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Late night shop drawings
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Late night shop (in reply to estebanana)
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Very few are still alive today who faced kamikaze attacks or participated in them.
Two of my uncles were aboard fighting ships in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during WW II. Both had heavy combat experience. One of the them was a crew member throughout the war on the most highly decorated ship in the service, 16 battle stars and two Presidential Unit Citations. He received the Silver Star medal, with two additional awards of the same. The other was awarded the Bronze Star. He was an antiaircraft gunner aboard an aircraft carrier that was heavily damaged by kamikazes in several battles.
Neither of them would ever say a single word about their combat experience. Neither would even show us their medal. When we boys asked them about it, all they would say was, "The heroes were the ones who didn't come back." They were gentle with us, but we very quickly learned to leave the subject alone.
I suspect each of them would have had a visceral reaction to depiction of such a horrific weapon that had killed so many of their shipmates.
These days, even the number of those who knew such men is beginning to decline. I would not take offense on their behalf. My relatives were strong enough to deal with their own experiences, though one of my uncles (a Marine rifleman, eventually a sergeant who fought at Tarawa, Kwajalein, Iwo Jima and Okinawa) did so by essentially withdrawing from society.
Bearing in mind Clausewitz's statement, "The result in war is never final," my reaction is sadness. Sadness for the young men who faced the kamikazes, sadness for the families of those who were killed, sadness for the young untrained pilots motivated by the false ethic of "death before dishonor" or hounded into suicide, and sadness for their Japanese families.
The unresolved consequences of WW II have been more apparent to me in Asia than in Europe and America, though maybe that's just the working of chance in dealing out experience to me.
I would expect a variety of strong reactions to the exhibit of such drawings in Japan, though maybe the passing of generations would weaken this. The reactions I anticipate wouldn't be ones I would intend to elicit in conversation, even among close friends.
My Japanese girlfriend's mother, whom I knew fairly well, lived through the fire bombing of Tokyo. My father was in on both the planning and execution of it.
Her reaction and mine were almost certainly irreconcilable.
RNJ
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Date Feb. 24 2015 22:53:49
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
The unresolved consequences of WW II have been more apparent to me in Asia than in Europe and America, though maybe that's just the working of chance in dealing out experience to me.
One of the main reasons for those unresolved consequences of WWII in Asia is the inability or unwillingness of the Japanese to formally apologize for their aggression and the atrocities they committed in the Asian theatre of operations, not to mention Pearl Harbor. Their "apologies" are always couched in indirect terms such as "caused suffering," "past relations are regrettable," and "remorse." The closest thing to an absolute apology was when Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama declared in 1995 that Japan’s “colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering,” while expressing his “remorse.”
Germany, on the other hand, has more than owned up to its wartime aggression and atrocities, paying indemnities to Israeli Jews and almost going overboard in wearing the hair shirt for its actions in WWII, including full disclosure in school textbooks.
I have always found it interesting that Japanese Prime Ministers cannot resist going to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor the dead, among whom are some of its worst war criminals. The Germans would never attempt such an action. I think that goes a long way toward explaining why Europe has come to terms with Germany in spite of its past, while Asia still has not completely come to terms with Japan. I understand the cultural differences, but there are strong currents in Japan today who actually view Japan as the victim in WWII.
Every year at the memorial service in Hiroshima there is a call from the Japanese for the U.S. President to attend the ceremony. Perhaps we should consider it, but only after the Japanese emperor stands at attention on December 7 at the memorial service on the "Arizona" memorial honoring those who perished in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 1:28:28
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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Stephen,
evocative stuff for sure! Thanks for sharing. An exhibition of kamikaze airplanes is... daring, indeed. One might say provocative. But I guess art should dare to go far beyond polite conversation!
Bill,
I am not sure quite what you are getting at about Japan. They were an aggressive, dominant, militaristic culture that aped Western technology and structure in order to avoid being swallowed up by a far more aggressive civilization--and lost. It seems to me they could only apologize once their own values had been completely eradicated and replaced by those the victors consider suitable. It's probably rather hard for them to understand why those who fought the enemy with the ultimate intensity are labeled criminals, when it is only natural to regard one's country's defenders as heroes. Perhaps it still doesn't fully comprehend why the superpower on the other side of the Pacific saw fit to nuke two of its cities, firebomb the rest, and then demand apologies.
But that's looking at things from the other end of the barrel.
