Re: We Were Soldiers

On Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:49:01 +0000 Roger Burton West 
<roger@firedrake.org> wrote:

> It is certainly the case that many people in the UK dislike any sort 
of formal friendship with or support for the Japanese, because of the 
actions of the Japanese forces in the Second World War. Mostly it's 
not people who were there, any more; it's their children, who had to 
live with the aftermath... <

Same in Australia, although confined more to the wartime generation, I 
think. My mother -- sister of two men who fought the Japanese and wife 
of another -- disliked and distrusted them years after WW2 ended; she'd 
seen and heard of too many horrors from prison camps, etc., and she was 
not inclined to anything more conciliatory than a live-and-let-live 
attitude, but always remembering to "keep your powder dry."

A child of the 50s and 60s, I don't hate the Japanese (and I had the 
occasional argument with Mum over that), and I haven't brought my sons 
up to, either. In the way of these things, they may have a less 
tolerant attitude than I do, due solely to what they have discovered 
for themselves in reading history. Never underestimate the propaganda 
power of historical texts...

Phil
----
Gravity is a Downer... So let's go flying!