[Livia]

The cruelty of the Japanese, although not literally hard-wired into their DNA, was hard-wired into their psyche. Their actions were as a result of hundreds of years of their culture. No one's surely going to dispute that. But we must not accuse them of cruelty, and when they refused to apologise to the few remaining survivors even after all that time, we said, okay. Hirohito, who was emperor of Japan when they were starving, beating, working and torturing our prisoners to death, died an old man, still emperor, comfortable in his own bed... and we say, okay. And yet... the BBC make one joke about Hiroshima and they're summoned to the Japanese embassy where they demanded the BBC apologise... and they DID!

We are required to forgive and forget. We're required to see the good in people now. However, it seems we're still required to continue to beat ourselves up over our colonialist past, a past way before anyone alive now. Forget he German and Japanese atrocities, committed within the living memory of some. But continue to be contrite about our own past. This country gave my family a home after the war when they arrived here broken and penniless, but the face of Britain people still wish to expose is the colonising aristocracy of a time gone by.

Forgive the Germans and the Japanese by all means. But never forget what they were once capable of.