Germans take another one from Japan's playbook

[cstaylor]

Honor the Uprooted Germans? Poles Are Uneasy

"Consciousness is created by certain symbols," said Wlodzimierz Suleja, the director of the Wroclaw branch of the Polish Institute for National Memory, and a historian of modern Poland. "And this center would be their symbol, the Germany symbol, that they were victims, too, and that would be a symbol detached from the truth about the past."

[AssKissinger]

That's a good article and it does raise some interesting questions. Is it really appropriate for the Axis power countries to see themselves as only the victimizers and not the victims? I'm afraid that if a country doesn't deal with painful elements of their history, no matter what the cause, in a reasonable and healthy way then a backlash may finally occur which may start the next phase of a bad pattern. I'm an Amerian who lives in Hiroshima. I also lived in Korea. So, I've seen a lot different WWII perspectives. I went fishing with a man who told me that thirteen members of his family were killed in Hiroshima. In my opinion, the atomic bombing was justified. Even after visiting the museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I can say that because as an American I'm proud that we (the Allies, not America alone) won the war. I feel it would be wrong for me to question the tactics used especially after reading about the bloodiness of the battles down in Okinawa. The fact that Japan fought on the same side as Hitler doesn't make me any more sympathetic, either. But on the other hand I'm not one of those people who feels like the A-bomb musuem misrepresents history because they don't go into all the nasty details that led up to it. If people are not allowed to grieve and memorialize a tragic event like that then they are likely to express their bottled-up feelings in a more unpleasant way. However, I think Japan needs to come clean with their history a little more. Once I taught a private lesson to a really bright JPN junior high girl and I asked her if she thought Japan was the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy' during WWII. She answered that she thought Japan was the 'sad guy'. It shows how Japan sees itself as the victim of WWII. They need to teach the truth about their aggressive imperialism but at the same time thay need to acknoweldge that they did indeed suffer and many innocent lives were lost.

[cstaylor]

Once I taught a private lesson to a really bright JPN junior high girl and I asked her if she thought Japan was the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy' during WWII.

Just wondering, but how did this come up?

[American Oyaji]

I think it was during the after-glow. That's how it CAME UP!

[cstaylor]

Once I taught a private lesson to a really bright JPN junior high girl

Oyaji, you are a sick bastard.