_____________________________
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Date Feb. 25 2015 2:06:04
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timoteo
Posts: 219
Joined: Jun. 22 2012
From: Seattle, USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
There is a museum in my area that has an archive of the letters, it's interesting and moving to see the motivations behind the reasons they did this, or were forced into it. Not interested in politics or moralizing, just making a dialectic between the words in the letters a the machines used to carry out the mission.
I would be very interested in visiting that museum. I suspect that the motivations expressed are not that much different than the motivations of the young Americans who headed off to the war in the Pacific (and the irony of that designation), under the full realization that they might never come back. So personally it would be far more interesting to me to juxtapose letters of American soldiers with the Japanese letters. Or even modern day letters from American soldiers who enlisted to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. The machines, to me, are just the transitory instruments of their demise, and focusing on them seems, to me, to obscure the underlying similarity of the two warring factions. Pairing the letters with a visual element that the two sides had *in common* would, to me, better emphasize the tragedy. But I'm not an artist, so perhaps that would be too heavy-handed, clubbing the viewer over the head with something obvious. I just know that if I were in the same situation, there's a chance I would have made the same choices.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 3:29:19
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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quote:
I am not sure quite what you are getting at about Japan. They were an aggressive, dominant, militaristic culture that aped Western technology and structure in order to avoid being swallowed up by a far more aggressive civilization--and lost. It seems to me they could only apologize once their own values had been completely eradicated and replaced by those the victors consider suitable. It's probably rather hard for them to understand why those who fought the enemy with the ultimate intensity are labeled criminals, when it is only natural to regard one's country's defenders as heroes. Perhaps it still doesn't fully comprehend why the superpower on the other side of the Pacific saw fit to nuke two of its cities, firebomb the rest, and then demand apologies.
Miguel,
Japan began "aping" (as you put it) Western technology and structure during the Meiji Restoration beginning in 1868. It was an internally-driven dynamic designed to turn Japan into a power. At the time, and as it continued its industrial and military buildup during the first half of the 20th century, there was no "far more aggressive civilization" attempting to "swallow up" Japan. In fact, it was Japan that was militarily defeating, and in some cases "swallowing up," other countries long before WWII began: China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05, by 1910 Japan had conquered and made colonies of Korea and Formosa (Taiwan), in 1931 Manchuria, and in 1937 Japan invaded China proper.
Do you actually believe that China, Korea, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and others who suffered under the brutality of Japanese aggression and occupation (the Rape of Nanking being just one of the more egregious examples) should not expect a full apology by Japan because the aggression and atrocities committed were simply a reflection of Japanese "values"? Remember, those countries suffered far more from Japanese aggression and occupation than did the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor notwithstanding. As for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that has been well-covered in another thread on the Foro. I will only say that there is a big difference between using maximum force against an aggressor to end a conflict and the use of force by the aggressor in beginning it.
You state that you are not sure "what I am getting at about Japan," and you do seem to have missed the main point of my post. It concerned why there are still "unresolved consequences of WWII" in Asia, far more than in Europe. I offered the possible reason being that Germany has more than apologized for its aggression and atrocities committed during the war. It has offered restitution and completely revamped its educational system to teach subsequent generations what happened and its part in those events. As a result, Germany has been fully integrated into Europe.
Japan, on the other hand, has actually done very little in those areas, with weak apologies and a tendency to make excuses for its actions leading up to and during the war. In fact, there is a faction in Japan that continually pressures the government not to apologize and make restitution, claiming Japan was the "victim." That attitude does not sit well with other Asians who were victims of Japanese aggression and occupation. It is no surprise that Japan has not become fully integrated into Asia in the way that Germany has in Europe.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 6:29:24
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to timoteo)
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quote:
he machines, to me, are just the transitory instruments of their demise, and focusing on them seems, to me, to obscure the underlying similarity of the two warring factions. Pairing the letters with a visual element that the two sides had *in common* would, to me, better emphasize the tragedy.
I get where you are coming from, but what l'm interested in is the way that we, kids of my generation grew up drawing and building models of planes from WWII.
What I want directly look at is why I find these machines so cool to look at. They have an aesthetic, they are engineered for a special purpose. The whole thing is about why we found these planes seductive and how that played into an idealization of war. Making heros, listening to mythology. The drawings are kind a grown ups version of these models and toys. I did think about making drawn portraits of the pilots, but at did not work for me, because I never knew them, but I knew the iconography and the toys and models.
It's an entry point into something that is not political, it's about our fascination with military hardware. Then to juxtapose that with excerpts or one sentence passages from the letters serves to repurpose the machines and the dialectic between these to ideas will create third thing or content. That is a bit more unknown because it will be different for each person.
