[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by 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.

But would we be any different if we lived under the same government as they did back then? I don't think we would be. We would be the same, just doing what we can in fear of our lives.

I also don't think any country was innocent when it came to cruelty in WW2, like I said before we demonised them as much as they demonised us. I doubt we treated PoWs any better but since we were the victors I'm guessing such cases were glossed over when it came to the history books.

Either way nothing justifies Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the bombing of cities is cowardly and the willful murder of civilians is the ultimate cowardice, especially considering that Japan was on the ropes. We played a part in killing thousands of civilians and damning generations of innocent people yet to be born to crippling illnesses and disease. Nothing justifies that response and it's no surprise that we're apologetic to Japan to this day over it. How many government and Army officials that would have been behind Pearl Harbour and the torturing of prisoners were in those cities compared to innocent civilians?