all I can say is....why?? I guess next will be a service for the Taliban dead. It was war and they were the enemy. Just because they are now a major trading partner doesn't mean we have to honour their war dead especially with some of the horrors our men had to put up with.
Pete
If it is any bleak consolation, the Japanese educated people are repentant about Japan's sorry history in Asia and in WW2. It is not as though countries like China and Korea have made making amends any easier though. Politicians, like politicians everywhere, fudge and are revisionist. Few leaders are statesmen, more is the pity.
It is very hard though for any ordinary rational caring human to mentally process descriptions and images of atrocities like 'The Rape of Nanking', for instance or the POW camps of WW2.
However, while those submariners may have had their heads filled with *bleep* that served the secondary agenda of their leaders, they nonetheless died in military service and very probably without ever having had a hand in anything unspeakable. Some say too that the Japanese navy had a different tradition in its naval officers to the army.
I was heartened by the feeling of respect for lost souls shown by the Japanese naval officer who suggested the service,. An intelligent man, he would have known that it would have been educational for his crew who stood to get both sides, an even balanced story and understanding (that they will take home), out of the service and liaisons later.
Not being soft, just realistic, these are not the Japanese soldiers of WW2, and we need more friends than enemies.
For me, this subject stirs up a whole lot of conflicting emotions.
The first thing that comes to my mind is the magnanimity of the Turkish people in allowing an Anzac Commemorative Site at Gallipoli. Imagine the outrage if someone were to propose a similar site for the Japanese in Darwin or Sydney.
That said, I could not be party to such an arrangement, either in Australia or Gallipoli. To me, such a decision can only be made by those who have been personally affected by those events. Many service-people and civilians were victims of unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Japanese. Only they have the moral authority to forgive and forget.
If one looks for a parallel in the German armed forces, there were the Wehrmacht and the SS. The former were just plods who fought as regular soldiers in the service of their country, but the latter were sadistic murderers who deserved to be bulldozed into a hole in the earth. My impression of the Japanese is that even their regular army were as brutal as the SS. In fact at this very moment the "comfort women" are in the news once again in pursuit of belated justice, or at least acknowledgement, from an unsympathetic Japanese goverment. Contrast this with the Germans who have voluntarily paid reparations to their victims on numerous occasions. In fact my own parents were interned in a Nazi concentration camp as young children, yet neither harbours any resentment to Germans, even though my mother lost her 5-year old brother and her sister was permanently crippled (by a wayward grenade).
__________________
"No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full."
Japanese students get a sanitised version, often where Japan was hard done by. There is a big focus on 'the' bombs.
However most people alive now weren't part of it and all we can hope for is that by treating them decently they will question and learn.
When you visit Japan you are treated very decently, certainly in the cities and the 'old' are met with respect and helped. Not unusual for Japanese to go well out of their way to make sure you get where you are going. It used to be that way in Australia, but the culture has changed. There is a lot of incivility here now.
Like most country folk, my family lost many men and several women in WW2 and some in the Pacific theatre. We remember, but we can't carry the baggage without hurting ourselves more.
