There's more than one way to look at this issue.
On one side, there's the Nanking massacre and the Phillipines and Marshall Islands and Korea. Bataan death march and Pearl Harbor. On the other side, at some point you have to drop your baggage to be able to go one with your life. This goes for a father who couldn't save his son in the swift flowing river, the mother who was hooked on crack and beat her daughter unconscious, and it goes for an entire nation.
I disagree with how Japan is going about it, though. The "victimization" route. They should teach the history as it occured, and just simply say "we do things differently now, because this way is superior."
I read about the Trail of Tears and Thanksgiving. I've read about Cortez and Pizzaro. Native Indians were a hell of a long way from pacifism. They were not the peaceful, tranquil civilizations that I learned in public school. They might have had impressive cultures and languages, but at the end of the day, they were just as brutal as we were. I know what we did, and I know why we did it. That goes for American Indians, Hawai'ians, Eskimos, Tories, and Japanese. Japan was just as brutal as those two bombs we dropped on them. If I was given a second chance, if I could do things differently, I'd have dropped ten of them on December 6th.
I just view "our" way as being superior. That is why we won the war. Doesn't make us right, and doesn't make them wrong.
I won't even start on the comparison with Muslims.
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