My grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured extensively. After the war he was offered the opportunity to beat up the Gestapo officer responsible for his torture. He declined. His son (my dad) was close friends with a guy whose parents were high in the Nazi party during the war. I have close colleagues and friends who are German, and the war isn’t an issue at all. What good does hatred do? Why should today’s people carry the blame for their ancestors’ fault?
The only hatred I’ve ever encountered directed towards the Japanese is their insistence on slaughtering whales and dolphins for, ahem, research purposes.
But me, I’m up here having nothing but fun
I’m a gaijin man in the land of the rising sun
Despite posting to a zombie thread, eating POWs still pisses me off.
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D’you want to leave a message?
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Tell him that justice is waiting for him.
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OK Justin. Thank you. Bye bye.
[hangs up]
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No, justice. Justice.
Submission fantasy or something? Total guess, but it sorta makes sense…
Being married to a Japanese-American whose parents spent the War in an internment camp, there are three things working together.
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World War II racism. As others have said, this is practically extinct now. If a young person exhibits it at all, it’s because of something their grandparents told them.
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Economic fear. This isn’t nearly the factor it was in the 80s or 90s. The Chinese have replaced the Japanese and Koreans as the target for this.
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Garden variety bigotry. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, African American, etc. It’s pretty much all wrapped into a single package.
Americans were frightened by the Niihau Incident.
That, and President Bush throwing up at a Japanese dinner because some of his fellow pilots were eaten by their Japanese captors.
James Ellroys latest novel Perfidia partially deals with this. Well recommended.
My father was a ten year old boy living in Hawaii when Perl harbor happened. Honestly he hated Roosevelt for his role in the attack and didn’t have any animosity towards the Japanese.
So your father liked a nice tinfoil hat?
When did he learn about FDR?
Embarassingly racist portrayals of Japanese in American media appear to have mostly served as attempts to fire up the home front.
Meantime, racist portrayals of Americans by the Japanese directly resulted in thousands of civilian deaths via mass suicide.
The Niihau incident was in 1941. George Bush threw up in 1992. That’s 24 years ago. What does that have to do with today’s attitudes.
And I’m going to ask for a cite about Bush throwing up because of Japanese cannibalism. He’d already been to Japan for Hirohito’s funeral in 1989, which would have been a much better occasion to vomit.:dubious:
I am sorry that I cannot provide one.
Many cites to his associates being captured and eaten, and to his being ill and ridiculed. I did see one somewhere, but I cannot find it, and it is only an opinion, like mine. It is certainly not the sort of thing that makes good PR between car manufacturers and customers. :dubious:
Many people were alive 24 years ago. I recall my Grandmother, who lost a son in WWII, hating Japanese.
Bush had stomach flu, and that’s why he threw up. George Bush had eaten with the Japanese plenty of times before and hadn’t thrown up, so a stomach bug is a better explanation than the President being overwhelmed at the thought of some isolated incidents of cannibalism 50 years prior.
I thought that since his friends were the guys eaten, that he may have taken it personally. Perhaps I was mistaken.
Bullshit. You do this every. fucking. thread. on. Japanese. in. WWII.
Yes, the Japanese did a ton of terrible things during the war, and you’ve got a particular obsession with this one. It gets tiring. Just pit them already.
I imagine he’s talking about the Chichijima incident. Bush, however, was not present as he had managed to avoid being captured.
I don’t think it had anything to do with him getting sick and passing out all over the prime minister. :rolleyes:
We’ve already did discussed this earlier in the thread, three years ago and your bullshit is still bullshit.
That incident did not significantly constribut to the decision to intern the Japanese and Japanese Americans during the war.