When I visit the museum to do more research I'll see if there is some book or publication in English I can get for you. It's in the town of Chiran on Kyushu about 50 mile south of me. Many of the Kamikaze' came from Kyushu and if they were for elsewhere they trained in Chiran, that was the forward base they left from to go to Pacific.
I think Americans will have more of a problem with this work than Japanese, but it's uncomfortable to me from both sides, and for that reason I think the project is worth doing. Jean Genet said in an interview( which he termed an interrogation) that artists have to come at society from an oblique angle. They don't run parallel into the stream of humanity. It's a bit melodramatic to state ti that way, but there something true about it.
So essentially I like drawing these aircraft and other aircraft, it's just cool, I have always liked fighter planes. I also am not much of a gung ho patriot in that I see my country as always being right so the letters for the kamikaze' pilots to their families humanizes a little tiny bit of that war, and I figure that is better than just drawing the dumb planes. It adds another level of meaning to them that now as a grown up makes the models and the kid war games have a transition or a deeper more important meaning.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 13:22:08
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
Stephen,
Discussions of Japan's part in WWII notwithstanding, your drawings are very interesting and well-done. Fine work indeed.
Bill
I've been reading the politics and I have lots of thoughts about WWII and Japan and I must say at after living here I have changed the way I see several things.
Basically I see it like this, Japan has been a non aggressive country with an anti war constitution for 70 years now. The Japanese people are very different from Europeans, they are not even close. The way that Europeans dealt with WWII had to be done in the way Europeans could understand it. The Japanese have dealt with it mainly by living by example. They can't be expected to deal with the aftermath in European or American terms, they had their own way of repenting.
I'm going to steer away from getting political, but of course I interested in hearing the viewpoints.
You'll also notice one of the drawings is of a Predator drone, and that is another project, related to the Kamikaze' drawings. I have a complex and many sided relationship with modern war aircraft too. I never liked it when the Blue Angels came to San Francisco every year to do the air show. I found it annoying, but not because I don't like the stunts and the planes or the was bothered by the noise. What disenchanted me was that they never showed what those machines are actually for. I always wanted them to tow a drone ship into San Francisco Bay and blow it to smithereens while the crowd watched from Fisherman's Wharf. Then after they blow up and strafe a few target ships then they could get on with the seductive air show, which hides the facts about what those cool machines actually do.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 13:47:57
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Bill,
Japan's culture seems to be by nature aggressive, yet it was clearly defending themselves from the West from the start. The US initiated the process by steaming in warships and forcing Japan to trade with it. How is that "internally driven"? We could much more easily call US involvement in WWII "internally driven", since not a single Axis soldier ever set foot on US soil! Which, by the way, is a perfect microcosm of how the West does business. It uses military force to exploit lesser civilizations via trade.
These countries take what they can get, using the means available to them. China is not apologizing for destroying Tibet. The US is not apologizing for subjugating the Philippines (incidentally, one of the rare cases in history when the occupiers were brutal enough to defeat native guerrilla partisans) or essentially eradicating the (you can fill in the blanks). Each country has done vile things when they have had the upper hand. Japan lost and must suffer the consequences. The rest of Asia is probably aware that when the balance of power shifts, Japan may again turn into a military power. And although Germany, long-occupied by the US military, split into two counties, has been culturally re-shaped, I wouldn't sleep on them rising again if the conditions that suppress them no longer exist.
_____________________________
Connect with me on Facebook, all the cool kids are doing it.
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Arizona Wedding Music Guitar
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Date Feb. 25 2015 14:13:16
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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Actually Miguel the Japanese today are not aggressive, they are really actually very mellow. The kind of culture that used to exist has changed, the today the Japanese take pride in the fact that they have not started any wars or gone to war. They seem to like it that way, and have had to change the constitution to allow them them to protect themselves, mainly because China is escalating the situation in the East China sea.
Japan is not going to become a military power again, the constitution limits how much the Japanese can engage and they don't have the collective will. What is different today is that the Emperor and the government can't fool the people. The Emperor no longer has the mandate of heaven. The Showa Emperor renounced that on agreement with Mac Arthur, the Emperor today is like Prince Charles, just a figurehead. Before that pre WWII the people were required to be obedient to the Emperor and the Showa Emperor was surrounded by the vestiges left of the samurai class who were very militaristic. The people who grew up in that era had to do what the government and Emperor said, and today modern Japanese honor the Emperor, but they don't live under the same type of filial obedience to the government. The general consensus in Japan is that they would like to keep the pacifist status, but reluctantly had to adjust the constitution to allow mutual self defense. That means basically they can't rely on the US to protect them from China and they have been coerced into a kind of defacto self defense pact with the US In other words China has to fire on the US first and then Japan can join the fight to help the US fight. They can't engage Chinese fighters that illegally cross into Japanese airspace, and the Chinese are the party accountable for the escalation. Mainly because the Chinese know the Japanese are hamstrung by their own constitution.
