John Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:

> masayuki yoshida wrote:
>
> > > Even Fukuyama was carpet bombed, with (they include injuries) a casualty
> count
> > > of 80,000. Lack of media or public attention and a focus on the
> A-bombings,
> > > particularly of Hiroshima, has contributed to this ignorance or apathy
> among
> > > Japanese. Many even forget the Tokyo firebombing.
> >
> > As far as the majority of contemporary Japanese is a post-war
> > generation, using the word 'forget' is not appropriate.  You mean
> > failing to recall person's real experience by the term?
>
> Perhaps what Eric means is something like "many teachers forget to teach
> their students" about such things. I forget what percentage of Japanese
> twenty-somethings didn't know that Japan had fought a war on the same side
> as Germany and against the United States in a recent survey, but it was
> rather depressingly high.

What is even funnier to me is the people who do not know that Japan LOST the
war. Still common terms such as "shuusen" (end of war) as opposed to "haisen"
(losing the war) do not help. There are many who are offended by the nation
specific US term "V-J Day" but I am not. It's not America's fault that other
Asians were not so intent on liberating themselves.

And then the people who do not even know that Japan had their own (failed)
program to develop the A-bomb, of which the founder of Sony was a part, which
might lead to a bit of understanding of why the US was so desperate to build
and use one first (some believed Japan actually tested one in Korea). Ho boy.

> And even in this newsgroup there have been
> numerous gaffes by Japanese people who clearly have a very hazy idea of what
> actually went on in the 1930s and 40s.
>
> Still perhaps that's a tradition in itself - the "floating world" - only now
> it's a world of karaoke, pachinko and shopping sprees, and the realities of
> history all seem very far away...

Some wonder when the world will stop blaming Japan for the war or colonial
history. I'm sure people won't mind much in two centuries for sure. The US and
UK are getting along alright. Americans don't seem too angry over the more
recent war with Mexico, or action in Grenada either.