to do a new one at least each month.

An old man and a young boy were traveling through their village with their donkey. The boy rode on the donkey and the old man walked.

As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding.

The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.

Later, they passed some people that remarked, "What a shame, he makes that little boy walk." They then decided they both would walk.

Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey.

Now they passed some people that shamed them by saying, "How awful to put such a load on a poor donkey."

The boy and man said they were probably right, so they decided to carry the donkey.

As they crossed the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?

If you try to please everyone, you may as well just kiss your ass goodbye

Isn't it funny how many different topics have been discussed on this thread that Hatterasguy started about remembering the attack on Pearl Harbor?

I supposed this thread gets the award for "Most Hijacked Thread" . :P

Works for me, those guys never get any credit!:D

And just how many civilians did the "Japs" torture and kill during the war? They were brutal and sadistic, and they got what they deserved. Not to mention the disregard they had for their own troops lives. I'm sure the Chinese and Pacific Islanders have many reasons to hate them too. How quickly you forgot Japanese history in the first half of the 20th century . No sympathy from me concerning the atrocities Japan inflicted on millions of innocent civilians and POW's.

amazingly it never veered off onto sex!

tom w

Have you considered the possibility that your Japanese wife was merely being polite and appeasing a husband who has historically displayed a visceral anti-American sentiment? :)

To quote you from another thread: "Your history is genocide and slavery, your culture is murder and McDonalds, and you are nothing but a stray dog."

Paul

it is hard to imagine what the "stray dog" comment was hoping to accomplish.

there is truth in the comments but it ignores a huge amount of positives that our country has done.

such as defeating totalitarianism in ww2 and rebuilding europe with the marshall plan...not to mention standing toe to toe with the soviet bloc and successfully terminating the cold war.

i am lead to believe we managed to lead the way in stabilizing the bosnia and hertzagovia situation without costing any american lives too.

this iraqi adventure i am not proud of. among other things it distracted from our afganistan effort which was much more clearly a worth while effort.

tom w

I think we can agree to disagree, but don't use words that I didn't use. I didn't describe the Japanese opinion of Amercans as "Total and limitless adulation".

I said their impression of us is overwhelmingly positive, but I'm sure there are those that don't care for us. I just didn't run into that many.

It seems obvious, though, that your experience is turning out to be different than mine.

Perhaps "perception" would be a more appropriate word than "experience".

To satisfy you, how about the Rape of Nanking or the other civillians that were raped, killed, etc, etc?

Sure, perception is fine.

I'm willing to bet he'd get a different perception of the country if he could speak the language fluently.

But just because you speak the language fluently doesn't mean they will tell you everything. You are still a stranger, albeit one that speaks the language.

I think I speak english fluently and so do you, I suspect. Does that mean I will tell you thoughts that are in my mind? Just because I think you are an idiot and a jerk in my head doesn't mean I will tell you so. The wife's boss is a prime example. Jerk First Class. Clueless moron too. People don't tell her that.

One of my favorite stories about that was by Ring Lardner, I think. Perhaps somebody can provide a pointer to it. It goes like this.

A couple arrives in a town and ask an old guy what the town is like as they're considering moving to the area. Old man asks what the town was like where they came from. They say it was full of gossipy, small-minded, petty people who were unfriendly and cold. Old guy says that's a shame because he was sure that they'd discover the people here were much the same. The couple departs in sadness.

Later another couple asks the same question of the old guy and he responds with his same question. Oh, they say, we cried and cried when we left our home. The people were so warm and friendly that they opened their homes and hearts to the couple almost from the first day. Old guy says, Well folks, I am happy to say that I believe you'll find this town is exactly like that, too.

Bot

Yes but their english speaking ability, by and large, is very poor. If you speak to them in english, they will say what they are able to say, not what they want to say.

When you speak their language, they can say whatever is on their mind, especially when they're drunk. And believe me, for about the last 3 1/2 years I lived there, I went out drinking with my co-workers nearly every night.

True, true. My take on the orientals in general is that they are often much more reserved than we are here. In fact, sometimes, we are considered rude because we speak our mind more than they do. IMO, they seem more concerned with appearances of niceness and politeness than we are.

That might be one way but I for one am very nervous about info got under the influence. I tend to remember what was said or done when I am drunk. So far I haven't done much under the influence that I can't see myself doing sober. At best it is an indication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Nanking

Not Japan's finest hour thats for sure. I remember reading a newspaper artical at the time about a contest. It seems two Japanese officers were racing to see how many Chinese they could kill with the Katana's. The total's for each were well into the one hundred range.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

However not such dark a day for the Germans, or the Nazi's.
(note I dispute wiki in that regard, from my readings his Nazi credentials helped him, go figure.)

How strange history is.

Oh and why do currant Japanese history books glaze over WW2....hmmm....

As to the stray dog comment, yeah I am happy to be a stray thank you very much.

Why did Dacia leave his homeland?

To get to the other side.

B

Seems like he misses it.

He who misses is never missed.

but would he miss his missus?

tom w

More tellingly, would his Missus miss him?

As far as I know, history textbooks in Japanese schools don't even cover WWII. They learn absolutely nothing about the atrocities they committed in China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Phillipines. It's such a shame. At least the Germans have taken an honest look at their history and what they did in WWII.

Just for the record - - I'm not defending Japanese people as a race. Just those that have immigrated to the U.S. and have become Americans. They are as patriotic and love this country as much as the rest of us, and what's more, young Japanese men volunteered to serve in the military and fought bravely in WWII, even when their loved ones were still behind barbed wire in the U.S. One of the camps was Manzanar. Ansel Adams published a book of photography of the camp, which he visited many times.

In fact, part of my thesis in earning my degrees in Japanese and Linguistics involved translating first person interviews of first generation Japanese fathers of what their experience was like in the interment camps. Most of the men interviewed were kept in Manzanar.

Edit:

Just googled Manzanar. It is a National Historic Site. Here's a link:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/manz/home.htm

Just for point of reference, how long did it take American primary school textbooks to cover the issue of violence and betrayal against First Nation members? Or the treatment of minorities in general? I suppose one day it will cover the issue of the CIA and MI5 in the overthrow of the government of Iran?

Every nation has skeletons in their collective closets, and over time there will be a generation that has the courage to face them and expose them.

My old man, a vet of the Philippines and New Guineau, died in 2000. I was really frustrated in trying to hook him up with some of his buddies from the war back in the mid to late 90s. I'd seen video of veterans reunions and I asked my dad if he'd be up for it -- he said he'd love to.

I spent a lot of time in veterans chat rooms asking if anyone knew anyone who'd served in the 24th ID in WW2. No luck and I certainly don't fault the people running those websites. It's a big ocean to find a certain kind of fish in.

I know the Pentagon has plenty on its hands, but it seems like some sort of database of who served where and current contact info, on a willingly supplied basis of course, would really be a boon for those who served.

Since they are veterans, not active duty, maybe the Veterans Admin would be a better outfit to organize things like that.

It's like this: outfits that have high unit cohesion organize themselves. Units that don't, don't. Why force what doesn't come naturally?

Bot