They are much more into the upcoming Olympics and putting Fukushima in order. You know when the Fukushima disaster happened they took all the nuclear plants in the whole country offline. It caused energy prices to go up, but they still have not turned the nukes back on. How many other countries would have done that?
But you have some points about the other Asian nations and the US. I'll only say I'm appalled at the way China has treated the Tibetans and then turns around and reprimands the Japanese. It's really hypocritical. The Beijing government destroyed Tibet's capital, perpetrated genocide, and has systematically dismantled Tibetan culture while saying they lifted the Tibetans up. Well they took Tibet by force and have treated them horribly. I've been to China too and I have heard it all.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 25 2015 14:29:00
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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quote:
Japan's culture seems to be by nature aggressive, yet it was clearly defending themselves from the West from the start. The US initiated the process by steaming in warships and forcing Japan to trade with it. How is that "internally driven"? We could much more easily call US involvement in WWII "internally driven", since not a single Axis soldier ever set foot on US soil!
Admiral Perry opened up Japan in 1854, and after the Japanese went through the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and beyond, they clearly were enamored of the industrial and military capacity of the West and wanted to emulate it. The Japanese were not "defending themselves from the West"; rather, they began to view themselves as a potential power player and wanted to attain what they viewed as their rightful place among the world's powers, which then consisted only of European countries.
It is breathtaking that you suggest U.S. participation in WWII could easily be called "internally driven," since not a single Axis soldier ever set foot on U.S. soil! The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed our battleship fleet and many of our aircraft, not to mention the loss of life that resulted. We were just lucky that our carriers were at sea during the attack. The Japanese had issued a Declaration of War, and the Germans followed with their Declaration of War four days later. Axis soldiers did not need to set foot on U.S. soil. The Axis had already brought World War II to us. There was nothing "internally driven" about it.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 14:46:17
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Bill, it is facile to so dismiss the US gunboat diplomacy that showed the Japanese they must modernize or be subjugated. They responded to external superior force, and a projected existential threat, by attempting to make themselves strong. It is a rare ability of their culture that I am not sure I have seen in any other. Most bow down and disappear with a whimper. Nor do I think they have exhausted their aggressive tendencies--in the 80's, they scared the hell out of everyone with their fiercely competitive manufacturing campaigns.
In WWII, the US chose to contest Japan and Germany's expansionism. At no time were the Axis close to overrunning our borders. Their victory would have made them a fellow superpower, not our overlords. We considered their plans against our interests, and responded accordingly by placing our forces to block them. It is unsurprising that Japan would attack forces put in place to expressly thwart their objectives. Pearl Harbor is more remarkable for the failure of US planners than that Japan attacked.
This is realpolitik, is it not? I don't see what morals or apologies have to do with it.
I am an American citizen and both grandfathers served in WWII, but I try not to look at these things through a nationalistic lens. War is a terrible, idiotic, insane, unavoidable thing. The impulse to dominate is not exclusive to the Japanese (understatement). My grandmother, a nisei, told me she was in the cane fields on Oahu and saw the Japanese planes as they buzzed overhead. The US is a militaristic society and an empire, perhaps one of the most enlightened ones that has come along. Despite our many faults, I am quite certain I prefer it to whatever the Japanese or Germans would have come up with, had they somehow won.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 16:23:32
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Miguel,
We have such diametrically opposing views of who the aggressors were in WWII (and in the case of Japan, when the aggression started and the reasons for their military and industrial buildup), and who contested whom, and who was overrunning borders and why, not to mention what constitutes an act of war (that it must be "overrunning borders," but not a an aerial attack against a sovereign nation's naval and air facilities after declaring war against that sovereign nation) that further discussion would be futile. In order to have a meaningful debate, we must at least agree on certain underlying premises, which in this case appears impossible.
The only thing I would suggest is that you contemplate and give some thought to the central point of my original post regarding why Germany has successfully and completely integrated into the European community of nations, but Japan has not as successfully integrated into the Asian community of nations; and why there are still "unresolved consequences of World War II in Asia," keeping in mind that countries such as Korea and the Southeast Asian nations who bear witness to those "unresolved consequences" are not U.S. lackeys. When they broach those "unresolved consequences of WWII," they are paying homage to the very real suffering and atrocities they experienced.
