To think Obama SHOULD apologise to the people of Japan?

[HappenstanceMarmite]

For his country decimating Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Yes, he wasn't personally responsible. But I believe a heartfelt apology - and the taking of ownership for his country's atrocity - would mean a lot to the victims' families ...and all of Japan actually.

I had a boss whose father was a Japanese POW. Whilst I was working for him there was an earthquake in Japan (I think - some kind of natural disaster, early 90s). He was nominated to deploy as part of a relief operation. He refused. He was told he was going. He said he would resign his commission (an absolutely huge thing) if they forced him...He didn't go.

He later told me that his father had returned from Japan mute. He never spoke again. My boss was a young child who never got to hear his fathers voice again.

Feelings still run too high. An apology would have been a mistake.

Yoko

I didn't comment on it, but I reported it.

I am sorry but I don't understand why 'Japs' is considered racist. Surely it is shortened version of 'Japanese'? Why or how would that be racist?

Atrocities were committed on both sides, however, Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbour. Further actions must be at least partially attributed to their actions, they brought it upon themselves in that attack and their treatment of their PsOW.

Because it is used as a term of abuse. I struggle to understand what is difficult to understand about that.

Cant

Do you also need it explained to you why "Paki" is considered a racist, pejorative term?

Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbour

Which, ironically, indirectly ended the second world war. Both the Germans and the Japanese assumed that American mass production was not of military value. They were utterly, utterly wrong.

Doesn't Japan still have a problem to say sorry to the "comfort women"?....

May have happened since, but it has taken years.

Sorry, not up on the history at all. Just know some friends' (grand)mothers and their children who were in the camps. -total taboo to mention it--

Is 'Brits' racist? I don't think it is personally. I think Japs is just an abbreviation for Japanese and, to me, doesn't have racist overtones.

Have you heard of Alf Garnett.

DR

So paki is okay then too? Anyone with almond eyes is a "jap", anyone with brown skin,which doesn't mark them as being of African descent, is a "paki"? No problems there?

"Japs" is certainly considered an ethnic slur in the US and has been for a long time.

Why should he apologize for something he didn't do and had no hand in?

Vickyyyy

Same reason Britain apologised for the slave trade I suppose.

Though apologising to Japan has pretty no strong argument, unlike my above example.

I have genuinely never heard the abbreviation of Japanese being used as racial slur. Ever. I honestly thought it was the same as Brit (but clearly not Paki). You learn something new every day.

My great-grandfather was a Japanese POW. Their apology was so half-hearted. I don't think Obama should apologise.

One of my great uncles was a Japanese prisoner of war who was literally worked to death in 1943 building the Burma Railway in inhumane and insanitary condtions.

He, or what were alleged to be his remains when prisoners' bodies were eventually dug up from various burial grounds some years later, was reburied here:
www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2017100/KANCHANABURI%20WAR%20CEMETERY

Imo Barack Obama apologising to the Japanese would be the equivalent of Benjamin Nethanyu apologising to the Germans.

With regard to the term which has come be regarded as racist, when Emperor Akihito made his first state visit to the UK in 1998 Private Eye magazine famously captioned its cover photo of the event with the words 'There's a nasty Nip in the air' which adroitly summed up public feeling at that time while avoiding causing offence.

Bolograph, when did I go where?

Bolograph: 'But in the case of Japan it had never been anything remotely approximating a democracy, and the vast majority of the population had no reason or way to know about the atrocities, which in any event were happening thousands of miles away. '

Pre war Japan had a very well developed racist propaganda machine that served to unite the Japanese in hatred of the enemy, as well as to demonise that enemy. The Japanese portrayed themselves as divinely descended (or at least the subjects of someone of divine descent - i.e. the Emperor) and thus superior to western people and powers and predestined to lead the world. The Shinto idea of purity was put to extensive use by propagandists. As inhabitants of relatively isolated islands, they saw themselves as racially pure, not interbred with others, distinct in appearance and culture. They also cast themselves as liberators of the Pacific from colonial powers - Britain , America and the Netherlands. While the Japanese may have had little knowledge of wht they were fighting for (in terms of specific war aims) or how the military was going about achieving victory and maintaining oppressive rule over 'liberated' territories, they were encouraged to do whatever the glory of the Emperor necessitated, and to feel they all had a stake in the glory of Japan.

