They are not “blameless” you know that.These tourists are after all the Japanese and I have no clue where does racism has to do with this anyway.

Few groups of the Japanese tourist chose to pose cheerly and smiling photo in the river Kwai is bizzare enough even to my Japanese ears.One of the question came up to my head was were they really Japanese and not any other East Asian national who can visit the place without much feeling of guilt and see the place simply as the David Lean movie related site.But I’ll just turn down the suspicion and cynicism and simply apologize for misbehave of my countrymen.I think our PM .late Ryutaro Hashimoto had apologized to UK vetereans in the page of The SUN in the 90’s at the occasion of his state visit.(I understand the bizarre choice but that was adviced by Peter Mandelson,you know).Nonetheless I repeat my own apology here.

I’m very sorry for what my grand parents did and I’m very ashamed for my countrymen were doing at the presence of a British citizen in the cemetary,They were undeniably not acting properly.

What I don’t understand about non-Japanese is they blame Japanese for un-German but never accept(or acknowledge) any kind of apology from Japan.(we accept no apology from the Japanese since it’s insincere,No,We don’t need any words we want actions,No,We just want sincere apology and not asking for money,No compensation is the only way to treat the victim with respect,look at Germany how they treat holocaust victims!Pay compensation to the your neighbors,No to the individual victims!)

The Guys Donald had posted in your blog,William Underwood,David Mcneill and Tokyoite teacher who belongs to National Teacher’s union are all usual muckrakers,nothing wrong about that by the way.If only we can have some sort of counterargument and criticize and point out one or two(or more)factual errors with out being fingerpointed as “the revisionist”.
The point is they exaggerate pretty much about lots of things and the strawman argument they keep making at the benefit of the Japanese liberals silence are to me, irritating.

Sadly in your case you have witnessed something that would give you a concrete conviction which contradicts from my understanding of the situations.I won’t try to brainwash you in anyway.frankly speaking I wasn’t interested in making any counterargument on your comment not until I went to your blog and found those names that I despise.See,whenever one hype about Japan is made by English speakers,there are no ways to dismantle it from our side.and that become global conventional wisdom. When I was in school it was Japan buys up the whole world and wipe out the foreign competitors and destroy the world economy.Scarely.
Many in Japan were saying that’s not gonna happen since that’s not the world we wanted to be.but nobody was listening.the iron triangle of media-expat-and Japanologist keep on writing “yeah that’s right your childrens are going to work under Japanese bosses as workhorse of Japan Inc working Japanese hours”.
I won’t call that racism.Most of them simply couldn’t read Japanese.
When I got my Job in 94 it was reverse,Japanese economy was too weak and Japan would drag the world economy into depression and destroy the world economy.We’ve been saying that’s not gonna happen,but the iron triangle said”yeah that’s right they don’t listen to our advice either they were too dumb or too lazy.”.We said “Hey wait a minuite.Things aren’t THAT bad”.But nobody was listening.
Now the triangle says Japanese are not like Germans when it comes to the history.OK,we are not Germans.and we will never be like Germans.Simple reason.We are not Germans.But some of you can understand Japanese and you can speak up for us.”We feel sorry and doing what ever we can to make win-win relation to our former victims”and what have we got.Waves of anti-Japanese comment on internets.I’m blaming Mcneill and Underwood probably for emotional and unjustifiable irrationalism.But I always feel they just pack up and go home,So we can control our own narrative without lame interruptor. l

If you want more internet debate on current state of Japanese war memory.I’m willing to take part.but it is getting late now and I don’t want to drag you into long and complicate debate.All I can say is the situation is a lot more complicate,a lot more complicate than the situation in Europe here.

yours.

However I was confused as to why a few groups of Japanese families chose to pose cheerily and smiling for photos at the Bridge as if it were a simple tourist folly rather than show the respect for the dead like all other visitors (regardless of ethnicity). The same was true in the war Cemetery. My only conclusion was that they did not know the real facts.

But if you say that the real facts are known widely, then I must go back to being confused about their actions.

I can only report what I see and mean no offence to anyone.

Not exactly.The revisionist history belongs to the fringe in Japan.
The atrocities are TAUGHT in Japanese text book.
Kinda funny that there is no reference of Japanese tourist showing remorse on historic site of Japanese atrocities or any passerby interview who knows about Nanjing massacre never shows up on western journalism?Not a conspiracy theorist myself but it is pretty much against all the mathmatical probability.
All I can say is pick up a textbook or subscribe any Japanese paper for a week,you ‘ll find out.

http://misssymartin.blogspot.com/2007/04/kanchanaburi-and-pows.html

No, but I guess if you asked them they wouldn’t say anything interesting. As the popular understanding goes, suicide was generally the way to go during the war rather than be taken prisoner…

Mutant Frog: “They chose to end it all rather than be raped and tortured by the Americans.” Really? Were they interviewed before they jumped?*

*Just today read a Digg article that some people are biologically incapable of understanding sarcasm. Doubt that’s true here.

Life magazine published a photograph of a woman standing next to a Japanese skull which her fiance had sent from the pacific, with the caption: “Arizona war worker writes her Navy boy-friend a thank-you note for the Jap skull he sent her” in the May 22, 1943 issue.
US soldiers routinely used Japanese skulls as ornaments on military vehicles and as war trophies, after the flesh was boiled in lye or left to be eaten by ants. On February 1, 1943, Life magazine published a famous photograph by Ralph Morse which showed the charred, open-mouthed, decapitated skull of a Japanese soldier killed by US Marines at Guadalcanal, which was placed on the tank. (http://www.rastko.org.yu/kosovo/istorija/ccsavich-propaganda.html)

Soon after the publications of the pictures of the Japanese skulls used as ornaments in Life magazine, they were reported in Japan. It is understandable that Japanese tried to hide their bodies in jungle. No one wants to become ornaments for Americans.

I’ve seen guys shoot Japanese wounded when it really was not necessary and knock gold teeth out of their mouths. .. I remember one time at Peleliu, I thought I’d collect gold teeth. One of my buddies carried a bunch of ‘em in a sock. ... The way you extracted gold teeth was by putting the tip of the blade on the tooth of the dead Japanese—-I’ve seen guys do it to wounded ones—-and hit the hilt of the knife to knock the tooth loose. ...This Jap had been hit. One of my buddies was field-stripping him for souvenirs.. the guys dragging him around like a carcass…This guy had been a human being…. It was so savage. We were savages. (http://www.rastko.org.yu/kosovo/istorija/ccsavich-propaganda.html)

It has been reported that when the remains of Japanese soldiers were repatriated from the Mariana Islands in 1984, sixty percent were missing their skulls. (http://www.loper.org/~george/trends/2002/Mar/65.html)