With that, I suggest we agree to (agreeably) disagree and carry on.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 17:17:44
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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quote:
The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley
Runner, thanks for the recommendations. Judging by the Amazon reviews, it takes a rather strong perspective--probably one I would be comfortable exploring, but others might not. I think a lot of our discussions here in the Off-topic section come down to disparate worldviews. I grew up in the 80s-90s and was rather thoroughly indoctrinated in the precepts of Post-Modernism. I never understood what it was, but it seems that I have internalized its general schema. It's probably not a coincidence, given the friction that develops between us, that Bill recently referred to the Sokal incident that supposedly discredited post-modernism for all time!
Yet still we approach the standard narratives with skepticism, reflexively play the devil's advocate, suspect glorification of our own or any other culture, consider broader areas of context. Discredited? No. An unbridgeable gap between postmodern thought and traditional/nationalistic thought? Well... Google postmodernism in the conservatapedia or whatever it's called. There's your answer!
_____________________________
Connect with me on Facebook, all the cool kids are doing it.
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Arizona Wedding Music Guitar
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Date Feb. 25 2015 19:15:12
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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quote:
Yet still we approach the standard narratives with skepticism, reflexively play the devil's advocate, suspect glorification of our own or any other culture, consider broader areas of context.
Miguel, do not flatter yourself by thinking the qualities you list above are in sole possession of the Post-Modernist crowd. Your description quoted above applies to any good researcher, be he historian or scientist. And do not make the mistake of thinking that because we may disagree on certain issues that I have not questioned the standard narrative and played devil's advocate to test my own conclusions. In fact, the conclusions I have reached in our recent discussion of Japan's history since the Meiji Restoration and the motives that drove that history are a result of just such a process. It would be a mistake to think that those with whom you disagree are simply "nationalists" who follow "the standard narrative." And believe it or not, there are times when the "standard narrative" is the one that best explains the issue under discussion.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 22:28:24
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Yes, there were incompatible narratives of the causes of WW II with Japan. After all, that's why there was a war. These narratives survive, as well as others.
Prior to WW II Japanese society and culture differed almost inconceivably from America's.
My ex-girlfriend is a descendant, via an adopted son, of the man regarded as the chief architect of Japanese militarism, one of the genro of the Meiji Restoration. For many years he was the single dominant force in Japanese politics. Her famous ancestor was himself childless, but he adopted his sister's son to carry on the family name, and the political influence of the father.
As a child my girlfriend's mother was raised in the ambience of the pre-WWII militarist nobility, plus that of the intellectuals. Her uncle was a Prince, her father was a physicist who studied in the USA. He had the ill grace to say publicly that if Japan attacked the USA, there would be a war, and Japan would lose it.
According to her, the militarists regarded America's almost universal isolationism, right up to Pearl Harbor, to be a symptom of weakness and cowardice. They believed that a heavy blow against the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor would keep the USA out of Japan's war in Asia. Her father turned out to be right, but the militarists locked him up when the war began. Americans, of my generation at least, would regard his treatment as torture. To the militarists, it was routine punishment for a disloyal subject. He died in prison.
Admiral Yamamoto, who planned and carried out the raid on Pearl Harbor happened to agree with my girlfriend's grandfather, but as a loyal subject of the Emperor he carried out the task assigned to him. He paid for it with his life, killed in a daring long distance mission by a flight of the new P-38 fighters.
As you might imagine, the imprisonment of her father radicalized my girlfriend's mother to a considerable extent. The privations of the latter stages of the war added to her disaffection from her social class.
She was the first woman to earn a PhD from Tokyo university. In the USA she worked as a simultaneous translator. Her languages were Japanese, French, German and English.
She once said to me, "I was a member of a generation that was disillusioned with Japan." Her English was fluent and precise. She meant "a generation."
Her narrative of the causes of Japan's colonial expansion and attack on Pearl Harbor, to the extent she expressed it to me, differed from both Bill's and Miguel's.
I would go so far as to say that the "truth" or "correctness" of a moral assessment of any of these narratives would depend strongly upon the culture from which they were viewed. As Stephen points out, the Japanese militarist culture is nearly extinct.
An anthropologist or a lawyer from another galaxy would likely arrive at still a different conclusion, or else throw up their hands and agree with Shakespeare's Puck, "What fools these mortals be."
RNJ
No disrespect is meant to the narrators in this thread. Their manners are impeccable. I refer to the human propensity to decide whose story is right by killing one another.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 22:58:01
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