Tora! Tora! Tora!
On this date, December 7th, in 1941, the treacherous Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, bringing the United States into the war. At the same time (it was December 8th in Asia), the Japanese bombed Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.
It should never be forgotten.
Neither should it be forgotten that there were many sacrifices before the fucking Japs* got their sorry asses kicked.
*Yes, they do have a history of treacherous attacks.
"From the skies you could almost hear them cry
Tora! Tora! Tora!
In the town they were going down
Tora! Tora! Tora!"
'Tora! Tora! Tora!' Depeche Mode
9 comments:
Did I mentioned that Aug 6 and Aug 8 never happened, along with the Nanking Massacre?
Whahahaha..
War sucks, period, and shows how much we as humans still need to evolve. However hard it can be to forgive others, it's absolutely necessary. My grandfather was in that war (flew--gunner in the Navy) and finally no longer uses that embarrasing term (Jap). and even drove a Honda for a while. While it's dangerous to forget history it's even more dangerous to dwell on the past. I think about some of my Japanese students and friends and the gifts of peace their ancestors gave us here in DC (cherry blossom trees) as well as their incredible legacy of art and realize how far we've come.
thankfully for us all, josh hartnet and ben affleck werent at pearl harbour in real life.
otherwise we'd all have been doomed
Steve I agree with you. War is a tragedy.
I don't agree with collective guilt though the Japanese society was totally militarised, in education, politics, culture in the 1930s. The democrats and dissenters in the society were killed off. People are individuals and should be treated as such. There were guilty individuals (many of them) then. That was then. This is now.
I don't agree with generational guilt either. The current generation of Japanese are innocent.
Anyhow, why should this be remembered and commemorated? Why indeed? It is to remember the victims.
It is also to counter the revision of Japanese textbooks and also their popular culture (there are specific manga and anime) where the Second World War is often
whitewashed. And the Americans and others are blamed for forcing the Japanese hand. This is important, otherwise, the lessons of aggression will never be learned. Now, the Japanese are changing their pacifist constitution. Not exactly an alarming prospect but it shows a shift and drift in mentality.
Oh, I do business with Japan. And my family has been doing business with them for the last forty years despite losing a grandfather and other relatives to their terror bombing in World War II. Many Asian cities were bombed. And the targets were not military targets per se.
Merv, perhaps, they were at Pearl Harbour in real life. That's probably why the US Pacific Fleet was devastated. Hahahaha.
Steve, that's why I am alarmed at strong nationalistic sentiments that I have encountered in Asia.
Asia's nascent nations (not talking about ancient Asia civilisations), and emerging voice of the people often have these fervent sentiments and well... you know.
I had a long conversation with this Japanese woman I know about the war and its aftermath and she noted that on December 8th the biggest story in the papers was a Lennon retrospective...
Japan still isn't a post-war nation.
There was no mention of the war in the society? The horrific consequences of aggression? I guess the only date they would remember would be the atomic bombings? Where they protray themselves as victims?
You know, in all these years, I have never spoken about the war to my Japanese friend. I wonder about her views. Then again, she is just a girl, not someone born during the wartime. Her views could possibly have been coloured by the leftist views of the UK academic world and possibly Japanese pacifism of the 1960s and 1970s. I don't know.
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