[fidelis]

"I’m not as familiar with this issue as I’d like, but I have some sympathy for the Japanese of today. How many of those who committed atrocities in WWII are alive today? I don’t feel any responsibility for slavery because I wasn’t there. Should today’s Japanese feel responsibility for the actions of their grandparents?"

I was in Hawaii last October and visited the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor for the first time. I was a little surprised to see the place full of Japanese tourists, mostly honeymooners. They were all very solemn and respectful as they walked through the large exhibit rooms.

Anyway, as you know if you have visited the Memorial, there is a short video you watch before you take the skiff out to the Memorial itself. The video thoroughly narrated and showed footage of the events that led up to the Japanese attack, the attack itself, and the aftermath, including an enumeration of casualties. After the lights came back on, I saw several young Japanese women with tears streaming from their eyes and visibly sobbing over what they had just seen.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"I was in Hawaii last October and visited the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor for the first time."

Hawaii is a huge tourist area for Japanese. When I was stationed there, a story went around about a gate guard at the Makalapa Gate (the one you went through to get on Pearl to go to the Arizona Memorial). Nowdays it is manned by private security people, but back then it was manned by military. Anyways, the story goes that Japanese tourists pull up to the gate and ask the young Marine standing guard duty where the Arizona memorial was. He looked behind him, then looked back and said it's right where you left it in the harbor....