My comment was deleted for saying Jap. I had no idea it was considered racist and didn't mean it to be derogatory but I struggle to keep up with what's acceptable from day to day. Paki isn't considered racist in Australia where it's used to describe people from Pakistan. It becomes offensive when anyone 'a bit Asian-looking' is lumped together.

The rest of my deleted post said that regardless of if dropping the bombs was the correct thing to do, apologies when delivered by someone with nothing to do with it, are hollow and meaningless. I felt that Cameron's apology for slavery was a really empty PR stunt. It's not as if anyone can be held accountable.

My grandfather fought the Japanese in SE Asia during WW2. He was then part of the Occupation forces for 2 years after the war, going into Nagasaki just a week after that bomb was dropped. My aunty still has the horrific photos he took (I've seen them). He suffered terrible MH problems for the rest of his life. He was convinced that fascist forces in our own countries put Japan (and Germany) up to it, made their (literal) killings on the arms sales and then sent poor young men like him to fight and die.

Is an apology always also an admission of guilt?

I often apologise because I am sorry something happened, even if it wasn't completely my fault, and even if what happened was the least-terrible of several alternatives.

I am not convinced that 3 days was a long enough time to wait between the two bombs, though I can see that you are all much better informed than I am. I was not aware that the issue was considered this black and white. I thought there was a much more complicated mix of opinion among scholars about the use and timing of the bombs.

I am not saying Obama should apologise; I don't know enough about the history and implications. I trust him to do the best thing possible under difficult circumstances.

claraschu

"Is an apology always also an admission of guilt?"

No, I don't think so but when it's something like this, I think it makes the whole thing even emptier and more meaningless.

"I often apologise because I am sorry something happened, even if it wasn't completely my fault, and even if what happened was the least-terrible of several alternatives."

So do I. You mean things like two people blamelessly bumping into each other when walking? Yes, normally we say 'sorry', smile and walk on. I think political apologies are very different to this kind of thing though.

i really don't get the people still arguing about whether a term is racist or not. Not knowing and stopping is one thing, continued denial is completely another.

Nip is just as bad. 1998? Akihito wasn't the emperor during the war! calling him a Nasty Nip is like calling Angela Merkel a Nazi.

There is a lot of shame in Japan about what happened. Yes. things are censored within the country - but the losing side always has more atrocities uncovered than the winners - that is not a justification, so don't misunderstand me - just rather a fact that the winning side control what is reported. Even nowaday with the media coverage we don't hear about atrocities peacekeepers commit but now and again they trickle through.

and again, they haven't asked for an apology. the dome in Hiroshima was kept as a sign of peace, and in the hope that such an event would never need to happen again.

I am not convinced that 3 days was a long enough time to wait between the two bombs,

Senior figures in the Japanese war government, without whose agreement any surrender was impossible, discussed the implications and decided that Japan could, and should, cope with more such bombings.

Parts of this discussion took place over encrypted radio (presumably PURPLE, the Japanese analogue of Enigma, but all Japanese crypto was broken by 1945) which the Americans intercepted and read (MAGIC, the American equivalent of ULTRA).

So within 24 hours of the bombing, the Americans knew the Japanese intended to continue the war. This was of a piece with their response to the Potsdam declaration: Truman promised "prompt and utter destruction" and the Japanese government's response was Mokusatsu, itself the subject of much debate but pretty clearly implying that they weren't going to surrender.

And indeed, it was news of Nagasaki which broke the deadlock in the war cabinet and caused the emperor to intervene. Even then, there was a reasonably serious coup attempt to prevent the emperor's surrender message from being broadcast.