Pearl Harbor, despite it's use as a naval base, exudes an atmosphere of serenity. A relaxing calm filters through among the ocean breezes, the beauty of the Hawaiian landscape providing a pleasing backdrop as your tour boat approaches it's destination.Disembarking, you walk up the ramp.
Your head is on a swivel. Looking around. At the harbor. The surrounding hills. The large vessel floating by. The white stone structure that is your destination.
What a cool place to be.
You step aboard the Arizona Memorial. Looking down,you are reminded that directly below your feet, permanently entombed within the hull, lie the remains of over 1100 United States servicemen.
In case you needed a reminder, the protruding gun turret and the still present oil slick leave no room for doubt: you are indeed standing on hollowed ground, the names of the entombed etched in stone upon the Memorial Wall.
Looking out again, you try to imagine how this sweet place in the sun could have once been the site of so much hell.
Bodies floating. Men screaming. Smoke billowing. Fires raging. Explosions of every kind, everywhere. Death by the thousands.
So, it is with interest that I read of the Emperor of Japan potentially visiting this sacred site. The place where all this hell and devestation was rained down in the name of the rat bastard of Pacific,who else, but the Emperor of Japan.
And no doubt, the Emperor will desire to lay the obligatory wreath in honor of the fallen.
Well, I think enough wreaths have been laid already, and from this guy, the Emperor of Japan, using the wreath cliche is getting off easy. Waaay too easy.
For crying out loud, this is Pearl Harbor we're talkin 'bout.
The day that will live in infamy.
Remember, those sneaky Japs? and the surprise attack?
And let this pompous jerk off the hook with a frickin wreath?
Who you kiddin'?
Personally,if I were in charge, I would require that the Emperor shave his head, strip to skivvies, and prostrate himself before every American present, physically kissing their asses while begging forgiveness for what was done to our nation in the name of the Chrysanthemum Throne upon which he sits.
That's what I want.
Maybe that's why I'll never be in charge
7 comments:
I'm embarrassingly ignorant to recent history and politics (I retain stories in my brain, but facts run in one ear and out the other)
Is this the same individual who ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or is it a new Emperor of Japan who is coming to visit as a representative?
its the son of the war emperor.
Ummmm ... I thought they already got both payback and full-face shaming ... ?
Yeah, I'd say we were about square right around the time we nuked two cities full of civilians. But that's me.
they got payback as a nation for screwing with us in the first place.
but this isnt about that.
its about a foriegn god trapsing around on our sacred ground, ground made holy on account of his sins.
the wreath cliche just dont cut with me.
some sites are strongly revered in our national memory. this is one. the alamo is another.
tracy: put me in charge, and i'll hold out for that lexus as well as the ass kissing.
Actually, Gino, I'd think that this would be especially appropriate, because it is a final nail in the "you are not, in fact, a god: DUH" coffin that the war-emperor built.
It is very likely a losing of face for him/the throne/perhaps Japan, for him to visit that site, rather than a "hey let's pretend everything is OK" ... because to show up there, at a site that really foreshadows the complete destruction of Nippon, is to move toward admitting, to the international and home communities, that Nippon IS finished.
I am interested now to know what he would say. There is a contingent of Japanese society that wants to keep the old superiority mythos alive (there was a hullaballoo about some horrendously offensive "history" books about two years ago, that tried to whitewash the Rape of Nanking). What this man says, will give them hope or rip out part of their foundation.
Interesting.
(I actually meant to include the surrender and the years we occupied and redefined their defeated nation, on top of the nukes ... the nukes were payback, the rest must have seemed like punishment.)
In defense of the nuke bombing. We really had no idea the devastation this would cause. Yes it saved many more lives by ending the war. I cry for the civillians that were killed but if a nuke were launched today it would be 100 times or 1000 times the devastation!
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